the Oasis

The cost of renting an apartment in South Carolina is not just higher in raw dollars than it used to be. Your dollar just doesn’t go as far.

By Scott Morgan, Managing Editor,
Sept. 30, 2025

The Deep Dive is where we take a look at datapoints and numbers and general trends and explore what they mean.

In March of 2019, I paid $870 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Rock Hill. Twenty-five of those dollars were because of my dog.

Still factoring in Margo, that same apartment rented for (starting at) $1,350 in September of 2025 according to its company’s website.

Herein lies the rub: $870 in 2025 dollars is worth about $1,171. Which means that if I still had that apartment, I’d be paying the equivalent of $179 extra every month with 2025 money than 2019 money.

Does that make sense? It doesn’t have to.

Data-lite

ApartmentList keeps track of average rents — overall, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom — by month in the state, plus in seven South Carolina metro areas and the cities and counties considered part of the metros.

For the record, they are:

• York County/Charlotte, Rock Hill
• Charleston County,  Charleston City, North Charleston, Mount Pleasant, Goose Creek, Berkeley County, Dorchester County
• Beaufort County
• Greenville-Anderson, Greenville County, Greenville City
• Columbia City, Richland County, Lexington County
• Horry County
• Spartanburg

Between July of 2017 and August of 2025, overall average rents rose between 27% (Spartanburg) and 45% (Charleston) in these respective metro regions.

Nicholas Moellman, a professor of economics at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, says the price of  housing has risen faster than the price of other general goods. By a lot.

$112 more per month in Charleston; 

$70 more per month in Rock Hill;

$56 more per month in Myrtle Beach

on rent than they would have, if the U.S. dollar was worth as much as in July of 2017; and that the acceleration of rent prices was sharper between these two dates than the rest of the economy.

There is one metro area on the other side of these calculations — Spartanburg,

In July of 2017, ApartmentList set average rents here at $943 a month. In August of 2025, they were $1,204. Run $943 in 2017 dollars through the inflation calculator and it’s worth $1,248 in August of 2025 — meaning that Spartanburg renters paid $44 less than they would have paid by 2017 dollar values.

What This All Suggests

Yes, all these numbers kinda hurt my head too. Really, though, they’re just evidence to what I said up top — that it’s not just the actual cost in dollars that’s higher now, it’s that the dollar doesn’t go as far to get you there.

South Carolina is not quite the bargain it might seem to be. There are pages (and pages) of rankings of most affordable states for renters. Ask a search engine — any of them, I dare you.

And why they all score affordability and livability and everything else-ability in as many ways as there are rankings, generally, they all seem to agree that South Carolina is middle-of-the-pack affordable for renters in 2025, compared to other states.