Mobile Home Removal in Horry County, SC

The tarp is on the roof, the adjuster has been and gone, and the number on the letter is not enough to rebuild — that is where most Horry County removal calls start. A storm-hit mobile home loses ground fast: soaked floor decking swells, belly wrap holds water against the frame, and a unit that sits through one more wet season quietly turns into a teardown. The workable news is that the exit is simpler than most owners expect, because South Carolina's paperwork gets lighter — not heavier — when a damaged home is demolished where it sits instead of towed down US-501.

Five declarations in five years

Horry County's federal disaster file runs 34 declarations deep, and the recent run reads like a rotation through the whole catalog: hurricanes in 2022 and 2023, a tropical storm in 2024, a fire declaration in 2025, a winter storm in 2026. The county's longer incident history adds floods, severe storms, and severe ice storms to the mix. HUD's wind map puts Horry in Zone II — a step above the inland standard — so newer, properly anchored homes usually ride out a glancing blow. The damage concentrates in older stock scattered from Conway out through Loris, Longs, Aynor, and Galivants Ferry: end-of-life metal roofs that peel at the seam, add-on rooms that were never rated for anything, piers that shift when saturated ground moves. With 28,038 manufactured homes in the county, every declared event leaves behind a set of units that will never be lived in again — and the longer they sit, the more of their salvage value rots away.

Tow it out or take it down? The wreck usually decides

An intact tow is the cheaper exit when it is available — market averages run about $4,000 to move a single-wide under 50 miles and near $7,000 for a double — but storm damage is exactly what takes that option off the table. A racked frame, water-heavy floors, or a roof held on by straps is not roadworthy, and the county's permit ledger shows how rarely damaged homes travel: of 169 manufactured-home permits recorded from 2024 through 2026, just 5 were moves, while 75 were demolitions. When the unit cannot survive US-17 or SC-22 at highway speed, we shift to demolition in place — the excavator does the traveling, sorted debris rides out in trucks at roughly $1,000 to $2,000 in transport, and nothing fragile has to hold together in the wind.

The exit, priced in published numbers

The honest frame is market ranges plus the county's actual scale rate. Demolition with disposal runs $3,000 to $8,000 per published figures — $4 to $8 per square foot, single-wides at the $3,000-to-$5,000 end, doubles at $5,000 to $8,000 — and full hand deconstruction for salvage can reach $10,000. Set against that: the steel chassis, axles, and aluminum skin survive nearly any storm, and published scrap figures of $400 to $1,000 per home come off the bill. The Horry-specific variable is tonnage. The Solid Waste Authority bills demolition debris at $47.50 per ton, and storm-soaked material weighs more than the same house dry — decking, insulation, and carpet all carry water to the scale, so tarping the wreck and letting it dry before teardown is not cosmetic, it is money. Every one of these lines is broken down in our removal cost guide.

Paperwork gets lighter when the home never travels

South Carolina attaches its mobile-home moving permit to relocation, not to disposal: S.C. Code 31-17-360 requires the county-issued permit — granted only after the treasurer certifies no unpaid taxes — before a home travels a public road, and the permit rides displayed for the whole trip. Demolish the home where it stands and there is no state moving permit to pull; only local building and demolition permitting applies. Asbestos runs the same direction: under the rule administered by SCDES, one standalone home used as a private residence is excluded from the pre-demolition survey mandate, and the full regime — licensed survey, 10-working-day notification, $50 project license — arrives only when the job becomes a park clear-out or multi-unit commercial project. For homes a storm has left structurally dangerous, the regulation even carries an emergency lane: a government-ordered demolition may skip the 10-day wait, filing the application with a copy of the signed order. The statewide stack is mapped on our SC demolition requirements page; we sequence all of it before the crew rolls.

The Hwy 90 scale house, and the burn-pile myth

Everything we haul lands at the Horry County Solid Waste Authority complex at 1886 Highway 90 outside Conway — a Class 3 landfill for household-type waste and a Class 2 landfill for demolition debris, both billed at $47.50 per ton on the published fee schedule. Sorting pays here: the on-site recycling facility accepts cardboard, wood, metal, plastic, and carpet with padding; tires price separately at $150 per ton ($400 for off-road tires); and anything odd coming out of a flooded shed needs the SWA's special-waste pre-evaluation before it rides. Two things the SWA pages do not publish: a mobile-home-specific flat fee and an asbestos-certificate requirement. The state layer still governs, though — under R.61-107.19, asbestos-containing material enters a Class Two landfill only with an SCDES permission-for-disposal letter in hand, and structural burns are flatly prohibited, so the storm-pile bonfire is not a legal shortcut. We arrive with the paperwork done and the loads pre-sorted.

One visit, three numbers

Storm damage does not always mean total loss. A sound double that lost skirting and a few panels can still clear our buyout line, and we would rather tell you that than bill a teardown. Every Horry quote comes back three ways — what we would pay for the home, what an intact tow costs, and what demolition with sorted disposal costs at the county's real rates — so the decision gets made on numbers instead of adrenaline.