Vicky Janowski

Forget what can $1 million buy you. How about what can $432,000 buy you?

That’s how much a (median) single-family house will cost you here, as of February, the latest figures available from Cape Fear Realtors.

Median means the midpoint. So some of you have scooped up homes above the $432,000 price tag, and others have found more affordable houses in the region. But that’s the middle of the bell curve for New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties.

Like much of the rest of the country in recent years, local homeowners have played the Zestimate game – wistfully watching their estimated home values climb while bemoaning where would you move to anyway. (Yes, the Zestimate is controversial, but if you’re not in the market to sell and your only goal is to torture yourself with the all-cash, sight unseen, no need to repaint the walls urban legend offers that you just know would pour in, it’s a fairly quick search.)

The recent cool-off seen in other metro markets hasn’t yet hit locally. The median sales price in February was still 9% higher for the region than at the same time last year.

But what will happen to that midpoint mark in 2023? 

Will homeowners park themselves on the historical low interest rates they scored in 2020? How will the banking industry turmoil play into the Federal Reserve’s plan for interest rate hikes this year? (We send this issue to press the day of the Fed’s March meeting, so at least one of those questions will be answered soon).

By the way, the homeowners of 1981 scoff, seeing your current 6.97% mortgage rate and raising you the 16.63% they paid each month. 

Your 30-year rate is a snapshot in time – and possibly credit score – reflecting what’s going on in the larger economy and forces that seem far, far removed.

Meanwhile, your median sales price can be a snapshot in geography. Where you live and how the local market supplies those choices can push that median point up or down.

Will Wilmington’s ongoing concerns with available inventory drive people farther away from the metro center? Will more options – either from government, endowment or private funding – for workforce and affordable housing materialize?

And on a personal level, where do you want to live and where can you afford to live? 

For example, while the median price for a single-family home in the region is $432,000, it’s higher at $450,250 in New Hanover County and lower at $401,290 in Brunswick County. 

Or broaden the map and take your median wallet of $432,000 – unattainable for some, chump change for others, but again our region’s collective midpoint – and shop it around the country.

$432,000 can get you a 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom, 667-square-foot condo in the middle of D.C. It’ll get you a five-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom, 2,415-square-foot house in Hickory, North Carolina, which U.S. News dubbed the most affordable place to live in the country.

Or, spend $165,000 on a tricked-out Sprinter van and become a digital nomad. You’ll need the rest for gas money.