Living in Wilmington NC - Pros & Cons 2024

Welcome back. In this video, we're gonna go over the pros and cons of living in the Greater Wilmington NC area in Southeastern North Carolina covering all the barrier islands, Wilmington, Soutport, Leland, Hampstead, all that good stuff. Hi. My name is Brian Schroeder. I'm with the Coastline NC Real Estate Team at Blue Coast Realty Corporation. I've been living here in the area for 28 years and this video is going to show the pros and cons that I've came up with and some of my clients over the years working in real estate down here in the Wilmington, NC area. So enough of that, let's jump right into it. Pro number 1 is our location. Our location is the middle of the eastern seaboard. As you can see here on the map, if you live on the East Coast within a day's drive, you can actually get to our area. Now for some of those folks that are in the Midwest, maybe on the West Coast, we do have an international airport here as well. But it is nice to know that our location is middle of the seaboard. We are in a subtropical area, so, palm trees grow here. So that is the pro, number one for our area. moving to the next one, it's a huge one. Our area beaches are gorgeous. We have around 11 different barrier islands throughout this entire area of southeastern North Carolina. You got pretty white sands. You got pretty, gorgeous water there. And you know, another reason why the water here is so nice, the Gulf Stream is about 60 to 70 miles, off our coast. So we get a lot of those waters that come into our area that kinda give it that greenish Caribbean blue at certain times. It just really depends on the weather. So beaches are probably one of our best pro here being in the area because we have so many to choose from. Another pro in our area is our temperatures. We have 4 distinct seasons here in the Wilmington, NC area. So, you know, you get that spring, you get that summer, you get that taste of fall, and you get a little bit of taste of winter, which is kinda nice. A lot of people like that. Now, our winters are very mild. We hardly get, snow here. It might snow possibly maybe every 4 years here. We get that little touch of, winter. It might dip down into the thirties. But our average temperature in the wintertime is 52 degrees. It's incredible. It allows you to do door activities in the wintertime and that's one of the big pluses living here in the area. Now, moving along to our next one is, our real estate taxes. Our real estate taxes are very very affordable. and compared to, a lot of the places in the northeast metropolitan areas. But as you can look here, here's some of the figures here. $500,000 home you can roughly pay, depending on the location of the town, anywhere from $28100 up to $5,000 depending on the location. Another big pro for living here in the area is we have around 33 different area golf courses throughout. Going from about 60, mile radius from Hampstead all the way down to the South Carolina border, we have some of the best golf courses here in the country. And tag along with that with the climate that we have. It allows you to play golf all year round here, which is a big pro for a lot of my clients. Now some of these courses are open to the public, some are private, some are semi private, Some are in neighborhoods and some aren't. So you have a plethora of different ones to choose from which makes this a great area to be in. Another big pro is, we're active down here. You got Live Oak Pavilion, Greenfield Lake Amphitheater for concerts. There's Thalian Hall for the performing arts. We also have the Wilson Center, as you've seen here, for a lot of different functions. So one of the cool things, there's a lot of breweries here in the area, places to go to. There's downtown, there's billiards rooms, there's so much things that Wilmington has to offer. It's got that small town feel, which is pretty cool. And kinda diving into that again, there's a lot of, activities that you can do, like water sports. You know, there's tons of beaches to walk. There's, surf fishing. There's offshore fishing. There's surfing. There's paddle boarding. There's kayaking. There's a lot of little different, barrier islands to, to go explore in our area, which makes it a huge plus. If you're into water sports, this is the place you wanna be. If you're into boating, we have tons of different areas to boat. Here's some shots of the Intracoastal Waterway, but you got it. You got the Atlantic Ocean. You also have, the brackish water of the Cape Fear River. you can get to downtown by boat. So it's a really, really neat place if you're into boating. Now that we've talked about all of the pros here in the area, we're going to talk about some of the cons here, of living down here in the Wilmington NC area. Like I said, I've been here for 28 years. I've been through a lot of stuff here. Storms and summers, hot summers, the humidity, we're gonna talk about it all. because this is off the cuff. This is not, we're not trying to cover up anything. We just want to give you good information so you guys can get a good taste of what it's really truly like living down here in the area. So moving on, these things, these hurricanes, we're not talking about the hockey team out of Raleigh. hurricanes, we are in an area that we do get them, we're prone to getting them. So, that's one of the cons of living here in our area. the nice thing that, you know, people realize about hurricanes is that you do have plenty of advanced notice when they're coming. They're it's not like they pop up out of nowhere, but they can cause damage. They can cause flooding. They can bring storm surge and high winds. So in our area, a lot of the barrier islands take the brunt of these storms. So, you know, it's one of the things. Hurricanes, we do get them here in our area. Next one, the bugs. this this little critter here, it is not a cockroach. It is called a palmetto bug. We do have them here in our area and, it's one of the things, you know, it is a little bit buggier down here in the south. We also have termites here in the area. So if you do own a home here, you