Aiming to serve more customers along the Carolina coast, a homebuilding company founded in Greensboro has leased space in Wilmington, Shallotte and Myrtle Beach.

Beth Sink, director of sales and marketing for Wade Jurney Homes, said the firm hopes to open its Wilmington location in a shopping center off Market Street and New Centre Drive by the first weekend in August. The company calls their retail locations new home studios, and they offer one-stop shopping for new homebuyers, Sink said.

“We set up in retail spaces so we have good storefronts and lots of drive-by traffic,” Sink said Thursday. “Once you walk in, you have the ability to purchase in any of the communities that we’re building in ... the majority of new home studios have on average between six and eight different communities.”

In the Wilmington area, the company has bought lots in Deer Crossing near Myrtle Grove.

“Most [storefront] locations are within a 25-minute drive time or less from the actual location of the new home studio,” Sink said. “We tried to centralize that studio to sell around it.”

The Port City location is at 4719 New Centre Drive, Suite H, in front of Target, and the company’s Shallotte address, what the firm calls its Brunswick County studio, is 120 Shallotte Crossing Parkway, Suite 2. Wade Jurney Homes, owned and led by Wade Jurney, is also opening a space in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

The company's price points in the area range from the mid-130,000s for about 1,300 square feet and a one-car garage, up to $245,000 (in Deer Crossing) for 3,400 square feet and a two-car garage. Deer Crossing starting prices are a little higher, in the 180,000s, Sink said.

Wade Jurney Homes has five divisions -- in Charlotte, the Triangle area, the Triad area, coastal Carolinas and southwest Florida and more than 80 employees total, Sink said.

"We're always out looking for new locations," she said.