13 beach homes on North Carolina coast priced $5M+ looking for buyers

As the price point reaches new highs for prospective buyers willing to drop millions of dollars for North Carolina coastal homes, some sellers are taking a keen interest.

Numbers from the North Carolina Regional Multiple Listing Service show at least 13 homes priced more than $5 million are now up for sale or pending sale off the coast of North Carolina.

Homes from Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach to spacious dwellings on Bald Head Island and Holden Beach are now on the sale block.

The number of current listings is slightly higher than the number of $5 million sales along the coastline in the past year.

“This has been a very active market this year,” says Rebecca Dawson, co-owner and a real estate broker with Full Circle Experience, a Nest Realty affiliation in Wilmington. “The $10 million-plus market has cooled down a little bit but showings have not abated.”

Among the $5 million-plus homes for sale (listed below), two of them are priced at more than $10 million, and five of them are priced at more than $6 million.

According to MLS numbers, in the past 12 months, there were 11 homes sold at $5 million-plus category – with four beach homes selling for $10 million or more. One house priced at $10 million was sold without a public listing in the past quarter.

North Carolina beach homes sold for $5 million or more in 2023

From spacious Widow’s Walk to putting greens, and from sizable swimming pools to ultra-secret basement chambers, the buyer attractions of these high-end coastal homes have gone up considerably in recent years.

Nick Phillips, principal broker/founder of Landmark Sotheby’s International Realty in Wilmington sold two $10 million-plus homes in the past year. “We still have a very limited inventory despite the 13 homes listed for sale,” Phillips said. “We have a different category of buyers now coming in from places like New York and Boston. Direct service to NYC and Boston from Wilmington airport makes it easy for folks in the financial services area, CEOs and business owners to look for second homes off our coast.”

Phillips adds that the Triangle area continues to be a big draw for coastal properties. “They are as strong as ever and most of them are buying with cash,” he said. Essentially, talking about mortgage rates is not an issue for the prospective buyer looking at these homes.

But Brunswick, Carteret, New Hannover, and Pender counties are not only for wealthy individuals.

Demand for homes remains high across much of North Carolina, but the state’s coastline continues to make noise among the hottest markets in the country.

An analysis by the Business Journals of pricing trends among ZIP codes with a minimum median home value of $250,000 and a population of at least 5,000 found some of the hottest markets in the state are tourism hotspots and traditional second-home markets. The analysis used data from Zillow Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ZG) and the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey.

Interestingly, based on the sale price and the escalation of the value of properties, observers have pointed out that the coastal market in the U.S. has not priced in the “climate risk”. In fact, prices have gone northward in the communities along the Eastern seaboard. A detailed report from the Washington Post earlier this year referenced at least two studies where authors found very little evidence that coastal home prices are being discounted because of climate risk.

Richard Byrne, a Triangle executive who has his $12 million beach home for sale on Wrightsville Beach, said he is not worried about the market. “If it takes two years, I am okay with it,” Byrne said. “It will sell when it sells. That’s the beach and it is a great house.”

Here are the 13 beach homes listed for $5 million or more on the North Carolina coast (information on the individual listings can be found here):