Supply is a crossroads, not a town. It sits in unincorporated Brunswick County where US 17 meets NC 211, ZIP code 28462, with no mayor and no municipal tax line. It does not appear in the Census Bureau’s 2023 Gazetteer list of North Carolina places, which is why there is no official population for Supply itself. The address is a postal convenience covering a lot of ground.

That matters when you read numbers about it. ZIP 28462 also covers Holden Beach and part of Varnamtown. The 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey puts the ZIP at 12,340 people, median household income $60,349, median age 55.4. Of its 11,775 housing units, 4,990 sit vacant for seasonal use, which is to say beach rentals.

One figure deserves a buyer’s full attention: 6,338 of those units are single-unit detached houses and 5,008 are mobile homes. Supply is one of the few places in our three counties where manufactured housing is not a footnote, it is the affordable stock. On October 1, 2026 the active Supply list held 164 single family homes, 118 lots, 41 manufactured homes and 2 townhouses, half of the residential listings new construction.

Across those 206 priced residential listings, asking prices ran from $80,000 to $4,200,000, median list price $316,870. One listing carried a $99,999,999 placeholder and we left it out. The floor is manufactured housing on its own land, a 648 square foot two-bedroom on Sea Wind Court SW. The ceiling is water: the five highest asks, $1,895,000 to $4,200,000, all sat on waterfront streets off the Lockwood Folly. Between them Supply is a $250,000 to $450,000 market.

Two figures temper it. The same survey reports a median home value of $253,000 for ZIP 28462, plus or minus $21,877, owner-reported and averaged over five years. The pace is also slow: median days on market across the Supply actives was 83. Our Brunswick County market update puts the county median sale price at $409,000 for the three months ending August 2026, with 98 days on market against 67 a year earlier. You have room to negotiate, and your comparison is usually a builder incentive against a resale that has not priced against it.

Land trades on its own terms: 118 lots, $13,023 to $2,200,000, median $78,250, and a lot that cheap usually has a soil problem behind the price. Against our Shallotte guide, Supply costs less and gives up the grocery stores. Against Oak Island, Southport or Sunset Beach, you trade the ocean for real money.

Life here runs on the river, golf and two county parks:

• Lockwood Folly Country Club, 19 Clubhouse Drive SW, an 18-hole Willard Byrd course whose own site says it borders the Lockwood Folly River and the Intracoastal Waterway about four miles from Holden Beach, with the Oak and Anchor Grill on site
• Lockwood Folly Park, 430 Green Swamp Road, 20 county acres off US 17 with three ball fields, a soccer field, a playground and two tennis courts
• Cedar Grove Park, 700 Grove Trail SW, behind Cedar Grove Middle School and the county’s newest park
• Holden Beach Seafood, 2224 Holden Beach Road SW, with High Rider Seafood, the Seafood Shack and Garland’s Fresh Seafood Market at 2 Fisherman Road in Varnamtown, all on the NC State Extension seafood market list

The free state ramp at Sunset Harbor, off Lockwood Folly Road, covers the rest. What Supply lacks is a downtown. No main street, no walkable block, no restaurant row; the grocery run is Shallotte, 13 minutes west. People choose Supply because it is quiet, an acre is still affordable, and the beach bridge is a 14-minute drive rather than a mortgage line item.

Supply is served by Brunswick County Schools, and the elementary assignment is split. We ran six Supply addresses through the district’s own Edulog WebQuery lookup on October 1, 2026:

• Supply Elementary School (PK-5) for most of the area, including Van Buren Street SW, Ginters Park Road NW and Seashore Road SW.
• Virginia Williamson Elementary School (PK-5) for the Holden Beach Road and Turkey Trap Road corridor toward the beach.
• Cedar Grove Middle School (6-8) and West Brunswick High School (9-12) for every address we tested.

