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

Kingstree Rental Market Overview

Kingstree, the Williamsburg County seat, had 3,244 residents at the 2020 census, down 2.5% from 3,328 in 2010; a more recent American Community Survey estimate published via DataUSA puts the population lower still, at roughly 3,132 as of 2024, consistent with the decline continuing rather than reversing. As of September 2026, a public housing-assistance directory identifies 14 rental communities carrying a Kingstree mailing address: Kings Square, Kings Square II, Kings Crossing, Kings Court, Kings Pointe, Royal Knight Apartments, Queen Ann Apartments, Butler Crossing, Butler Crossing II, Interfaith Apartments, Sandy Bay Apartments, Frierson Homes, Ashton Avenue, and Jean W. McCabe Manor -- every one described by the directory as subsidized, voucher-accepting, or income-based, with no open market-rate complex identified in the research for this guide. Running each street-numbered address through the Census Bureau's public geocoder found that 13 of the 14 resolve to the incorporated Town of Kingstree; the fourteenth, Jean W. McCabe Manor at 28 Manor Cir, resolves to unincorporated Williamsburg County land outside town limits, despite carrying the identical Kingstree mailing address as the other 13. A fifteenth address, Royal Knight Apartments' listed 519 Fluitt St, did not resolve in the Census geocoder under that spelling or several close variants tried for this guide, so its jurisdiction couldn't be confirmed either way.

Common Lease Terms in Kingstree

No community identified for Kingstree publishes a full lease, application, or fee schedule on an independently verifiable website of its own, consistent with a rental market that's entirely income-restricted or voucher-accepting rather than open market-rate. What the housing directory itself discloses, property by property, is narrower but more specific:

• Butler Crossing (208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave) is the only Kingstree community with a disclosed price range in the directory -- 2- and 3-bedroom units at $628 to $911 a month -- but that figure comes from the aggregator rather than Butler Crossing's own website, so it's reported here as directory-sourced, not independently confirmed
• Royal Knight Apartments' listed address, 519 Fluitt St, did not resolve in the Census Bureau's public geocoder under that spelling or several close variants tried for this guide, so whether it sits inside Kingstree, in the county, or is simply recorded incorrectly in the directory couldn't be determined
• Jean W. McCabe Manor, at 28 Manor Cir, is the one Kingstree-addressed community confirmed to sit on unincorporated Williamsburg County land rather than inside the town itself
• The remaining eleven communities -- Kings Square, Kings Square II, Kings Crossing, Kings Court, Kings Pointe, Queen Ann Apartments, Butler Crossing II, Interfaith Apartments, Sandy Bay Apartments, Frierson Homes, and Ashton Avenue -- are named in the directory as subsidized or voucher-accepting, with no independent website or fee schedule found for any of them

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but Kingstree 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 Kingstree, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• No accessible official Town of Kingstree website could be located for this guide -- the most likely town domain currently resolves to a parked, for-sale page, and Municode's Kingstree listing did not return usable chapter content -- so this guide cannot confirm or rule out a local rental-registration or landlord-licensing ordinance beyond the state baseline, a narrower research limitation than most other small South Carolina towns this guide has checked
• Checking all 14 identified rental addresses in Kingstree against the Census Bureau's public geocoder found that 13 resolve to the incorporated Town of Kingstree, but Jean W. McCabe Manor (28 Manor Cir) resolves instead to unincorporated Williamsburg County land, despite carrying an identical Kingstree mailing address
• No local landlord-tenant ordinance beyond South Carolina's statewide Residential Landlord and Tenant Act could be confirmed for Kingstree, though the town's own code of ordinances wasn't accessible for direct review

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

Mandatory Fees at Kingstree Communities

No independently verifiable fee schedule exists for any of Kingstree's 14 identified communities, as of September 2026.

• The housing directory names all 14 communities but discloses no application fee, pet fee, or administrative charge for any of them -- those specifics aren't published online for a single one
• Butler Crossing's $628-$911/month range is the only figure disclosed anywhere in this guide's research, and it comes from the aggregator rather than Butler Crossing's own website, so it isn't stated here as a confirmed rate
• At the income-restricted communities identified for Kingstree, what a specific household pays is set by the applicable program's income formula (commonly capped near 30% of income, or benchmarked against Area Median Income limits) rather than a posted fee schedule

A directory-listed price isn't the same as a confirmed one -- getting any rent, deposit, or fee amount in writing directly from the specific property, before applying, is the only way to know the real total at any of these 14 communities.

