Folly Beach voters capped short-term rentals in February 2023. City Council is only now preparing to find out what that actually did.
That is the story. Three years of the most consequential housing policy on the island, and the first comprehensive review is still sitting at the request-for-proposals stage.
Here is where things stood at adoption. The referendum set the ceiling at 800 licenses. At the time, Folly had 1,125 rental properties, roughly 43 percent of the island's entire housing stock. The cap applies to second homes only. Primary residences were never in the crosshairs.
So a lot of owners got squeezed, a lot got grandfathered, and everybody has had an opinion ever since. What nobody has had is data.
Council plans to fix that by hiring an outside firm. The RFP is expected in early fall, the study itself later in 2026, and any amendments to the ordinance in the fall or winter that follows.
"We need to get an objective look at the cap, impacts of the cap and impacts of any proposed changes," Mayor Chris Bizzell told the Post & Courier.
Objective is the operative word. Folly's rental debate has been running on anecdote and grievance since well before the vote.
What the study will actually look at
Home values, first. That is the one every property owner on the island cares about, and the one that has been argued in both directions with zero evidence behind either.
Then license holders. Who has them, how many, and what the concentration looks like.
Then neighborhood livability, tourism revenue, and the cost of enforcing the thing. Enforcement is the quiet line item. Caps are cheap to pass and expensive to police.
The firm will also price out alternatives. Two are already on the table: letting licenses transfer between properties, and a 72-day rental structure that would let more owners rent less.
Worth being clear about what this is not. The study has not happened. There are no findings, no numbers, and no verdict on whether the cap worked. Anyone telling you otherwise is telling you what they want to be true.
Folly is also the closest thing the region has to a live experiment on capping short-term rentals. Whatever the study eventually finds will get quoted in every version of this argument happening on every other island around here.
For anyone who owns on Folly or has been circling a purchase there, the calendar is the part to write down. Amendments in fall or winter mean the rules governing those 800 licenses could look meaningfully different a year from now.
Folly took the vote first and is doing the homework second. Backwards, maybe. But it is finally getting done.
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