Across New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties this is a buyer’s market on time and terms, and close to balanced on price. Which label applies to you depends on your county, your price band and how accurately the house is priced.
When someone asks us this question, what they usually want to know is whether they can negotiate. In the Cape Fear region this fall the answer is yes on almost everything except the asking price itself. Homes are taking three to five weeks longer to go under contract than they did a year ago, inventory is higher in two of our three counties, and price reductions before contract are running well above last year in New Hanover. That is real negotiating room, and buyers did not have it in 2021 or 2022.
What has not happened is a price collapse. The New Hanover County median sale price is down 3.5% year over year. Brunswick is up 2.2%. Pender is up 0.5%. Two counties up slightly and one down a few percent is not a buyer’s market on price. It is a market where sellers lost the ability to name a number and wait for it.
What do the three counties actually look like right now?
We keep a market page for each county and refresh it monthly, so these are the numbers we work from rather than a national headline. All three are three-month medians through August 2026.
- New Hanover County: median sale price $448,000, down 3.5% year over year, 58 days on market against 37 a year ago, 1,249 active listings, up 10.2% Tidal Realty Partners New Hanover County market update, August 2026 data
- Brunswick County: median sale price $409,000, up 2.2%, 98 days on market against 67 a year ago, 2,250 active listings Tidal Realty Partners Brunswick County market update, August 2026 data
- Pender County: median sale price $477,000, up 0.5%, 76 days on market against 62 a year ago, 423 active listings, down 4.9% Tidal Realty Partners Pender County market update, August 2026 data
- Months of supply at August’s sales pace: about 3.2 months in New Hanover, 3.9 in Brunswick, 3.7 in Pender Our calculation from active listings and August closings on the three county market updates, August 2026 data
- 30-year fixed mortgage rate 6.95%, up 19 basis points in one week and about 70 basis points above a year ago Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ending September 17, 2026
Read those lines together and the split is obvious. Brunswick County has the most homes for sale and the slowest pace, with roughly 2,250 active listings, more than New Hanover and Pender combined. New Hanover is the priciest and the only one where prices are off year over year. Pender is the tightest, and the only county where inventory actually fell.
Why is time on market the number to watch, not price?
Because time on market is where the negotiation lives. A New Hanover home now takes 58 days to go under contract against 37 a year ago. In Brunswick it is 98 days against 67. In Pender it is 76 against 62. Those extra weeks are weeks of carrying costs, showings and second thoughts, and they change what a seller will say yes to.
The pattern we see on the ground matches it. Price reductions before contract are up 23% in New Hanover and down 11% in Pender, per our county market updates for August 2026. In New Hanover roughly one listing in three has already taken a cut by the time a buyer finds it. When we write an offer on a house that has been sitting past day 45, we are usually negotiating four things at once: price, repairs, closing costs and the closing date. Two years ago we were lucky to get one.
The flip side matters just as much. A softer market does not mean sellers give things away. It means the seller who already cut twice has run out of room and starts holding firm, while the seller still priced to last summer will not move at all because they have not accepted the market yet. Knowing which one you are dealing with is most of the job.
Where do sellers still have the upper hand?
In Pender County, and in any price band where the house is priced correctly on day one. Pender is the only one of our three counties where both inventory and price reductions moved the seller’s way, with active listings down about 5% to 423 and reductions down 11%, and price per square foot up about 6% year over year. Well-priced homes in Hampstead still go under contract inside a month even while the county average stretches to 76 days.
The same is true inside New Hanover. Homes priced to today’s comps in Landfall, Autumn Hall, Ogden and the Mayfaire corridor are still trading inside a month. The listings sitting past 50 days are almost always priced for a market that ended last summer. The county median is a summary of both groups, which is why the county label is a poor guide to your own street.
What does this mean for your side of the table?
If you are buying, you have the most choice since 2019 and you should use it. Get a bound insurance quote during due diligence rather than after, especially east of College Road, because premiums are doing more to payment math than a quarter point of rate. Run the payment at 6.95% and then look at what a builder buydown does to it, because several Wilmington-area builders are funding rates in the 3s and 4s right now. Our mortgage update keeps the current rate and the current builder offers side by side. You can start with what is actually listed on our property search.
If you are selling, treat the first two weeks as your shot at full price rather than a starting point to negotiate down from. Comps from last summer are stale in New Hanover, where the median is off 3.5%. The homes that sit are the ones that priced to a number the owner needed rather than a number the data supported. A home value estimate is a starting point, and then we walk your street with you.
County data is a blunt instrument. Brunswick’s 98-day median is pulled up by the coastal resale end of the county, and Leland new construction inside the same county moves on a different clock entirely. Monthly figures also bounce around with the mix of what happened to close, so one month is never a trend. And this balance is not stable: rates moved 19 basis points in a single week in September 2026, and if they fall meaningfully the buyer’s advantage we are describing narrows fast. If you need certainty about which market you are in, the honest answer is that you need numbers for your neighborhood and your price band, not for a county.
Related questions people also ask
Are home prices in Wilmington going down?
In New Hanover County the median sale price for the three months ending August 2026 was $448,000, down 3.5% from the same period a year earlier, according to our New Hanover County market update. Over the same period Brunswick County was up 2.2% and Pender County was up 0.5%. So prices are softening in the most expensive of the three counties and holding in the other two. That is a very different picture from a regional decline, and it is why a single Wilmington price headline is usually wrong for somebody.
How long does it take to sell a house in the Wilmington area right now?
The median time to go under contract was 58 days in New Hanover County, 76 days in Pender County and 98 days in Brunswick County for the three months ending August 2026, per our county market updates. Each of those is two to five weeks longer than the same period a year earlier. A correctly priced home in a strong location often still goes in under 30 days, so the median reflects a market with two groups in it rather than one slow one.
Should I wait for mortgage rates to drop before buying here?
Nobody can tell you where rates go, and anyone who does is guessing. What we can tell you is that the 30-year fixed averaged 6.95% in the Freddie Mac survey for the week ending September 17, 2026, after moving up 19 basis points in one week, and that rate direction since spring has been up. Waiting trades today’s negotiating room for a rate you cannot control. You can refinance a rate later, and you cannot go back and buy at a price that has already moved.
Pick your county page, read the current numbers, then get the version that applies to your street and your price band. Send us the address or the search you are running and we will show you what has actually sold nearby in the last 90 days and where the negotiating room is sitting. That conversation takes about twenty minutes and it is where most of our buyers and sellers start.
Sources: Tidal Realty Partners New Hanover County, Brunswick County and Pender County market updates, August 2026 data, refreshed September 2026; Tidal Realty Partners mortgage update, September 2026; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ending September 17, 2026; months of supply calculated from active listings and August closings on our three county market updates.
