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

Loris Rental Market Overview

No apartment community with a Loris address was found publishing its own market-rate lease pricing on its own website, as of September 2026. A housing-assistance directory lists five income-based or federally subsidized apartment communities inside the city: Loris Gardens and Palmettos Way Apartments, both on Suggs Street; Tall Pines I on Harrelson Avenue; Creekwood Apartments on Main Street; and Watsons Place on Heritage Road. Rent at communities like these is calculated from a household's income or a voucher payment standard, not advertised as a fixed monthly figure the way a market-rate complex would -- so there is no dollar range to publish here the way there is for larger Horry County cities in this guide. For a benchmark, HUD's fiscal year 2026 Fair Market Rent schedule for the Loris area lists $1,229/month for a one-bedroom and $1,465/month for a two-bedroom -- the federal standard used to cap Section 8 voucher payments, not a confirmed asking rent from any specific community.

Common Lease Terms in Loris

Loris's identifiable rental stock splits into two shapes, and the paperwork differs between them.

• The five income-based communities identified (Loris Gardens, Palmettos Way Apartments, Tall Pines I, Creekwood Apartments, Watsons Place) generally require an income-eligibility application and, for the subsidized units among them, annual income recertification -- a different process from simply signing a standard 12-month lease
• Outside those five communities, rental listings with a Loris address are mostly individually owned single-family homes rather than units inside a professionally managed complex, so lease terms, application steps, and move-in costs vary property to property rather than following one company's standard form

Local Tenant Protections

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

• No dedicated rental-registration or landlord-licensing ordinance was found. Loris's Code Enforcement Division, per the city's own website, administers zoning regulations, permit and inspection ordinances, and dwelling-standards ordinances covering hazardous or condemned buildings, alongside a general business-license requirement that applies to any business operating in the city -- a property-condition and business-licensing framework, not a tenant-rights ordinance
• Loris's code library is hosted on Municode, but the site's interface is a JavaScript application that did not render searchable content for this review, so a full section-by-section search of the code could not be completed -- disclosed here rather than guessed at
• No local rent control; South Carolina Code §27-39-60 expressly bars any county or municipality from regulating rent on privately owned residential or commercial property

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

Fees and Costs at Loris's Known Rental Communities

None of the five named communities was found publishing an itemized fee schedule on its own website -- unlike the Greystar-managed communities covered on this site's Conway guide, none of the five appears to maintain a public marketing site at all, which is consistent with how income-based and subsidized housing is typically operated. What's publicly documented about each, from a housing-assistance directory rather than each property's own site, is limited to name, address, and program type:

• Loris Gardens (4265 Suggs Street) and Palmettos Way Apartments (4399 Suggs Street): both listed as income-based with short waitlists; the Census Bureau's geocoder could not match either address to confirm city-limits status, a gap in the address-range data rather than a negative finding
• Tall Pines I (4300 Harrelson Avenue): listed as subsidized housing; confirmed by the Census Bureau's geocoder to fall inside Loris city limits
• Creekwood Apartments (2340 Main Street): listed as subsidized and voucher-accepting with a short waitlist; confirmed by the Census Bureau's geocoder to fall inside Loris city limits
• Watsons Place (Heritage Road): listed as meeting accessibility requirements; the directory gives no house number, so its address could not be checked against city limits

For income-based or subsidized units, rent itself functions as the main "fee" -- it moves with household income or a HUD payment standard rather than a posted rate. Confirming the security deposit amount, any application fee, and what utilities are included directly with the leasing office is the only way to get a real number here, since no published rate sheet exists to check it against.

Loris's Local Economy and the Bog-Off Festival

Loris was founded on December 7, 1887, as a railroad and timber town and was incorporated in 1902, per the Loris Chamber of Commerce's own history page. Timber and turpentine gave way to tobacco by the early 1900s, and by the mid-1930s "agriculture was king," with tobacco, strawberries, Irish and sweet potatoes, lettuce, and poultry grown locally and shipped to northern markets. Tobacco farming and sales warehouses remained the backbone of the local economy into the late 1990s, after which the city pursued industrial diversification through the Loris Commerce Center, developed as a joint venture with Santee Cooper electric utility.

Today, per the Chamber's own materials, McLeod Loris hospital -- originally chartered as Loris Community Hospital in 1950 -- is the city's largest employer. The Loris Commerce Center is home to Builders First Choice, Carolina Food Service of Loris, DMA Industries, Laudisi Enterprises, and Wild West, and Moose Logistics & Distribution operates in the area as well. That healthcare-and-light-industry base is Loris's economic identity, not the coastal tourism of Myrtle Beach some 30 miles east in the same county.

Loris's civic identity centers on the annual Loris Bog-Off Festival, held every October on the third Saturday, per both Wikipedia's citation to the Chamber and the Chamber's own festival page. The festival's Chicken Bog Cooking Contest centers on chicken bog, a chicken-rice-and-sausage dish that originated in South Carolina's Pee Dee region; the Chamber's own materials put attendance at more than 35,000 across two stages of live entertainment and over one hundred craft vendors, alongside carnival rides, a petting zoo, and school performances. A companion car, truck, and motorcycle show -- the "Small Town, Big Show" festival -- runs each April.

Population growth has been modest over the most recent full decade: 2,396 residents in 2010 to 2,449 in 2020, a 2.2% increase, per the U.S. Census Bureau as cited on Wikipedia. That is a marked slowdown from the growth the Chamber's own history describes after the 2000 Census, when Loris was designated the second-fastest-growing city in South Carolina, a run the Chamber attributes to the city's proximity to Myrtle Beach.

Common Issues Renters Face in Loris

These are the most frequent considerations for anyone renting in Loris, based on the research for this guide:

• Major rental listing sites searching "Loris, SC" return a large share of results actually located in Little River, Longs, and Conway -- separate South Carolina towns several to many miles away, plus at least one listing across the state line in Calabash, North Carolina -- so confirming a listing's true city before assuming it's in Loris matters more here than in a bigger market
• The income-based communities identified carry waitlists of varying length, and eligibility depends on household income and size rather than simply the ability to pay a posted rent
• Individually owned single-family rentals, which make up much of the remaining identifiable stock, don't come with a company's standard lease or published fee schedule, so terms should be expected to vary from one property to the next

Negotiating Your Lease in Loris

South Carolina is landlord-favorable with minimal statutory protections, the same statewide baseline that applies everywhere else in this guide. What differs in Loris is that most of its identifiable rental stock isn't the kind of lease "negotiating tips" usually address.

• At the income-based communities identified, the rent figure itself is set by income or a HUD payment standard rather than a market quote, so the more relevant step is confirming eligibility category and current waitlist position before assuming a unit is available at all
• For an individually owned single-family rental, comparing move-in costs, deposit terms, and maintenance responsibilities across more than one listing is the practical substitute for negotiating against a large management company's standard lease, since no single company's terms apply citywide
• Verifying that a listing's address is actually inside Loris, rather than in a neighboring town captured by a wider search radius, is worth doing before treating any city-specific fact on this page -- or any other -- as applicable to that unit