Reviewing a Value Vacation Property
Preface: We’ve been fortunate enough to visit a number of places covering a range of social tiers, prices, and values. Many within the same calendar year. A lot of places reviewed and written about on the internet are solely for the Jones. Our intention is to write several articles on a range of places including some the Jones would love to brag about and some they wouldn’t. This article describes a place for the value consumer. Jones may want to seek one of our articles on Long Boat Key Club or renting houses. The goal of this article is to show you the positives and negatives of this value property so if you happen upon this page while searching you get a good idea of what to expect.
We like to visit South Carolina for vacation – a lot. We go there two to three times a year. We visit Murrells Inlet, Garden City, and the Surfside Beach areas. We’ve rented a number of houses and have stayed at one resort a couple of times. The houses are without question our favorite but their issue is they only rent Saturday to Saturday. This works out fine for spring break and vacations when we can set the days. It doesn’t work out so well when the kids get a Wednesday to Wednesday to Wednesday winter break (two weeks) but you still want to go to a beach within driving distance. We consider driving distance to be roughly ten-ish hours. We’ve chanced the weather and vacation to the north part of South Carolina in December three years now.
This trip we decided to stay at a place called Myrtle Beach Resort (MBR). Despite the name it’s not actually in Myrtle Beach proper but it’s definitely the northern most place we’ve stayed in the area. MBR is a place I know well as I went there three times as a child, again in the late 2000s, and then again in 20, 22, and 23. Having so much history with a place gives perspective but all necessities keeping bias in check. For the sake of averages it was built in the mid 80s, has three buildings each with ~five stories, and a tower with ~20 floors.
Many of the units are owned by individuals meaning you have some units that are very modern and some that sit as they did in the mid 80s. They range in size from single bedroom units (often beach front) to “three” bedroom units in the tower.
The complex has six pool areas (two of which are indoor with hot tubs), tennis courts, volleyball courts, a lazy river, and a bar. Some of the units have their own laundry and for the ones that don’t there is a laundry mat. One of the buildings is completely enclosed including a pool and hot tub allowing you to enjoy the pool regardless of the weather.
There are a number of mini lakes with numerous turtles in them that you can watch and enjoy as well. There are three well maintained access points to the beach and its very easy to find from the beach if you go on long walks.
The entire complex is gated, has a security staff of seemingly a dozen people, and I’ve watched them check the parking pass on every single car every night. It’s also relatively affordable allowing you to stay a week for $900-$1200 including all bogus traveler fees and taxes. There is plenty of parking and many of the people there have some connection to its past. i.e. they are 40+ now but went there as a child. Sound familiar? The front desk staff is friendly and didn’t give us any issue checking in early. The sheets are included too! You may be laughing about that line but this area enjoys a $500 premium / fee for having sheets provided. Overall the property sounds pretty good right?
I stayed a week on a man-cation while working half days remotely, went to the beach and pool everyday, and very much enjoyed myself. The kids and Mrs. joined me at the end and enjoyed a day at the lazy river too. All of these great things being said Mrs. and I had a conversation and I asked her – would you recommend this place to your friends? The answer was no and it was for me as well. So why no recommendation?
It’s a place you understand clearly once you’ve been there a day. There is certainly value to be had but the place is also suffering from a combination of age and deferred maintenance. To put it shortly its aging itself out of existence. It was built in the mid 80s and everyone I’ve spoken to who went in the 90s agrees it was amazing. The association even did a decent job modernizing in the 2010s with the addition of the lazy river and some grounds updating. The problem is they haven’t done much since in my opinion and often when something breaks now, if its hard to fix, they just close it and walk off.
Granted it was winter when we went the most recent time but of the six pool areas, one was open and it wasn’t designed for the volume it was seeing as a result of all the other pools being closed. The bathroom in this pool building at one point had a shower room(?) but it must have broken because they had screwed a board across the opening and added a sign the showers were closed. The sauna was also indefinitely closed as well.
When we originally arrived the other indoor pool area was in fact open and we used it several times. Unfortunately, one of the rungs on one of the ladders had a screw come out of it. Rather than either close that ladder, that pool, or fix the ladder with the screw that came loose- they decided to close the entire pool area. It was closed for at least three days until we left and it’s hard to tell how long it was left closed.
Seemingly everywhere you turn something is broken or out of commission.
The tower was closed in 2022 for being unsafe due to foundation issues. I’ll include some images I’ve taken as well as some news articles. The number of diverse articles I was able to find on this topic was shockingly low.
The gist from the articles is that following the high-rise collapse in surfside Florida that resulted in many deaths MBR decided to have the foundation of the renaissance tower re-checked. It was found to have deteriorated so badly the county actually evacuated and shut the building down for over four months while emergency stabilization and repairs were made. The majority of the first floor of that building is still torn up in early 2024. The county did allow the building to be reopened after it was stabilized. It’s a good but unfortunate example of the place falling apart (in my opinion).
I didn’t mind the design of the interior buildings but Mrs. felt like it was almost government housing like – from the 80s.
To add just a bit more of annoyance on top of this. They are additionally getting ready to charge $20 for parking which I find ridiculous.
To summarize it’s a huge property with plenty to do, we’ve always felt safe there, it has several access points to the beach, many pools, and other amenities. It suffers from aging and deferred maintenance making it hard to use some of these amenities. Only time will tell if it continues to sink or if their nearly $1,000 a month HOA fees for some owners are able to pull it from the abyss.