Myrtle Beach is the center of an area called The Grand Strand.  Within The Grand Strand of South Carolina there are the towns or cities of Little River, Longs, Loris, North Myrtle Beach, Conway, Carolina Forest,  Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach, Garden City, Murrells Inlet, Litchfield, Pawley's Island.  Many also consider the southeast coastal area of North Carolina, which includes Calabash, Carolina Shores, Sunset Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach to be part of The Grand Strand.

Real estate prices in the Grand Strand were below other east coast properties through 2004.  During the beginning of the real estate boom  this area  was  simply trying to match what property was really worth.  Speculators and greed took over as we saw the cost of an ocean front condo increase by a hundred thousand dollars within weeks.  Even after the crazy days ended real estate sales continued until the mortgage problems began to surface.  The media made things sound worse and day after day all we heard was basically "the sky is falling".  Those that could make a real estate purchase feared the worse was yet to come because that is what they heard day-after-day.  Just think, if the media had not made things worse and if people that could afford to purchase real estate had done so, builders would have continued to buy materials and products, suppliers would not have laid-off employees, so-on and so-on.