Vacation Homeowners and Vacant Long Term Homeowners

Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals is asking for your help. Due to the wildfire, thousands of Horry County residents have been asked to vacate their property. Many of them are my personal friends and they have had to leave their homes until the wildfire is contained.

I am asking you to donate your property to these residents for a few days until we can move them home. Southern Coast Vacations will donate all the linens and towels. The staff and I will donate our time and personally clean your unit. We appreciate your generosity during this tough time.

Please call our office or email us at stay@southerncoastvacations.com and let us know if you are able to donate a few days.

Several of you have already opened your second homes to our community and we really appreciate it. Please keep all of our evacuees in your thoughts and prayers.

Barefoot Resort/Highway 90 Homeowners

If you are a homeowner at Barefoot Resort or at a development on Highway 90 and have questions concerning the brush fire please feel free to call the Southern Coast office at 1-800-978-4988. Currently the area from Highway 22 to the new Main Street Connector is being evacuated. This includes the Barefoot Resort area. We are currently calling all tenants in these areas to offer assistance. We will post updates as new information is released. We will contact the homeowners of any properties that have fire or smoke damage.

Property Business Licenses

Property Business Licenses:

All vacation property owners are required to have a business license to rent out their property on a weekly or monthly basis. Depending on where your property is located determines the amount of the fees and when they are due. All fees are based upon the previous year’s gross rental income or if you have not rented for a full year, the amount is based upon an estimate of your gross rentals for the upcoming full year.

As a service to you, Southern Coast Vacations will file the application and pay the fees upfront for you and bill your statement accordingly.

The City of North Myrtle Beach is now in the process of mailing all owners the applications or fees at this time. The license must be renewed prior to April 30th to avoid any late fees.

The City of Myrtle Beach mails out their renewals in May and the fees are due by June 30th.

If you have already taken care of your business license fees or wish to pay them directly, please contact our accounting office at 843-663-6063 or email me at peggy@southerncoastvacations.com so that we will take you off our list. If we do not hear from you we will go ahead and file the paperwork and bill accordingly.

Peggy Rotterman
Property Manager

Long Term Owner Direct Deposits

Long Term Property Homeowners:

We are happy to announce that we have initiated the process of direct deposit of your rental check. Your first direct deposit was made on February 4, 2009.

Because this is the first direct deposit, we ask that you please check your account to make sure that the funds were deposited correctly. Please be patient as we work through the set-up processes. Any future checks will be deposited to your account on the 1st of the month.

Your statement will show a check number that is coded for our office. This will enable us to know that the funds were direct deposited into your account.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to call our office at 843-663-6063 or you may email me at peggy@southerncoastvacations.com

Sincerely,

Peggy Rotterman
Property Manager
Southern Coast Vacations

Updates and Improvements

During the winter months many vacation homeowners have been in town updating and adding to their properties to get them ready for the upcoming rental season. Please let Southern Coast Vacations know when you have made changes so that we can update the website and help make your property even more attractive to potential guests.
We recently sent out e-mails to vacation homeowners on phone service in your properties. Although we do not require a phone, due to liablility purposes, we do have to list under the amenities for each property if phone service is provided. Thank you to everyone that has already replied to us.

Rental Update Jan 2009

I want to share with you my feelings about this year. I am very optimistic about 2009. Both our long term and vacation programs are extremely active for the first 3 weeks of January.

Vacation Rentals: Gas prices are still extremely low, we have a new president, and people are getting their tax checks in. Hopefully this trend will continue we will get some of those peak vacation weeks booked earlier this year. Our number of reservations and total rents are up, so the staff and I are pumped and ready to answer the phones and make some reservations.

Longterm Rentals: In January we have already shown over 80 long term properties and our lease signings are up. Lots of walk in traffic coming in to see properties. Most have found us through the internet. Many tenants have been renewing leases though they have been negotiating lower rents. This is normal, due to the heavy surplus of long term rentals along the Grand Strand. The current mortgage crisis has definitely increased our long term leases.

In 2009 we will putting more of our advertising budget into the internet. Also we have a billboard going up soon right on Hwy 17. I am very excited about it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From my family to yours, Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals wishes all our homeowners, tenants, past and future guests a happy holiday season.

We have been very blessed this past year, and we are looking forward to a prosperous 2009.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Tim