As new residents continued to flock to parts of southeastern North Carolina from colder states, some Brunswick County communities broke home-sale records in 2015.

On the southern end of the county, St. James Plantation celebrated one of its best years “since the start of the 21st century,” with nearly $60 million in sales and more than $80 million in new home construction, said Dan Kingsbury, vice president of sales and marketing.

“We continue to benefit from the continuing migration of retirees from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to the North Carolina Coast,” Kingsbury said in a news release. “We expect that trend will continue to drive sales for the foreseeable future as more of the [baby-boomer] generation reaches retirement age and starts thinking about leaving the snow and cold weather behind.”

He said many of the community’s sales are a direct result of referrals from current residents who moved to St. James Plantation from colder areas. For example, on Monday, as the sun was shining on a 54-degree day in Brunswick, Pender and New Hanover counties, residents in cities and states to the north of the region were still digging out of an historic weekend snowstorm.

St. James welcomed 279 new families last year, generating $59.2 million in sales and bringing the three-year total to 825 sales for nearly $170 million, Kingsbury said. New home starts in 2015 totaled 196, representing a capital investment in excess of $80 million, the release said. As of this month, 150 homes were under construction, and up to 50 more were in the pipeline for the first quarter of 2016, according to the release.

St. James Plantation officially opened in 1991, and was incorporated into the town of St. James in 1999, according to St. James Plantation’s website. Since 2000, the population has doubled to 4,000 residents, the site says.

Other communities have also labeled last year a banner year for sales. The northern Brunswick County master-planned development of Brunswick Forest in Leland had a record year in 2015, adding more than 340 families, according to Brunswick Forest marketing materials. The community has seen more than 1,500 families choose Brunswick Forest since opening in 2007, according to information posted Friday on "In the forest," a blog that's regularly updated on Brunswick Forest's website.

Compass Pointe, another master-planned development in Leland, posted a photo on its Facebook page Monday of the neighborhood’s presence at a marketing event at a Long Island, New York, hotel.

Home sales throughout the Cape Fear region ended 2015 on a high note, up nearly 13 percent over 2014’s number of units sold, according to Wilmington Regional Association of realtors statistics released earlier this month. The sale of 849 homes in the WRAR’s MLS area, which includes northern Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, represented the highest amount of units sold since 2006, according to WRAR stats.

Year-end statistics for southern Brunswick County for 2015 from the Brunswick County Association of Realtors, which is one of three associations in the process this month of going online with the new NC Regional MLS, had not been released as of Monday.