wanna make sure you get a termite bond on your property. It's another, con here for the area. And we also have mosquitoes, but you'll find mosquitoes pretty much up and down the East Coast. You know, we do have areas and a lot of our homes are built with screened porches and a patio, so you kind of have the best of both worlds. But some areas are buggier than others. If you back up to a, freshwater pond, you might have more mosquitoes. But bugs are on the con list for this year for living here in the area. Okay. Another one I hear about is our public schools. when you look at the ratings for the schools compared to, let's say, a lot of ones in the northeast. And if you look at the salaries that they're paying teachers, there's a huge difference there between the scores and also the teachers pay. So if you're a teacher looking to move south, it's a big difference down here. My wife is a teacher. So, public schools, you know, don't have the higher ratings that they do get in the northeast by by any means. now switching gears to the, universities here in North Carolina. We have some of the best universities in the state, of North Carolina throughout the country. So, you know, it's kinda weird that, you know, the the colleges are great and the public schools are kinda falling behind, but that's a con here in our area. what people do, you know, there's public, I'm sorry, private schools that are available as well as, you know, charter schools. There's also early college and that's some of the things that people do to kinda get around those, those scores. But, moving on to our next con, it's hot. It gets hot in the month of July August, you know. Here's some of the, here's a chart of the lows and highs. And you can see they peak there right in between July August. It's probably the 2 hottest months, but it does get humid here. It does get hot, especially up in the nineties. But I will say that, being here on the coast, you do get a breeze and it changes, which is kinda nice. And a lot of people too, to get around some of these, hot temperatures, we, will take a trip to the mountains and jump into some of that cool mountain water and some of the lakes and waterfalls up there in western part of North Carolina. One of the neat things is that you can get to the mountains within 5 hours. So you can basically go from the mountains to the beach within 4 to 5 hours depending on which area you're going to which is pretty cool as well. Okay. Yeah. That's a shingle. That is a shingle and one of the major cons of our area is that if you, own a home and you have a mortgage on it, you're required to carry wind and hail insurance So that's an extra cost that people don't realize about living down here in the coast. so that's a con, because it's added cost. It does protect your house from winds when we do get storms and stuff like that. So, definitely a con here for the, the pocketbook. Kinda, segueing from that, we also have areas down here that are in flood zones. So here's a little map. You can see the, the blue and the green are the ve and ae zones. So, if you live in those areas and you have a mortgage, you're required to carry a flood insurance, which is another added cost. Now if you're in that yellow, orangey zone, you're not in considered you're you're considered in zone x, which means that you're not required to carry flood insurance. But it is very good to, hire a very experienced agent that's been down here for a while to kind of, reduce your risk of flooding if you're buying properties here in the area. Next one, con on our list is these little guys. And they're not little. They, they American alligator, it it comes up just to our area. This is the farthest north that they come. You will find them in certain areas throughout the, southeastern North Carolina. Now it's definitely not like Florida. they're not everywhere, but, you're lucky if you see one. But they do we do have alligators too. If you have a pet and you back up to a retention pond, with woods around it that's pretty secluded, you know, you might wanna be careful there. But like I said, I've been down here for 28 years. I've seen maybe maybe about 10 of these guys. Okay. So moving on traffic. Now, this is a loaded question and it really is based on what you're used to. traffic if, you know, from when I moved down here in 90 6, compared to now, I would say in in Wilmington, there's a lot of traffic down here. But if you're from DC, the the West Coast, California, New York, those areas, you will say that basically you don't have any traffic down here in our area because it's all relative to what you're used to. Now we'll say Wilmington proper has more traffic than, say, in Brunswick County. So the nice thing about it, if you're looking to get outside of town, we got a lot of good choices here. But traffic, I would say, is another con, that made the list for 2024. Another one people don't really realize is that salt air corrosion. this is a shot of a heat pump. It's a, you know, part of the HVA system, controls your heat and also, conditions your air. But if you live on the beach, these, products are get hit with the salt a lot and they don't last the normal, you know, 17, 20 years. So that is a con here for the area. You get some solid air corrosion. Now if you live, you know, inland off the beach, you're not gonna have to worry about this that much. it gets worse and worse as you get closer to the water. But it's definitely a con here for the area. But anyway, this has, you know, been a hopefully been a beneficial video for you to kinda show you the pros and cons living here, in the Wilmington, NC area. If you have any questions or comments, please post them in the link below, the comment section. You know, if you got another con, throw it in there. We'll put it out there for the next video that we do on pros and cons. Again, it's Brian Schroeder with the Co sign NC Real Estate Team. If you like this video, please subscribe. We're gonna be rolling out more on pros and cons, different areas, different beaches, different neighborhoods. So we hope to see you guys here on the next update. Take care now.