Start with the spelling, because it trips up every search. The Census Bureau files this place as Murraysville CDP. The sign at the main junction says Murrayville Road and the school is Murrayville Elementary, so that is what we use. Search both.

It is an unincorporated census designated place in northern New Hanover County, 8.614 square miles per the 2023 Census Gazetteer, with no town hall. The 2020 Census counted 16,582 people and 7,303 housing units inside the boundary. Almost every address reads Wilmington 28411.

The shape is simple. Gordon Road along the south, North College Road and the US 117 junction along the west, Murrayville Road through the middle, subdivisions in between. The 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey puts the median year built at 2000, counts 6,601 of 7,500 units as single family detached and 5,664 of 7,324 occupied units as owner occupied, about 77 percent. Detached houses on modest lots from the 1990s and 2000s, with a thin layer of townhomes and a little new infill.

What we tell buyers is that Murrayville is the county’s middle. Not the beach, not downtown, not a gated club. It is where a Wilmington household buys a three bedroom house with a yard and still gets to work in twenty minutes.

On October 17, 2026 the Coldwell Banker Murraysville page carried 91 listings, 46 active and 45 of those with a Murrayville address. The 38 active houses and townhomes ran $296,500 to $859,900, median asking price $369,950, median 46 days on market. One manufactured home was listed at $150,000, and six land listings ran $145,000 to $1,600,000.

The bulk sits in a narrow band: 15 of those 38 homes were priced under $350,000 and another 13 under $450,000. Only two cleared $600,000. Three are new construction on Juno Drive at $521,062 to $597,332, where the top of this market is heading.

Then the number that surprises people. The American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024 puts the median value of an owner occupied home here at $320,700, give or take $12,953. It reads below the asking prices because it covers the whole owned stock, including the smaller houses that rarely list. Median household income in the same survey is $81,167.

Our New Hanover County market update puts the county median sale price at $464,000 for the three months ending September 2026, down 1.3 percent year over year, at 61 days on market. Murrayville sells below that, one of the few places left in the county where that is reliably true. Compare it against Wrightsboro west, Castle Hayne north, King’s Grant south and Porters Neck east.

Murrayville’s best feature is one most buyers miss. Two of the county’s larger parks sit inside the boundary, not near it. We geocoded both against the Census line on October 17, 2026.

• Ogden Park, 615 Ogden Park Drive: the county’s athletic park, open 8 am to 10 pm, with baseball, soccer and football fields, a youth football stadium, nine lighted tennis courts, an off leash dog park, a skatepark and a one mile accessible trail around the pond.
• Smith Creek Park, 633 Shenandoah Street: quieter, open 8 am to sunset, built around a freshwater lake with a 1.3 mile paved loop, a fishing pier, a kayak dock and a nature themed playground. Catch and release only, license required. The county reports the Phase 2 expansion complete, adding parking off Gordon Road, a restroom, a shelter and a second paved trail.
• Murrayville Elementary, 225 Mabee Way: the neighborhood school is inside the boundary too.
• Murrayville Post Shopping Center, 2307 North College Road: the errand strip on the west edge.

Now the honest part. Murrayville has no restaurant row and nothing anyone would call a downtown. The eating is chain and strip retail on North College Road and Market Street. Buyers who want to walk to dinner should read our Mayfaire and Historic Downtown guides, and expect to pay for it.

Murrayville is served by New Hanover County Schools. We sampled the district’s published 2026 to 2027 zone maps, the ones behind its school locator, across the Census boundary on October 17, 2026:

• Elementary. About 72 percent is zoned to Murrayville Elementary, 225 Mabee Way. The edges split: roughly 14 percent to John J. Blair Elementary, 11 percent to Porters Neck Elementary, 2 percent to Castle Hayne Elementary.
• Middle. About 88 percent feeds Emsley A. Trask Middle, 2900 North College Road; the northern and eastern edge, about 12 percent, feeds Holly Shelter Middle.
• High. About 94 percent feeds Emsley A. Laney High, 2700 North College Road, with a southern slice going to New Hanover High.

We will not dress up the report cards. The North Carolina School Report Cards data, read October 17, 2026, carries year 2025 grades of C for Murrayville Elementary at 66, D for Blair at 51, B for Porters Neck at 75, C for Castle Hayne at 68, C for Trask at 61, C for Holly Shelter at 61, C for Laney at 62 and C for New Hanover High at 56. Murrayville, Porters Neck, Castle Hayne and Holly Shelter met their growth targets. Blair, Trask, Laney and New Hanover did not. Three zone lines cross this neighborhood, so run the address through the locator before you write an offer.

By road routing calculated October 17, 2026 from the middle of the neighborhood, Mayfaire Town Center is about 4.4 miles and 11 minutes, Wilmington International Airport 5.7 and 14, UNCW 7.7 and 16, Wrightsville Beach 8.4 and 18, Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center 8.9 and 17, and downtown Wilmington 9.3 and 19. All free flow estimates, so treat them as a floor.

Murrayville sits between the county’s two main north-south routes: North College Road, NC 132, down the west side, and Market Street, US 17, past the east. I-40 is five minutes out through the Exit 420 interchanges. Gordon Road at rush hour is the bottleneck, which is why the widening below matters more here than any other road project in the county.

Gordon Road is a construction zone for years. NCDOT’s project page for U-6202, read October 17, 2026, states that construction is underway to widen 2.5 miles of Gordon Road from Interstate 40 to Market Street, the stretch that forms Murrayville’s southern edge and carries most of the neighborhood to I-40. The page puts total cost at $81,100,000. Buy on the south side and you are buying cones for a better road later. Price that in now.

Flooding is mostly not the issue here, which is unusual on this coast. We sampled FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer across the Census boundary on October 17, 2026. About 3.7 percent falls in a special flood hazard area, nearly all Zone AE with some floodway, following the creeks. Another 0.5 percent sits in the 0.2 percent band, and the rest is Zone X, minimal hazard. Pull the determination for the parcel anyway, because the AE strips follow drainage and some subdivisions back onto them.

Insurance is where the coast catches up with you. Murrayville is nine miles inland, but the Department of Insurance settlement table from the January 2025 Rate Bureau agreement puts ZIP 28411 in territory 140, Eastern Coastal, approved for base rate increases of 10.5 percent in 2025 and 10.1 percent in 2026. That is double what territory 160 on the county’s western side took, for a neighborhood that will never see storm surge. Get a real quote and ask for the wind and hail deductible in dollars.

Public water, and you should still ask. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s page for its Richardson Water Treatment Plant names Murrayville among the communities it serves, drawing groundwater from the Castle Hayne and Pee Dee aquifers and treating it by reverse osmosis at up to 7 million gallons a day. That beats the parts of northern New Hanover still on wells. Sewer is a separate question, so confirm both.

The tax bill, and the association question. At the 2026 unincorporated rate of 0.3785 per $100, a house at the ACS median value of $320,700 carries about $1,214 a year and a $369,950 purchase about $1,400. No municipal rate sits on top, because Murrayville is in no town. This is a patchwork of subdivisions platted across two decades, so dues and covenants vary street by street. Ask for both in writing.