Forest Hills is an in-town Wilmington neighborhood, not a suburb and not a gated subdivision. It sits inside the city limits in New Hanover County, ZIP 28403, about a mile east of the 17th Street hospital corridor, in Census Tract 104. The school district’s subdivision layer records 200 lots in the plat. Tract 104 held 3,012 people and 1,215 occupied units in the 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, 879 owner occupied, median household income $136,830. This is an older plat stitched into the city, not one planned community, and it turns over slowly.

What people mean when they say Forest Hills is the canopy and the lot sizes. The aerials above are the plain view from overhead, and they show what buyers notice from the street: hardwoods over everything, big yards, curving streets, a wooded creek corridor through the middle. The housing stock is old for Wilmington, median year built 1954 in that same survey. Expect brick ranches, two story Colonial Revival houses and recent infill on the lots that came open.

On September 30, 2026, Coldwell Banker’s Forest Hills search returned 4 listings, 2 active: 827 Colonial Drive, four bedrooms and 2,089 square feet at $559,000 after 400 days on market, and 318 Colonial Drive, four bedrooms and 2,747 square feet at $910,000 after 39 days. Both pending listings were 735 Finley Place, a lot and a new house at $2,478,775. Two active homes is not a market you can average, and we will not pretend otherwise.

The steadier number is the Census one: ACS 2020 to 2024 estimates put the median value of owner occupied homes in Tract 104 at $522,200, plus or minus $62,476. That sits above the county median sale price of $448,000 for the three months ending August 2026 on our New Hanover County market update.

County conditions matter more when inventory is this thin. That August 2026 data also shows the county median down 3.5 percent year over year, 58 days on market against 37 a year earlier, and 1,249 active listings countywide, up 10.2 percent. A seller priced to a 2021 comp sits, and 400 days on 827 Colonial Drive is that story on one address. The gap between the two asking prices is condition, not location.

Places we point buyers to:

• Forest Hills Global Elementary, 602 Colonial Drive – the assigned elementary school is physically inside the neighborhood, so walking to school is real here, not a talking point
• Wallace Park, 2710 Market Street – city park at the neighborhood’s edge with an accessible playground, basketball courts and unpaved trails by the creek, about 2 minutes
• Empie Park, 3405 Park Avenue – the Althea Gibson Tennis Complex with 24 lighted courts, a fenced dog park, playground and parking for the Gary Shell Cross-City Trail, about 1.3 miles
• Indochine Far East Cafe, 7 Wayne Drive – the long running Asian restaurant whose own address line reads “Market Street at Forest Hills,” half a mile out
• Cape Fear Country Club, 1518 Country Club Road – the private club in the Wilmington Chamber directory, half a mile southwest and entirely separate from the neighborhood

The honest summary: this is residential and quiet, and weekends happen elsewhere. If you want a walkable commercial street at the door, read our Historic Downtown guide; if you want shops at the end of the block, read Mayfaire.

Forest Hills is served by New Hanover County Schools. We ran the neighborhood boundary against the district’s own address locator on September 30, 2026. Assignments came back consistent across all five study areas touching the plat, with one exception.

• Forest Hills Global Elementary, 602 Colonial Drive – assigned for the whole neighborhood, and located in it
• Williston Middle, 401 South 10th Street – assigned for the whole neighborhood, about 5 minutes
• New Hanover High, 1307 Market Street – assigned for four of the five study areas, about 5 minutes
• John T. Hoggard High, 4305 Shipyard Boulevard – assigned for study area 152 at the southern edge, about 8 minutes

That split is the most important school fact on this page. Two houses a few streets apart can feed different high schools, so run the exact address through the district locator before you write an offer.

On performance we give you the state’s numbers, not a letter grade from a review site. In NC Department of Public Instruction 2025-26 accountability data, grade level proficiency across all subjects was 43.1 percent at Forest Hills Global Elementary, 33.1 percent at Williston Middle, 43.6 percent at New Hanover High and 69.8 percent at Hoggard. Four year graduation was 81.6 percent at New Hanover High and 90.6 percent at Hoggard. Those trail the northern suburbs, and that is a real part of the trade here.

Forest Hills sits between Market Street on the north and the Oleander Drive corridor to the south, which is what makes it central and what makes the edges loud at rush hour. Approximate drives from the middle of the neighborhood, routing estimate with no traffic:

• Downtown Wilmington, Water and Market – about 2.3 miles, 6 minutes
• Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center – about 0.9 miles, 3 minutes
• UNCW – about 3.5 miles, 9 minutes
• Wilmington International Airport – about 6.4 miles, 16 minutes
• Mayfaire Town Center – about 6.7 miles, 13 minutes
• Wrightsville Beach, Johnnie Mercers Pier – about 8.6 miles, 16 minutes

Add real minutes between 7:30 and 9 in the morning and 4:30 to 6 in the evening. Market and Oleander both back up, and the Wrightsville Beach bridges are their own weather system on a summer Saturday. The upside: the hospital, downtown and the airport all sit inside sixteen minutes.

Burnt Mill Creek runs through the neighborhood, and FEMA maps it. We clipped the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer to the Forest Hills boundary on September 30, 2026, FIRM panel 3720312700K, effective August 28, 2018. About 89 percent of the neighborhood is Zone X, minimal flood hazard. About 11 percent sits in the Special Flood Hazard Area along the creek, split between Zone AE and a regulatory floodway inside it. That is a good result for a coastal city, and exactly why you pull the determination on the parcel: a lot backing to the creek and a lot three streets up carry different insurance and lending conditions. The watershed is over 20 percent impervious and the creek is on North Carolina’s 303(d) impaired waters list, so ask about yard drainage and what happened in September 2018.

Insurance is a coastal cost even five miles inland. The NC Department of Insurance and the Rate Bureau settled on statewide homeowners base rate increases of 7.5 percent on June 1, 2025 and 7.5 percent on June 1, 2026, with coastal territories above the statewide average. A second settlement announced April 22, 2026 raises dwelling rates, used on non owner occupied houses, an average 5 percent on October 1, 2026 and again in 2027. Expect a named storm deductible, and ask for it in dollars.

Your tax bill has two lines and the base just reset. New Hanover County bills 0.306 and the City of Wilmington 0.3315 per $100 of assessed value in FY2026-27, a combined 0.6375 percent, roughly $3,329 a year on the ACS tract median of $522,200. The city rate rose 4.9 cents in the budget council passed in June 2026. The county revaluation effective January 1, 2025 raised residential values about 67 percent on average against 2021, and the next reset lands January 1, 2029.

No HOA to lean on, and no historic overlay either. The City of Wilmington’s historic districts page lists five local and eight National Register districts, and Forest Hills is on neither, while Carolina Heights, Carolina Place and Westbrook-Ardmore nearby are. There are no club dues, no amenity fees and no design review protecting your view. Check title work for recorded covenants on the lot rather than assuming there are none, because city zoning alone governs what your neighbor builds. Water and sewer come from Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, so septic tanks and private wells are not a factor here the way they are in the unincorporated county.

Watch the road file. The Independence Boulevard Extension, NCDOT project U-4434, would have built 1.7 miles of new road from Randall Parkway to Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway with an interchange at Market Street, a few blocks from here. In late May 2026 the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board voted 12 to 1 to pull it from the 2026 to 2035 transportation improvement program, after city council opposed it in January 2026, but kept it in the long range plan through 2050. Dormant, not dead.