The performance numbers are not good and we would rather say so. In the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s 2025-26 Low-Performing State Designations, Supply Elementary carries a School Performance Grade of D with a growth status of Not Met, and it is on the continually low-performing list for 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26. The department’s 2025-26 growth file puts overall growth at -3.03 there, -5.44 at Virginia Williamson and -4.83 at West Brunswick High, all Not Met; Cedar Grove Middle met growth at -1.35. Only Supply Elementary is on that list, which by the state’s definition means the other three grade above D. Confirm any assignment with the district.

Supply runs on two roads: US 17 north and south, and NC 211, the Southport-Supply Road. The distances below are approximate, from OpenStreetMap routing on October 1, 2026, and summer beach traffic runs longer. The short trips are the ones you will make: Shallotte about 7 miles and 13 minutes for groceries, the Holden Beach bridge about 9 and 14, Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center in Bolivia, the nearest hospital, about 9 and 13. Then it stretches: Southport about 17 and 25, downtown Wilmington 27 and 38, ILM airport 33 and 51. If you need Wilmington several days a week, our Leland guide is a better starting point and we will say so rather than sell the drive.

No road project finishes that commute. Brunswick County’s NCDOT page lists R-5021, widening 7.2 miles of NC 211 from NC 87 to NC 906, under construction since January 2022 and due in spring 2026. The interchange that would change this crossroads, U-5932 at NC 211 and US 17, is committed without full funding and has no timeframe.

Flooding here is a waterfront question, not a Supply question. We queried the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer at six points on October 1, 2026. The crossroads, Stone Chimney Road, the Holden Beach Road corridor and the Lockwood Folly east bank all returned Zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard. The two Intracoastal Waterway points, by the country club and at Hewett Landing, returned Zone AE with a base flood elevation of 11 feet. Inland Supply is largely out of the Special Flood Hazard Area; the water’s edge is in it. Pull the determination on the parcel, because the line moves street by street.

Insurance costs less here than at the beach. ZIP 28462 sits in Territory 140, the eastern coastal band, per the North Carolina Rate Bureau’s revised homeowners territory definitions. In the Insurance Commissioner’s January 2025 settlement the Bureau asked 71.4% there; the approved result was 10.5% on June 1, 2025 and 10.1% on June 1, 2026. Beach Territory 120, which covers Holden Beach and Oak Island, took 16% and 15.9% after a 99.4% request. Dwelling policies on rentals and second homes move separately, 5% on October 1, 2026 and 5% a year later.

Your tax bill has one line, plus a fire fee. Brunswick County bills 0.342 per $100 for tax year 2026 and there is no municipal rate, so on the ACS median value of $253,000 that is roughly $865 a year. The county levies no fire district tax; under 2017 special legislation it bills a separate fire fee, which does not appear on the rates table. The next countywide revaluation takes effect in 2027.

Water and sewer are the hard part. Brunswick County’s own Rural Sewer Program guidelines, revised July 2024, say a sewer collection system “is not available in many areas of the county.” Septic is the norm outside the subdivisions, and county Environmental Health requires a well permit application alongside the septic application on any property without public water. The county also stepped from a Stage 2 mandatory to a Stage 1 voluntary conservation alert on August 31, 2026, and on October 1, 2026 that alert, extreme drought and a burn ban were all still posted. Its Northwest Water Treatment Plant is finishing an expansion from 24 to 48 million gallons a day plus reverse osmosis for PFAS.

Financing and rentals both turn on the county. With 41 of the 325 active Supply listings manufactured, lenders and appraisers treat part of this market differently, and whether the land conveys is the first question to ask. On rentals, Supply is unincorporated, so there is no town ordinance the way Holden Beach and Oak Island have one; the county’s Unified Development Ordinance use table lists bed and breakfast but no separate short-term rental use, and the county levies a 1% room occupancy tax on stays under 15 days. That is no permission slip, so confirm with Brunswick County Planning, and an association can prohibit what the county allows. Census estimates put Brunswick at 136,689 in April 2020 and 167,112 by July 2024.