"We have, right now, the lowest property tax rate in the state of North Carolina," Mayor Ken Dull told the town's Board of Aldermen at a February 2026 budget workshop, and Town Manager Haynes Brigman quickly added the qualifier that made it official: for a full-service municipality, Wrightsville Beach's rate really is unmatched. At 5.31 cents per $100 of assessed value, it is the kind of number that shows up in relocation conversations, in comparisons against higher-tax states, and in the mental math of anyone deciding between a home here and one twenty minutes inland.
It is also a number that tells you almost nothing about what you will actually pay, or how long that rate is likely to hold.
The line every listing agent repeats
Start with the plain math. A 5.31 cent rate sounds negligible next to property tax rates in the Northeast, where 1 to 2 percent of assessed value in annual tax is common. But Wrightsville Beach's median home value sits well above a million dollars, so even a rate this low produces a real bill, and that bill is now calculated against an assessed value that jumped further than almost anywhere else in the county. The rate is low. The base it's multiplied against is not.
More important is how the town arrived at 5.31 cents in the first place. The rate hasn't moved by policy choice in over a decade in any meaningful upward direction. The last time aldermen actually raised it was in 2012, from 9.9 to 13.3 cents per $100. Since 2017, the rate has drifted steadily downward, not because the town needed less money, but because a different revenue source started covering more of the bill.
Parking meters are doing more work than the tax rate
Wrightsville Beach expects to collect roughly $3.5 million in property taxes in fiscal year 2026-2027, which town officials describe as essentially flat compared to the prior year. Parking revenue alone outpaces that. In 2023-2024, the town budgeted conservatively for $5.2 million from its parking program and ended up collecting $6.9 million instead, nearly double what property taxes bring in.
That gap is the actual mechanism behind the low rate. Every summer weekend, day-trippers who don't own property here feed meters and pay for beach access parking, and that money substitutes for the property tax revenue the town would otherwise need to raise from homeowners. It's a workable arrangement as long as visitor traffic and parking enforcement keep performing, but it means the "low tax rate" headline is really a low tax rate propped up by tourism dollars, not a sign of a leaner municipal budget.
The town's own February 2026 budget discussions acknowledged the strain underneath that arrangement. Officials flagged flat revenue growth against rising costs: employee compensation increases, a five to six year bulkhead replacement plan covering eleven separate structures at roughly $4 million total (the board already voted to commit $600,000 to two of them, at Oxford Street and Fayetteville Street along Banks Channel), and a decade of deferred rate increases catching up with infrastructure that doesn't wait. By the final workshop in March, staff recommended holding the rate flat again for 2026-2027, using higher projected parking and sales tax revenue instead of raising the levy. It worked this year. Whether it works again depends on visitor volume staying strong and capital costs not accelerating faster than projected.
The average hides what actually happened to a typical home
New Hanover County's 2025 revaluation, effective January 1 of that year and locked in until the next scheduled revaluation on January 1, 2029, raised property values across the county by an average of 67 percent since 2021. Wrightsville Beach posted the highest average increase of any area in the county at 77 percent, ahead of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach in the low 70s and well above the City of Wilmington's 63 percent.
But the average and the median tell different stories here. County reporting at the time of the revaluation put Wrightsville Beach's median increase closer to 65 percent, a full twelve points below the average. That gap exists because a handful of oceanfront properties saw such large dollar increases that they pulled the average upward without reflecting what happened to a more typical home a few streets back from the water. If you're comparing a $1.2 million cottage near Banks Channel to a $4 million oceanfront rebuild, the tax story behind each is genuinely different, even though both technically sit inside the same 77 percent headline.
| Area | Average value increase, 2021 to 2025 |
|---|---|
| Wrightsville Beach | 77% |
| Countywide (New Hanover) | 67% |
| City of Wilmington | 63% |
For a buyer trying to estimate a realistic tax bill on a specific property, the average is close to useless. What matters is the assessed value on that parcel's actual notice, multiplied against whatever rate the town sets that year, not the countywide headline a relocation guide might quote.
Wilmington reset its rate. Wrightsville Beach didn't.
The most telling comparison sits just across the drawbridge. The City of Wilmington raised its own tax rate by four cents between 2021 and 2024 to keep pace with rising costs on the old, pre-revaluation values. Once the 2025 revaluation landed, the city cut its rate substantially, from 42 cents down to 28.25 cents per $100, bringing it much closer to revenue neutral against the new, higher assessed base.
Wrightsville Beach took the opposite path. Its rate was already near its current low point before the revaluation hit, so there was little room to cut further even if officials wanted to. Instead, the town is absorbing a much larger jump in assessed values at essentially the same rate it has held for years, betting that parking revenue and sales tax growth keep covering the gap rather than resetting the levy itself. New Hanover County's own leadership has openly worried about this dynamic. County Manager Chris Coudriet told commissioners in October 2025 that property values had effectively doubled in eight years and that the resulting sticker shock was creating real conflict for homeowners, prompting discussion of moving to a two-year revaluation cycle instead of four, specifically to soften future jumps. Nothing has been decided, but it signals that the four-year gap between reassessments, currently set to hold until 2029, is not guaranteed to stay that way.
What this means if you're comparing towns right now
If you're weighing Wrightsville Beach against Wilmington, Carolina Beach, or a market outside North Carolina entirely, the rate comparison alone will mislead you. A few things worth running the numbers on before you write an offer:
- Pull the actual assessed value on the specific property's most recent tax notice, not a neighborhood average, and multiply it by 5.31 cents per $100 to get this year's town-level bill, then add the county rate on top.
- Ask whether the property's assessed value moved with the 65 percent median or closer to the 77 percent average. Oceanfront and larger-lot properties skewed toward the higher end.
- Factor in that Wrightsville Beach's low rate depends on parking and tourism revenue holding steady. A slow summer season or a spike in capital costs could put upward pressure on the rate before the next scheduled revaluation in 2029.
The market itself isn't leaving much room to wait and see. As of early August 2026, active single-family listings in Wrightsville Beach numbered around 42, with a median list price near $1.975 million and homes typically sitting on the market for roughly three months before selling. That's a thin slice of inventory for a town this size, and it means the properties that are priced and positioned correctly don't sit long enough for a tax rate debate to change anyone's mind.
FAQ
Is Wrightsville Beach's property tax rate guaranteed to stay this low? No. The rate has been held flat through the 2026-2027 budget, but town officials have already discussed raising it to cover bulkhead repairs and rising operating costs, and reversed course only after finding higher revenue elsewhere. The next scheduled revaluation isn't until January 1, 2029, but county leadership has floated moving to a two-year cycle, which could change that timeline.
Why did Wilmington's tax rate drop so much more than Wrightsville Beach's after the 2025 revaluation? Wilmington had raised its rate in the years leading up to the revaluation, giving it more room to cut once assessed values jumped. Wrightsville Beach's rate was already near its historic low, so there was less room to reduce it further even as its assessed values rose the most of any area in the county.
Does a low town tax rate mean lower total property taxes? Not necessarily. Your total bill combines the town rate with the New Hanover County rate applied to the same assessed value. A low town rate on a high assessed value can still produce a substantial total bill, particularly on properties that saw increases closer to the 77 percent average than the 65 percent median.
Numbers like these are easier to make sense of with someone who tracks both sides of the bridge, the coastal towns and the city rates that shift around them. If you're comparing Wrightsville Beach to another market, Stephanie Vogel can walk through what a specific property's tax history actually looks like before you write an offer. Let's Connect.
