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Bank Statement Loans in South Carolina

Updated: September 7, 2026

South Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. A significant portion of the workforce include people who work for themselves: the contractors framing new subdivisions outside Charleston, the trades keeping up with Upstate manufacturing, the charter captains and restaurant owners serving the coast. For self-employed buyers who haven’t been able to qualify through conventional lending, Griffin Funding’s bank statement loans in South Carolina offer a straightforward alternative: qualify using 12 to 24 months of bank statements instead of tax returns, W-2s, or pay stubs.

  • Access home financing using bank statements
  • No tax returns or pay stubs required
  • Purchase, refinance, or cash-out options available
  • Enjoy high loan amounts and flexible terms
  • Competitive bank statement loan rates in South Carolina
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Table of Contents

Why Bank Statement Loans Matter in South Carolina’s Market

South Carolina added about 452,024 residents between April 2020 and July 2025, and posted an 8.8% population growth, one of the fastest population growth rate. That pace keeps steady pressure on housing: home prices still sit below the national average, but years of in-migration have pushed them up fast, with the steepest demand in Charleston, the Lowcountry, and the Greenville-Spartanburg corridor. 

For self-employed borrowers, qualifying can be an added challenge, because conventional loans are built around W-2 employees and penalize business owners and contractors who write off expenses on their tax returns. Bank statement loans give those buyers a way to compete in a market that’s moving quickly.

Here’s why bank statement loans make sense for self-employed borrowers in South Carolina:

  • South Carolina has a deep self-employed and small-business base. The state is home to more than 530,000 small businesses, which represent 99.4% of all businesses in South Carolina. Self-employed workers and contractors are concentrated in construction and the trades, healthcare, hospitality, professional services, and logistics.
  • Write-offs make qualifying harder than it should be. The same deductions that keep a general contractor, charter captain, or restaurant owner healthy at tax time shrink the taxable income a conventional underwriter sees. IRS data puts net income at just 20-23% of business receipts. Griffin Funding counts 50% of those same deposits by default, giving the typical self-employed borrower close to 2x the buying power a tax return alone would show.
  • Seasonal income doesn’t have to hold you back. Tourism is one of South Carolina’s economic pillars, and one in ten workers in the state is employed in hospitality. Restaurant owners, charter captains, short-term rental hosts, wedding vendors, and tour operators bill heavily in season and quietly the rest of the year, which reads as unstable income to a conventional underwriter. A bank statement loan averages 12 or 24 months of deposits, so your qualifying income comes from total deposit volume across the full window rather than one slow month or a single tax year.
  • Price isn’t the barrier here; paperwork is. With the average South Carolina home value around $310,382, below the national figure, and an effective property tax rate among the lowest in the country at 0.49%, the monthly cost of ownership is genuinely within reach for a profitable small business. What stops those buyers is documentation, not affordability.

Sources: Zillow home value data (July 2026); U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, 2025 State Profile; IRS Statistics of Income (Nonfarm Sole Proprietorships, 2008-2015; SOI Bulletin, Spring 2025).

How South Carolina Bank Statement Loans Work

South Carolina business owners and contractors who write off expenses often show a taxable income far below what they actually earn. This tends to leave them underqualified on paper for conventional loans, even when their cash flow tells a different story.

Bank statement loans qualify you based on cash flow shown in bank statements, rather than traditional tax-return income.

Griffin Funding reviews 12 to 24 months of bank statements and calculates income from actual deposit history. The percentage of deposits that count toward your income depends on whether you use personal or business bank statements. Personal statements count 100% of deposits; business statements typically apply a 50% expense factor, which can go as low as 10% depending on your business type.

To qualify for a bank statement loan, you’ll need:

  • Credit score: 620 minimum
  • Self-employment history: 2 years minimum (or 1 year if you’ve stayed in the same industry)
  • Down payment: 10% with a 680+ credit score; 20% minimum with a 620-679 score
  • Bank statements: 12 or 24 months of personal or business statements showing consistent deposits
  • Property types: Single-family homes, multi-family homes, townhomes, condos, manufactured homes, and rural properties are all eligible
  • LLC ownership: Properties can be held in an LLC

Prior bankruptcy requires a two-year waiting period before applying.

View Bank Statement Loan Requirements

Today’s Bank Statement Mortgage Loan Rates in South Carolina

As a national direct-to-consumer lender, Griffin Funding cuts out the broker markup and keeps non-qualified mortgage rates competitive. Your specific rate depends on your credit score, down payment, loan amount, and buydown points.

South Carolina Housing Markets for Self-Employed Buyers

From the Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville metros with the most economic activity to lower-cost Pee Dee, Midlands, and Upstate cities and premium coastal and Lowcountry towns, South Carolina has real options for self-employed buyers at every price point. Here’s where borrowers are buying across the state.

