Living in Wilmington, NC

New Hanover County

Wilmington's identity is coastal in a way distinctly different from the three Piedmont/mountain cities elsewhere in this file, and that shows up concretely in both opportunity and risk. It's a genuine deepwater port city -- the Port of Wilmington is cited as contributing $12.9 billion annually to the state economy on its own (part of a $15.4 billion, 88,200-job NC Ports system total) -- though 2025 saw an actual downturn in container volumes tied to softer consumer spending and trade uncertainty, not a growth year. It's also home to the real, historically earned "Hollywood of the East" film-industry identity: more than 400 film and TV productions have shot in the Wilmington area since the mid-1980s, anchored by what is now the Cinespace-owned former Screen Gems studio complex, the largest in the Southeast. That identity needs an honest present-tense caveat, though -- 2025 was a near-record-low production year locally, with officials citing only a single show filming and describing the industry as "in limbo" into 2026, pressured by lower-cost European incentive competition and post-strike industry softness; this is a real, current headwind, not just historical color. UNC Wilmington is a genuine and growing anchor too, enrolling a record 19,895 students in fall 2025 (up 5.6% YoY) with its largest-ever incoming class. And Wilmington's coastal hurricane exposure is real and directly documented, not theoretical: Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach in September 2018, stalled over the region, dropped more than 26 inches of rain, and left Wilmington functionally cut off from the rest of the state for days, with a preliminary $220 million in city property damage and $13 billion-plus statewide -- this is a fundamentally different, direct-landfall risk profile than the inland flood risk described for Asheville elsewhere in this file, and should be understood on its own terms by anyone relocating to the coast. On cost, home prices run close to the national median at $413,000, but property taxes are a genuine, well-documented advantage here: Wilmington's cited 0.57% effective rate sits below both the NC state median (0.81%) and the national median (1.02%), a real contrast to the above-average rates in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and even Asheville.

Explore Wilmington in depth

• Moving to Wilmington: Pros, Cons & What to Know
• Cost of Living in Wilmington
• Housing Market in Wilmington
• Buying a Home in Wilmington
• Renting in Wilmington
• Property Taxes in Wilmington
• Taxes in Wilmington
• Homeowners Insurance in Wilmington
• Flood & Hurricane Risk in Wilmington
• Climate & Weather in Wilmington
• Jobs & Economy in Wilmington
• Schools in Wilmington
• Crime & Safety in Wilmington
• Healthcare in Wilmington
• Traffic & Transportation in Wilmington
• Best Areas to Live in Wilmington
• Pros and Cons of Living in Wilmington
• Who Should / Shouldn’t Move to Wilmington
• Who Should NOT Move to Wilmington?
• Retiring in Wilmington
• Living in Wilmington for Families
• Living in Wilmington for Remote Workers
• Is Wilmington a Good Place to Live?

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Beach-access buyers who want a walkable coastal city with a lower property tax burden than the rest of this file, and retirees drawn to that same low-property-tax, coastal-amenity combination.

Maybe not for you if: Buyers with low tolerance for direct hurricane risk -- as opposed to the inland flood risk described for Asheville -- should weigh Hurricane Florence's documented 2018 impact seriously before committing to coastal NC; anyone relocating specifically for film-industry employment should understand the sector is in a real, current downturn rather than the thriving 'Hollywood of the East' peak years, and should verify current production activity rather than relying on the historical count of productions since the 1980s.