Renting in Bishopville? Here's What You Need to Know Before You Sign

Bishopville Rental Market Overview

Bishopville, the Lee County seat, has a thin rental market where most identified housing runs through subsidized eligibility rather than an open market-rate application, as of September 2026. The aggregator AffordableHousingOnline.com lists 11 rental communities inside Bishopville, but only one of them could be independently confirmed: Ashley Park Apartments, 214 Chappell Dr, appears in CAHEC Management's own property portfolio as a 32-unit, income-based Family community developed through acquisition rehab -- the same management company that confirms three of neighboring Manning's four subsidized communities. Landura Management, which also manages several small-town South Carolina affordable communities including one in Manning, lists no Bishopville property on its own South Carolina apartments page, ruling out an otherwise-plausible second source. The remaining 10 aggregator-listed communities -- Cloverleaf Apartments, Cloverleaf Apartments Phase II, Woodside of Bishopville, Fieldale, Lee County Special Housing, Spring Garden Apartments, Pepper Tree Apartments, Ashwood Pointe, Lee County Senior Apartments, and Lynches River Apartments -- could not be matched to an independently verifiable management-company or property website during this research pass. Checking all 11 aggregator-listed addresses plus Bishopville's own City Hall (135 E Church St) against the Census Bureau's public geocoder found no jurisdiction surprises: all 12 resolve cleanly to Bishopville city, the same clean result found in neighboring Manning.

Common Lease Terms in Bishopville

No apartment community in Bishopville publishes a full lease, application, or fee schedule on an independently verifiable website, so most standard lease terms can't be stated with a primary source behind them the way this guide can for a larger market-rate city. What CAHEC Management's own portfolio and the process of checking each other manager's site do confirm is more concrete than most small-market pages can offer:

• Ashley Park Apartments (214 Chappell Dr) is a 32-unit Family community, financed and classified as an acquisition rehabilitation by developer WWJ, LLC, per CAHEC Management's own portfolio listing -- no rent, deposit, or fee figure is disclosed there
• Landura Management's own South Carolina apartments page, which confirms Village St Claire Apartments in Manning, does not list any Bishopville community -- a negative result worth stating plainly rather than assuming Landura covers the town
• The aggregator AffordableHousingOnline.com names 10 further Bishopville communities -- Cloverleaf Apartments, Cloverleaf Apartments Phase II, Woodside of Bishopville, Fieldale, Lee County Special Housing, Spring Garden Apartments, Pepper Tree Apartments, Ashwood Pointe, Lee County Senior Apartments, and Lynches River Apartments -- but none could be matched to an independently confirmable website of its own during this research pass, so no unit count, housing type, or fee figure from any of them is repeated here as fact

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but Bishopville may have additional local ordinances that affect your lease.

• South Carolina law preempts local rent control statewide (S.C. Code §27-39-60) -- no South Carolina city or county, including Bishopville, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• Bishopville's own city website states that its Code of Ordinances is published through American Legal Publishing's codelibrary.amlegal.com, a different platform than the Municode library several nearby South Carolina cities in this guide use -- but that library blocked this guide's research request before displaying even a table of contents, so no chapter-level finding on rental registration or landlord licensing can be reported one way or the other
• Checking all 11 aggregator-listed rental addresses in Bishopville plus the city's own City Hall against the Census Bureau's public geocoder found no jurisdiction mismatch -- all 12 resolve cleanly to the incorporated City of Bishopville, not unincorporated Lee County
• No local landlord-tenant ordinance beyond South Carolina's statewide Residential Landlord and Tenant Act has been confirmed for Bishopville, though the blocked ordinance library means this is an absence of confirmation rather than a confirmed absence

For full South Carolina statewide tenant rights, see our South Carolina tenant rights guide.

Mandatory Fees at Bishopville Communities

No fee schedule could be independently verified for any of the 11 identified Bishopville communities, as of September 2026.

• CAHEC Management's own portfolio confirms Ashley Park Apartments' unit count, tenancy type, and financing structure, but discloses no application fee, pet fee, or deposit amount -- eligibility and any fees are handled directly through CAHEC's leasing office
• The aggregator AffordableHousingOnline.com lists the other 10 Bishopville communities without a confirmable management-company website for any of them, so no fee schedule from any of the ten could be checked against a primary source
• South Carolina law sets no statutory cap on application fees, pet fees, or administrative fees -- whatever a specific lease states is what governs

An aggregator listing isn't the same as a confirmed fee schedule -- confirming any deposit, application fee, or pet fee directly with the specific property, in writing, before applying is the only way to know the real total at any of these 11 communities.

