Yes, if your house sits inside the city limits: you pay New Hanover County’s 30.6 cents per $100 of value and the City of Wilmington’s 33.15 cents on the same bill. If your house sits outside every town, you pay the county rate plus a fire services tax of 7.25 cents instead, which works out to about $1,200 a year less on a median priced house.
This is the question behind a lot of confused buyers, and it usually surfaces at the worst moment, when a lender hands over an estimate and the escrow number is $100 a month higher than the one in someone’s head. Two houses that look identical, three miles apart, both with a Wilmington mailing address, can carry very different tax bills. Nothing about the house explains it. The city limit line explains it.
North Carolina stacks property tax rather than blending it. The county levies a rate on everyone. Then a municipality, if your parcel sits inside one, levies its own rate on top. If your parcel sits in none of them, which we call unincorporated, the county levies a fire services tax in place of a town fire department. You are never paying two full bills. You are paying one bill with more than one rate on it.
What the current rates are
These are the fiscal year 2026-2027 rates, per $100 of assessed value, as reported by Port City Daily on July 10, 2026 when the county sent out its bills.
- New Hanover County: 30.6 cents, paid by every property owner in the county Port City Daily, July 2026
- County fire services tax, unincorporated areas only: 7.25 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- City of Wilmington: 33.15 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- City of Wilmington Municipal Services District, downtown: an additional 5 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- Wrightsville Beach: 5.31 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- Carolina Beach: 17.12 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- Kure Beach: 19.5 cents Port City Daily, July 2026
- 2026 bills were due September 1, 2026 and can be paid without interest through January 5, 2027 Port City Daily, July 2026
Add the county rate to each of those and you get the combined rate you actually pay. Inside the city it is 63.75 cents. Unincorporated it is 37.85 cents. Wrightsville Beach comes to 35.91 cents, Carolina Beach to 47.72 cents, Kure Beach to 50.1 cents, and a downtown parcel inside the Municipal Services District to 68.75 cents.
The beach town numbers surprise people. Wrightsville Beach has the lowest combined rate in the county, lower than unincorporated Castle Hayne or Myrtle Grove, because the town’s own rate is only 5.31 cents. That does not make Wrightsville Beach cheap to own. It makes the tax rate a small part of the cost there, with insurance doing the heavy lifting.
What the difference costs in dollars
Rates per hundred dollars are hard to feel, so run them against one number. The New Hanover County median sale price for the three months ending September 2026 was $464,000, from our New Hanover County market update. Using that single value so the comparison is apples to apples:
Inside Wilmington city limits, at a combined 63.75 cents, the annual bill is $2,958.00. On an unincorporated parcel, at a combined 37.85 cents, it is $1,756.24. The gap is $1,201.76 a year, which is $100.15 a month of escrow. At Wrightsville Beach the same value produces $1,666.22, at Carolina Beach $2,214.21, at Kure Beach $2,324.64, and on a downtown parcel inside the Municipal Services District $3,190.00.
Your actual bill uses the county’s assessed value for your parcel, not the sale price, and those two numbers are frequently different. If yours looks wrong after you close, our post on how to appeal a New Hanover County tax value covers the process and the window.
What the city rate buys that the county rate does not
A fair question from a buyer looking at a $100 a month difference: what is the extra money for?
Inside the city you get Wilmington police, Wilmington fire, city street maintenance and city solid waste collection. Outside the city, the sheriff’s office covers law enforcement, the fire services tax funds the county fire system, the state or the county maintains most roads, and household trash is usually a private subscription you arrange and pay for yourself. That last one catches relocating buyers often, because a lower tax line and a separate garbage bill can net out closer than the rate comparison suggests.
The city rate also moved this year. Wilmington City Council adopted a $349.8 million budget for fiscal 2027 with a property tax increase of 4.9 cents per $100, effective July 1, 2026, with more than 70 percent of the increased investment going to police and fire operations, according to the city’s own budget announcement published June 17, 2026. For a home at the city’s cited median value of $445,000, the city put the increase at $18.17 a month. New Hanover County, by contrast, held its rate flat at 30.6 cents when commissioners adopted their budget in May 2026.
How to find out which side of the line your house is on
Do not rely on the mailing address. Plenty of houses with a Wilmington address are not in Wilmington, which is exactly why this post exists. Three reliable checks, in order of how fast they are.
First, pull the parcel on the county’s property records and look at the tax jurisdictions listed on the bill or the assessment record. A city levy will appear as its own line. Second, look at last year’s actual tax bill for the property, which a seller can provide and which shows every rate applied. Third, if the neighborhood is new or has been annexed recently, ask the city planning office directly, because annexation changes the answer and the records can lag.
If you want to see what unincorporated living looks like in practice, our Castle Hayne community guide and our Myrtle Grove community guide both cover areas outside any municipality, and our line by line breakdown of the cost of living in Wilmington puts the tax line next to insurance, utilities and everything else that actually determines what a house costs to hold.
A rate comparison is not a cost comparison, and we would rather you heard that from us than learned it after closing. Unincorporated parcels often pay for private trash service, and some pay a separate water and sewer connection arrangement, both of which eat into the apparent saving. Rates also change every year with the budget cycle, and the assessed value underneath them changes on the county’s revaluation schedule, so a bill can rise sharply in a year when no rate moved at all. Annexation is the other wildcard: a parcel just outside the line today can be inside it later, which shifts you from the 7.25 cent fire tax to the 33.15 cent city rate. If the tax line is tight in your budget, look at the actual prior year bill for the specific parcel rather than at any rate table, including this one.
Related questions people also ask
Does a Wilmington mailing address mean my house is in the city limits?
No, and this is the single most common mix up we see on this subject. Large parts of unincorporated New Hanover County carry a Wilmington postal address while sitting outside the city, which means the city rate does not apply to them and the county fire services tax does instead. The postal service draws its boundaries for mail delivery, not for taxation. The only reliable checks are the parcel record, the prior year tax bill, or a direct call to the city planning office.
Are property taxes lower outside Wilmington city limits?
The rate is lower, and by a wide margin, because the 7.25 cent fire services tax replaces a city rate several times its size. Whether your total cost of ownership is lower is a different question, since unincorporated households commonly pay privately for trash collection and may face different water and sewer arrangements. Services also differ, with the sheriff’s office rather than a city police department responding. The honest way to compare two houses is to add up the bills you would actually pay rather than comparing rates alone.
Why did my Wilmington tax bill go up when the rate did not change?
Your bill is the rate multiplied by the county’s assessed value of your property, so a bill can rise purely because the assessment rose. New Hanover County reassesses on a fixed cycle, and in a revaluation year a strong market can push assessed values up sharply even when commissioners leave the rate alone. The reverse also happens, with rates cut after a revaluation so the county does not collect a windfall. If your assessed value looks higher than what the property would sell for, there is a formal appeal process with a deadline, and it is worth using.
Ask for a copy of last year’s actual tax bill on any house you are serious about, and read which jurisdictions appear on it. That single document settles the city question and gives you a real escrow number, and we will sit down and work out the full monthly cost with you before you write an offer.
Sources: Port City Daily, New Hanover County property tax bills and fiscal year 2026-2027 rates, July 10, 2026; City of Wilmington, City Council Passes FY27 Budget, June 17, 2026; WECT, New Hanover County commissioners adopt fiscal 2026-27 budget with the rate unchanged, May 18, 2026; Redfin New Hanover County housing market, median sale price for the three months ending September 2026. Combined rates and dollar figures are arithmetic from the published rates above.
