Buyers of investment condos here ask about rates, management companies and which beach is better. Almost nobody asks the question with a statute behind it: what happens to the bookings that are already on the calendar?
The answer is that they may now be yours, and South Carolina does not ask whether you wanted them.
You take title subject to the bookings
“The grantee of residential property subject to a vacation rental shall take title subject to the vacation rental agreement… for all vacation rental periods that begin no later than ninety days after the date the grantee’s interest is recorded.”SC Code § 27-50-250(A)
Read that as a buyer. Any booking that starts within ninety days of your deed being recorded comes with the property. You cannot cancel it because you would rather use the unit yourself over Thanksgiving, and you inherit the rate the seller agreed, not the rate you would have charged.
For a Hilton Head investment condo bought in spring, that ninety-day window is the start of the season.
The seller has fourteen days
§ 27-50-250(B) requires disclosure of existing vacation rental agreements not later than fourteen consecutive days after entering into a contract of sale.
Note where that clock starts: the contract, not the closing. The legislature put the disclosure early on purpose, while a buyer still has room to act on it. If you are two weeks past contract on a rental property and no booking schedule has appeared, that is a question to put in writing rather than a detail to discover on the closing statement.
Ask where the deposits are
§ 27-50-240(B) requires a rental management company to place monies received from the tenant into a trust accountconforming with the requirements of § 40-57-135(B). Guests booked into the weeks you are inheriting have already paid something to somebody. Whose account it is sitting in, and how it transfers, is a fair and specific question — and a much better one than “is it a good rental?”
What counts as a vacation rental
§ 27-50-230(3) defines it as the lease, sublease or other rental of residential property for a period of fewer than ninety days. The written agreement between the owner — or the owner’s rental management company — and the tenant is the vacation rental agreementunder § 27-50-230(4).
This is a different rulebook from the one that decides whether you are allowedto rent short-term at all. That question is answered by the town ordinance and by your community’s own documents, and it is covered in the short-term rental rules and in the investment questions. The Vacation Rental Act governs what happens once renting is already under way — including the day the property changes hands.