Major Metros

  • Charleston: Charleston is South Carolina’s largest metro and its economic center, a historic port city built around the deepest harbor in the South Atlantic, deepened to 52 feet through a $580 million project fully funded by state and federal dollars. The state’s primary port moves nearly $87 billion in trade a year. Supply chain aside, Charleston is home to four major hospital systems, including the Medical University of South Carolina, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Novant Health, and Trident Health System, which sustain over 46,000 jobs across the board. Charleston’s local economy also spans several robust industry sectors including aerospace, automotive, life sciences, tech and innovation, tourism and hospitality, and military and defense, so a self-employed contractor has several industries to bid into without leaving the metro. Charleston asks the second-highest monthly business deposits in the table below, behind only Hilton Head.
  • Columbia: Columbia is the state capital, where the state government is the largest employer by a wide margin, alongside Prisma Health, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Lexington Medical Center, and the University of South Carolina. State agencies, hospitals, insurers, and universities all renew facilities and maintenance contracts on multi-year cycles, so your client base here holds steady even when the broader economy slows. Columbia needs the fourth-lowest monthly business deposits in the table below, well under Charleston’s.
  • Greenville: Greenville is the commercial center of Upstate South Carolina, a manufacturing region stretching along I-85 between Atlanta and Charlotte. Michelin North America has been headquartered here for over 50 years, with somewhere between 5,001-10,000 employees in Greenville, and generating $8.2 billion total economic impact in the state annually. This has supported about 14,000 jobs annually. A manufacturer that size runs on outside machining, tooling, logistics, and engineering contractors, and the Upstate’s broader automotive supplier cluster generates even more demand across the region. Greenville needs more monthly business deposits than Columbia, but less than Myrtle Beach or Charleston.

Affordable Markets

  • Orangeburg: Orangeburg is a small city in the center of the state that has quietly become one of South Carolina’s fastest-growing industrial markets. Over 20% of the larger county’s workforce is employed in manufacturing, with a chemical manufacturing industry 3.1 times more concentrated than the national average. The county’s major employers include Husqvarna, Allied Air Enterprises, GKN Aerospace, Bimbo Bakeries USA, and the Okonite Company, creating jobs across outdoor equipment, HVAC, aerospace, food production, and electrical and wire manufacturing. South Carolina State University and Claflin University both sit in town, and Claflin holds a $17.4 million grant to build a new biotech and cybersecurity innovation center, so industrial contracting and campus work are both available here. Orangeburg asks the lowest monthly business deposits of any market on this page, making it the most realistic first purchase on this list if your statement history is still building.
  • Florence: Florence is the commercial hub of the Pee Dee region, sitting where I-95 and I-20 cross in the state’s northeast. The county’s major industries include food and beverage, distribution and logistics, automotive, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, metals, and plastics and fiber. Hospitals, plants, and warehouses all contract out maintenance, sanitation, and skilled trades, which is steady work for an independent operator in any of those trades. Florence carries the second-lowest monthly business deposits in the table below, so this institutional client base comes at one of the more forgiving qualifying bars in the state.
  • Sumter: Sumter is a midlands city built around a major Air Force installation. Shaw Air Force Base delivers roughly $2.1 billion in direct and indirect economic impact, with about 7,200 active-duty personnel and 1,000 civilians on base. Continental Tire, another one of Sumter’s top employers, adds another 1,200 manufacturing jobs. A major base and a national tire brand both contract out facilities, logistics, and skilled trades continuously, giving a self-employed contractor two large, unrelated clients in a city this size, without the deposit volume Charleston or Hilton Head would demand. Sumter needs the third-lowest monthly business deposits in the table below.

Lifestyle Markets

  • Myrtle Beach: Myrtle Beach sits at the center of the Grand Strand, 60 miles of coastline packed with beaches, golf courses, and a boardwalk that draws visitors year-round. Over 17 million visitors flock to Myrtle Beach for its entertainment and attractions, which contributed more than $13.2 billion in direct visitor spending in 2024. The tourism industry here supports more than 82,000 jobs, with accommodation and food services alone accounting for over 31,000 of them, and retail, entertainment, and other service roles filling out the rest. A business here can serve a permanent client base that continues to grow, on top of the seasonal surge from tourists. Myrtle Beach asks for more in monthly business deposits than most other markets on this page, though still less than Georgetown, Charleston, and Hilton Head.
  • Georgetown: Georgetown is a historic waterfront town on Winyah Bay, founded in 1729 and still the third-oldest city in South Carolina. It’s also the state’s second-largest seaport, with a Harborwalk, a preserved historic district, and a working commercial fishing fleet that keeps the waterfront active outside tourist season. Hobcaw Barony and Hopsewee Plantation draw visitors in the shoulder months, so hospitality and trade work here isn’t concentrated into a single summer window. Georgetown needs meaningfully less than Hilton Head and somewhat less than Charleston, while sitting on the same coast.
  • Hilton Head Island: Hilton Head is a barrier island resort community with a year-round population of nearly 40,000. Over 2.6 million annual visitors in 2025 generated about a total of $3.95 billion economic impact on Beaufort County, the larger county Hilton Head Island sits in. This supported over 31,600 jobs related to tourism. Resorts, golf courses, and rental management companies all contract out landscaping, maintenance, housekeeping, hospitality, and property services year-round, which makes this a strong place to build a business or work as an independent contractor. Hilton Head asks the highest monthly business deposits of any market on this page, so run your numbers before you commit.