Williamsburg County Government, a Nobel Laureate, and Kingstree's Local Economy

Kingstree's own name comes from a single white pine along the Black River that colonial-era officials marked for the Crown's use as a ship's mast -- reportedly the only such tree ever claimed by the Crown in the American South, per Wikipedia; the surrounding settlement, originally called Williamsburg, kept that name for the county while the town itself became known as King's Tree. The Williamsburg County Courthouse downtown was built in 1823 and designed by Robert Mills, the South Carolina architect later responsible for the Washington Monument. Thorntree, a two-story 1749 plantation house built by James Witherspoon, was relocated from its original rural site to the town's Fluitt-Nelson Memorial Park for preservation, and Williamsburg Presbyterian Church traces its founding to 1736. The Black River, which runs through the county, had a 75-mile stretch designated under South Carolina's Scenic River Program in 2001.

As the county seat, Kingstree is where Williamsburg County's own administrative offices sit -- 201 W Main Street, confirmed by the Census Bureau geocoder to be inside town limits -- along with the county's Tax Collector, Treasurer, and Code Enforcement offices. Williamsburg Technical College, part of the South Carolina Technical College System, is also based in Kingstree. County-wide, manufacturing accounted for roughly 30.2% of jobs as of a 2024 county employer snapshot, at an average annual wage of about $60,944, with Food Lion and Williamsburg Technical College named among the county's top employers alongside the U.S. Department of Justice -- a reference to the federal government's medium-security Federal Correctional Institution, Williamsburg, which is actually located in Salters, a separate Williamsburg County community roughly 15 miles from Kingstree itself, not inside the town. That same April 2024 employer snapshot also named Tupperware, but Tupperware announced in June 2024 -- about two months later -- that it was closing its Williamsburg County manufacturing plant, in Hemingway, and laying off nearly 150 workers, so an employer list this guide found is already out of date on that point by the time of publication.

Two Kingstree natives reached national prominence: Joseph L. Goldstein, born in Kingstree in 1940, won the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research on cholesterol metabolism and the LDL receptor, and Teddy Pendergrass, born in Kingstree in 1950, became a platinum-selling R&B singer after his family moved to Philadelphia when he was a young child -- both facts confirmed on their own individual Wikipedia biography pages, not just Kingstree's own page. Kingstree's own notable-people list also credits NFL cornerback Bryant McFadden, but McFadden's own Wikipedia biography lists Hollywood, Florida as his birthplace, with no documented Kingstree connection -- a claim this guide couldn't verify and doesn't repeat as fact.

Common Issues Renters Face in Kingstree

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

• Every one of the 14 identified Kingstree rental communities runs on income-restricted or voucher-accepting eligibility rather than a standard market-rate application, so confirming current income limits and waitlist status directly with the property matters before assuming a household qualifies
• Jean W. McCabe Manor carries a Kingstree mailing address but actually sits on unincorporated Williamsburg County land -- worth confirming before assuming a specific Kingstree ordinance, utility connection, or business-license requirement applies there
• Royal Knight Apartments' listed address, 519 Fluitt St, couldn't be located in the Census Bureau's public geocoder, so its jurisdiction is unconfirmed either way -- a reasonable thing to ask about directly
• No accessible Town of Kingstree code of ordinances could be found for this guide, so a specific local rental-registration or licensing requirement, if one exists, would need to be confirmed with the town directly rather than assumed absent from a source this guide couldn't reach

Negotiating Your Lease in Kingstree

South Carolina is landlord-favorable with minimal statutory protections, and Kingstree's entirely income-restricted rental market means there's effectively no posted market rate to benchmark a specific quote against.

• Requesting the current income limit, program type, and waitlist status directly from the leasing office at any of the 14 identified communities is the only way to confirm eligibility, since none publishes those thresholds online
• Getting a written rent quote and fee schedule from Butler Crossing before applying is worth doing, since the $628-$911 range shown in this guide's research comes from an aggregator rather than the property's own website
• Confirming whether a specific address -- Jean W. McCabe Manor in particular -- is inside Kingstree town limits or unincorporated Williamsburg County is a reasonable question before assuming a municipal service or ordinance applies
• Comparing a quoted Kingstree figure against nearby Lake City, Manning, or Florence, all with more independently published pricing, can help gauge whether a specific number is reasonable for the wider Pee Dee region

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 before signing anything.