Masonboro is one of the best known addresses in Wilmington and one of the hardest to draw a line around. It is not a town and has no government. The Census Bureau draws no place by that name either: we queried the current and 2010 TIGER place files and the county’s census place layer on October 16, 2026, and Masonboro is in none of them. What people mean by it is the ground draining to Masonboro Sound, along Masonboro Sound Road and Masonboro Loop Road.

So we measured the one boundary that still carries the name. New Hanover County Schools draws a Masonboro Elementary attendance area from 14 study areas, and we pulled it from the locator’s boundary layer on October 16, 2026. It holds 3,656 parcels on the county’s 2026 tax roll, 3,421 residential and 3,269 carrying a house, all in ZIP 28409. It runs from Whiskey Creek south to Myrtle Grove Sound and east to Masonboro Island.

Then the fact that surprises buyers most. The city limits run through here. Of the 3,656 parcels, 2,864 carry Wilmington as their municipality on the 2026 roll and 787 carry only a fire district, meaning unincorporated county. Among the houses the split is 2,630 to 639, so two neighbors on one road can pay very different tax bills.

The housing is older, wooded and detached, on a median lot of 0.367 acres with 2,231 heated square feet. The county records 62 subdivisions here. The large interior ones are Tanglewood at 414 lots, Millbrook at 322 and Masonboro Forest at 223. The waterfront is a set of small enclaves instead: Oyster Bay, Masonborough Plantation, Masonboro Landing with its own boat basin, and The Bluff at Trails End. New construction is concentrated in East & Mason.

On October 16, 2026 the Coldwell Banker page for ZIP 28409 carried 306 listings. We read all ten pages and matched every address against the county parcel file. Forty six sit inside Masonboro. The 43 houses and townhomes run $279,000 to $8,000,000, median asking price $870,000, with 15 under $500,000, 11 between $500,000 and $1 million and 17 at $1 million or more. Three lots run $375,000 to $2,900,000.

Masonboro sells a 1960s ranch on a half acre and a new waterfront house with a deep water dock in the same week. The county’s 2026 appraisals on all 3,269 houses show the same shape: median $520,300, quartiles of $399,700 and $715,800, with 329 at $1 million or more and 271 still under $300,000. The 183 townhome parcels have a median appraisal of $364,600, which is where the attainable inventory sits.

Taking the most recent sale on each improved parcel, 164 sales of $10,000 or more closed in the 12 months ending October 16, 2026, median $607,500. Some are family or estate transfers, so read it as a shape. Our New Hanover County market update puts the county median sale price at $448,000 for the three months ending August 2026. Masonboro trades above that and above Myrtle Grove next door, because of the water. If the water is the point, price it against Wrightsville Beach across the inlet first.

• Masonboro Island Reserve, across the waterway: 5,653 acres, the largest site in the state’s estuarine research reserve, designated 1991 and reachable only by boat.
• Trails End Park, 613 Trails End Road: the county park at the end of the road, open 8 am to sunset, with a fishing pier and a ramp limited to boats 22 feet or less.
• Masonboro Yacht Club and Marina, 609 Trails End Road: the private marina basin on the sound, recorded under that name on the tax roll.
• The Veggie Wagon at Masonboro, 3315 Masonboro Loop Road: the market at the Loop and Pine Grove crossroads, open 10 am to 8 pm daily since 2017.
• UNCW Center for Marine Science, 5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane: the university’s marine research campus, 49 acres inside the neighborhood.
• Trinity Landing, 5450 Trinity Landing Way: the Lutheran Services Carolinas senior living community on the waterway, 220 units.

The honest version: Masonboro has no main street and no restaurant row. It has a crossroads with a market and a few shops, a church, a school and a lot of water. Buyers who want to walk to dinner should read our Historic Downtown guide instead.

Masonboro is served by New Hanover County Schools, and the elementary school is why many families look here first. We queried the locator’s boundary layer at all 3,269 improved residential parcels on October 16, 2026:

• Elementary. Every house feeds Masonboro Elementary School, 3518 Masonboro Loop Road, a K-5 school. It was Walter L. Parsley Elementary for years, and parsley.nhcs.net still redirects to its site, so older listings naming Parsley mean this school.
• Middle. The line splits, about 59 percent of houses to Roland-Grise Middle on Lake Avenue and 41 percent to Myrtle Grove Middle on Piner Road.
• High. All of it feeds John T. Hoggard High on Shipyard Boulevard.

The North Carolina School Report Cards site, read October 16, 2026, carries year 2025 grades of A for Masonboro Elementary at a score of 90, with growth Exceeded at 94.7. Grade level proficiency was 82.7 percent in reading and 92 in math, against 56.2 and 65 for the district. Roland-Grise carries a B at 70, Hoggard a B at 75 and Myrtle Grove Middle a C at 66, all three meeting growth. If the middle assignment matters, run the address through the locator yourself, because the queryable boundary layer still carries 2022 to 2023 field names.

By road routing calculated October 16, 2026 from the middle of the neighborhood, UNCW is about 4.8 miles and 11 minutes, Novant Health’s New Hanover Regional Medical Center 6.0 and 14, downtown 8.1 and 18, Wrightsville Beach 9.1 and 19, the airport 9.8 and 21, and the Carolina Beach boardwalk 10.3 and 20. These are free flow estimates, so add time for the College Road and Oleander lights.

Masonboro Loop Road is the spine of all of it, and it is two lanes. School traffic at the Loop and Pine Grove backs up twice a day, and the waterfront streets have one way out. The City of Wilmington is building the Masonboro Loop Trail along it, a 1.4 mile path from Navaho Trail to Pine Grove in two phases at $1.5 million and $1.1 million, Phase 1 underway and Phase 2 started in July 2025. The island in your view is not a drive. No bridge crosses from here, so that sand takes a boat.

Flood exposure is the price of the view. We queried the county’s 2025 flood hazard layer at all 3,269 improved residential parcels on October 16, 2026. Zone X, minimal hazard, came back for 2,527 of them, 77.3 percent. Another 405 returned AE, at base flood elevations of 12 or 13 feet, and 65 returned VE, the coastal high hazard zone where waves are expected, at 14 to 16 feet. That puts 14.4 percent of the houses in the special flood hazard area, along the sound and up Whiskey Creek. A VE lot is a different purchase: it drives the foundation, the premium and the elevation certificate.

Insurance is the middle tier of this coast, not the cheap one. The January 17, 2025 settlement between the Department of Insurance and the Rate Bureau raised base rates by territory, and its table puts ZIP 28409 in territory 140, Eastern Coastal, approved at 10.5 percent in 2025 and 10.1 percent in 2026 against a request of 71.4. Inland territory 160 took 5 and 4.8 percent, the beach territory 16 and 15.9.

Two tax rates in one neighborhood. At the 2026 rates an unincorporated house pays .3785 per $100 and a house inside the Wilmington limits pays .6375. On the area’s median appraisal of $520,300 that is about $1,969 a year outside the city and about $3,317 inside it.

Associations are a patchwork, and so are the docks. Most of Masonboro predates mandatory associations, and the roll shows only 73 association common area parcels, concentrated in the newer subdivisions, plus 11 deeded boat slips at Friendly Shores. If a listing mentions a dock, ask who maintains it. A new or rebuilt one is development in an Area of Environmental Concern, which takes a permit from the state Division of Coastal Management.

Public water and sewer, with a few exceptions. This is not well country. On the county’s land development map, read October 16, 2026, all 3,269 houses sit in the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority sewer area and 3,211 in its water area, with 58 where the county requires a well permit. Those are consult areas, so confirm the connection for the address.