How much needs to flow through your business account to buy in each of these markets? We ran the same formula Griffin Funding publishes for America’s 50 largest metros on South Carolina’s markets. The table below shows the average single-family home value, the estimated monthly payment, and the monthly and 12-month business deposits needed to qualify with a bank statement loan. A lower expense factor may apply with a CPA letter, reducing the required deposits.

Bank Statement Buying Power in South Carolina: Monthly Business Deposits Needed to Buy the Average Home

Metro Avg. Home Value Est. Monthly Payment (PITIA) Business Deposits Needed / Month 12-Month Deposit Total
Orangeburg $167,093 $998 $4,438 $53,250
Florence $197,536 $1,180 $5,246 $62,952
Sumter $210,023 $1,255 $5,578 $66,932
Columbia $259,700 $1,552 $6,897 $82,763
Greenville $317,256 $1,896 $8,425 $101,105
Myrtle Beach $365,694 $2,185 $9,712 $116,542
Georgetown $405,032 $2,420 $10,757 $129,078
Charleston $437,924 $2,617 $11,630 $139,561
Hilton Head Island $541,817 $3,238 $14,389 $172,670

*Estimates are hypothetical illustrations based on 12 months of business bank statements with a 50% expense factor (a lower expense factor may apply with a CPA letter), a 20% down payment (available on loan amounts up to $3 million), a 6.99% fixed interest rate (7.102% APR), 30-year amortization, South Carolina’s average effective property tax rate of 0.49% as published on our property tax by state page, and homeowners insurance estimated at 0.30% of home value annually. Qualifying assumes a 45% debt-to-income ratio; DTI includes all monthly debt obligations such as auto loans, credit cards, and student loans, and these figures assume no monthly debt other than the mortgage payment. Actual property taxes vary by city and county in South Carolina, and actual insurance and HOA dues vary by property. Home values are Zillow ZHVI averages for single-family homes by metro, data through June 2026. This is not a rate quote, an advertisement of currently available terms, a loan offer, a pre-qualification, or a guarantee of approval; actual rates, APRs, and qualifying requirements vary by borrower, property, and program. Try our Bank Statement Loan Calculator to run your own numbers.

Free Tools for Self-Employed Borrowers in South Carolina

Run the numbers before you commit. These free tools give you an instant read on your buying power and the South Carolina market.

Apply for a Bank Statement Home Loan in South Carolina

Self-employed borrowers with non-traditional income still have options to purchase property in South Carolina. With a bank statement home loan, you can qualify for up to $4.5 million in financing, no tax returns or pay stubs required. Down payments start at 10% for qualified borrowers.

Griffin Funding has helped self-employed borrowers, small business owners, freelancers, tradespeople, and independent contractors qualify for bank statement mortgage loans across South Carolina. We lend throughout the entire state, from Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville to Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head Island, and Beaufort, and the value markets of Florence, Sumter, and Anderson.

Reach out today to learn more about how to qualify for a mortgage in South Carolina if you’re self-employed. If you’re ready to get pre-approved and lock in your rate, get started online.

Frequently Asked Questions

Griffin Funding looks for healthy, stable accounts when reviewing South Carolina bank statement loan applications: positive balances, few or no overdrafts, and consistent deposits that reflect ongoing business income. One-time transfers between accounts and unexplained cash deposits are excluded from the income calculation, since those don’t represent reliable earnings. You’ll also need to show adequate reserves remaining after closing.

Griffin Funding accepts both personal and business bank statements for South Carolina bank statement loans. To calculate your qualifying income, eligible deposits are added up over 12 or 24 months and divided by the number of months. Personal statements count 100% of deposits toward income. Business statements apply a 50% expense factor by default, which can go as low as 10% depending on your business type and number of employees. Transfers and unexplained cash deposits are excluded before the calculation runs.

Griffin Funding requires the last 12 or 24 months of personal or business bank statements. You’ll also need to provide personal ID, proof of South Carolina residency, a credit authorization, a completed loan application, business documentation, and a purchase agreement. See our full bank statement loan document checklist to help you prepare ahead of time.

Qualifying for a South Carolina bank statement loan comes down to four main things: your down payment, your credit score, your self-employment history, and your bank statements. Griffin Funding accepts borrowers with a 620 minimum credit score and at least two years of self-employment. A loan officer will review your deposit history to determine your qualifying income and eligible loan amount.

Bank statement loans are primarily used to purchase a primary residence. Griffin Funding’s South Carolina bank statement loans are available for a range of property types, including single-family homes, multi-family homes, townhomes, condos, manufactured homes, and rural properties. That flexibility fits everything from a primary residence in Columbia to a Lowcountry home near Charleston.

Griffin Funding typically closes South Carolina bank statement loans in 30 days or less. Once closed, funds are usually disbursed the same day or the following business day, once the county register of deeds records the deed. To avoid delays, have your documents ready before you apply and stay responsive to lender requests.

Yes. If you already own a home in South Carolina, a bank statement cash-out refinance lets you tap existing equity without tax returns, so you can put those funds toward your next purchase or improvement. Cash-out refinances are subject to a mandatory 3-day waiting period before funding; purchase loans are not.