Population Decline, Pearl Fryar, and Bishopville's Local Economy

Bishopville's population fell from 3,471 at the 2010 census to 3,024 in 2020, a decline of about 12.9%, per Wikipedia's infobox, itself sourced to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 census figures. A more recent American Community Survey-based estimate from DataUSA.io, dated 2024, puts the population at roughly 2,910, consistent with the decline continuing rather than reversing; that same DataUSA profile shows median household income at $39,276 (down 10.8% from the prior year), a poverty rate of 29.9%, and total employment of 1,057 people (down 7.6% year over year), with manufacturing (286 workers), educational services (122 workers), and retail trade (109 workers) as the top local industries. Bishopville's own city website states a population of 2,829 -- a figure that doesn't cleanly match either census vintage above and may reflect a different estimate or an older count; this guide relies on the Census-sourced figures throughout. Bishopville is the seat of Lee County -- confirmed both by Wikipedia and by Lee County's own government site, which lists its mailing address as PO Box 309, Bishopville, SC 29010 -- and the city's own website frames its location as convenient to the larger Pee Dee-region markets of Florence, Sumter, Camden, and Columbia, rather than claiming a major employer base of its own.

The town's clearest civic identity, independent of any government office, is the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden: a three-acre yard of more than 400 plants sculpted into abstract, free-form shapes by self-taught topiary artist Pearl Fryar (1939-2026), who began the work around 1988 to show his neighbors he kept his property well maintained, per Wikipedia. The 2006 documentary A Man Named Pearl brought the garden national attention, and since 2021 it has been maintained by topiary artist Mike Gibson under a $50,000 grant, with a nonprofit -- The Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Inc. -- formed between 2020 and 2022 specifically to preserve the garden and Fryar's horticultural legacy. Bishopville is also home to the South Carolina Cotton Museum, which Wikipedia describes as housing the world's largest boll weevil, and the city's own website places Lee State Park and Lake Ashwood nearby. Against that backdrop, the declining-income, rising-poverty economic data above -- not a large local employer base -- is the more relevant context for a renter evaluating whether a specific Bishopville lease's rent is realistic for the local labor market.

Common Issues Renters Face in Bishopville

These are the most frequent considerations this guide's research turned up for renters in Bishopville:

• Only 1 of 11 identified communities -- Ashley Park Apartments -- has any independently confirmable detail at all, so comparing "Bishopville rent" to a neighboring city's published figures isn't possible from public sources alone
• Ashley Park's income-based, acquisition-rehab Family housing structure means confirming current income limits and waitlist status directly with CAHEC Management matters before assuming a household qualifies
• The other 10 aggregator-listed communities show no independently confirmable pricing, unit count, or management contact, so any figure a listing shows should be treated as a starting point for a conversation, not a confirmed rate
• Bishopville's local economic data -- median household income down 10.8% year over year and a 29.9% poverty rate, per DataUSA.io -- is a meaningful data point for gauging what rent level is realistic locally, since no published market-rate comparable exists inside the town itself
• The town's ordinance library (codelibrary.amlegal.com) blocked this guide's research request, so a local rental-registration or licensing requirement beyond the state baseline can't be ruled out with the same confidence this guide has reached for cities where the ordinance table of contents was visible

Negotiating Your Lease in Bishopville

South Carolina is landlord-favorable with minimal statutory protections, and Bishopville's rental market has no independently published market-rate price to benchmark against at any of its 11 identified communities.

• Requesting the current income limit, unit availability, and waitlist status directly from CAHEC Management for Ashley Park Apartments is the only way to confirm eligibility there, since CAHEC's own portfolio page doesn't publish the underlying thresholds
• Requesting a written rent quote, fee schedule, and management contact from any of the other 10 aggregator-listed communities before applying is worth doing, since none could be confirmed against an independent website during this research
• Comparing a quoted Bishopville rent against Sumter or Camden, both nearby South Carolina markets with more independently published pricing already documented in this guide, can help gauge whether a specific quote is reasonable for the region
• Given the local economic data -- falling median household income and a nearly 30% poverty rate -- confirming a rent-to-income expectation with a specific leasing office upfront is a reasonable step before signing anything

A community with no independently verifiable pricing isn't automatically a red flag in a market this thin -- but it does mean every figure needs confirming directly with the leasing office or management company before signing anything.