Wallace is a small railroad town at the top of our service area, about 42 miles and 52 minutes from downtown Wilmington up US 117 and I-40. The 2020 Census counted 3,413 people in 1,597 housing units across 3.1 square miles. The town’s history page tells the rest: incorporated in 1873 as Duplin Roads, renamed in 1899 for Stephen D. Wallace of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, and once the world’s largest strawberry exchange.

One thing to get straight before you look at a listing. Most of Wallace is in Duplin County, but the town line crosses into Pender, and the Department of Revenue lists the town twice for that reason. Which side a house sits on changes the tax rate and the reappraisal cycle. We check it on the parcel.

The housing stock is older and modest. The 2020-2024 American Community Survey puts the median year built at 1977 and owner occupancy at 976 of 1,697 occupied units, about 58 percent, which is a lot of rental for a town this size. Then there is River Landing, the gated golf community the Murphy family built on the Northeast Cape Fear River, carrying Wallace addresses and prices nothing like the rest of town. We keep a separate River Landing guide because the two markets barely touch.

On October 20, 2026 Coldwell Banker’s Wallace city page held 24 records, all Wallace NC 28466 addresses, 19 active and 5 pending. Strip out the one vacant lot at $50,000 on Washington Circle and you have 18 active houses asking $60,000 to $405,000, median $289,450, median 1,901 square feet, about $163 a square foot. Page two came back empty, so treat 19 as a floor, not a full MLS count. No River Landing address appeared.

The spread inside those 18 houses is the real story. Four are new construction, on Eastwood Drive, Calloway Drive and West Westbrook Street, running $265,000 to $363,550. At the other end a 514 square foot house on East Murphy Street asks $94,700 and one of 630 square feet on Devane Street $60,000. Those are not typos. They are small, old houses in a town whose ACS median owner-occupied value is $178,000, under the $193,300 for the wider 28466 ZIP and far under Pender County’s $299,000.

Pace is uneven. Median days on market across the active houses is 40, faster than anything our Pender County market update reports for the coast, but the tail is long, with a Forest Lane listing out 443 days. Against Burgaw, 15 miles south and the nearest town we cover, Wallace is cheaper and further from Wilmington. Against Hampstead or Surf City it is not the same market.

What there is here is specific, and most of it sits a few minutes apart:

• River Landing, 110 River Village Place, a gated community with two Clyde Johnston 18-hole courses, a clubhouse, pool and fitness center. Golf and dining are for members
• Mad Boar Restaurant & Pub, 111 River Village Place, American menu, live music and event space, the restaurant people drive in for
• Carolina Strawberry Festival, brought back in 2011 after a fifty-year gap, with a pageant, a 5K and a garden gala, next on April 30 and May 1, 2027
• Thelma Dingus Bryant Library, part of the Duplin County system, over 37,000 items, open Monday to Friday 9 to 5
• Wallace-Pender Airport (FAA identifier ACZ), a mile southwest of town, with a 4,153 by 75 foot runway, self-service fuel and hangars

The town also runs youth football, soccer, basketball and volleyball leagues from Municipal Drive. The rest we say plainly. No hospital in town, the county hospital is 19 miles north. No mall, no multiplex, no beach inside an hour.

Wallace is served by Duplin County Schools. We ran nine addresses through the district’s own Edulog assignment lookup on October 20, 2026, from Devane Street in the old town to River Club Lane and River Vine Parkway inside River Landing. Every one returned the same two schools:

• Wallace Elementary School, 4266 NC 11 South, state code 388. It runs PK through 8, which surprises buyers expecting a separate middle school. Average daily membership 1,120 in 2024-25
• Wallace-Rose Hill High School, 602 High School Road in Teachey, state code 392, grades 9 to 12, membership 713

The performance numbers are poor and we would rather you hear it from us. In the Department of Public Instruction’s 2024-25 School Report Card data, Wallace Elementary scored 37 for a School Performance Grade of F and did not meet growth at 67.0. Wallace-Rose Hill High scored 50 for a D and did not meet growth at 62.4. Both are designated low-performing and recurring low-performing for 2024-25, and both are Title I. Across the district 7 of 13 schools are designated and Duplin County Schools is itself a designated low-performing district. If schools decide it for your family, this is the part of the Wallace case that does not hold up.

Wallace runs on US 117 through the middle of town with I-40 just east, and that interstate access is the best argument for living here. The distances below are approximate, from OpenStreetMap routing on October 20, 2026 in free-flowing traffic. Downtown Wilmington is about 42 miles and 52 minutes, ILM about 37 and 51, Wrightsville Beach about 42 and 52, Carolina Beach about 52 and 68, Surf City about 50 and 71. The other way, Rose Hill is 7.5 miles and 13 minutes, Burgaw 15 and 21, Kenansville and the county hospital 19 and 28, Jacksonville 39 and 58.

Read those numbers honestly. Close to an hour each way to a Wilmington job is a real commute, and there is no transit alternative. What it buys is reach: Raleigh, Fayetteville, Jacksonville and Wilmington from one interchange.

The flood picture is better than people expect, with a clear exception. We queried the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer at the coordinates of all 24 listings on October 20, 2026. Every one came back Zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard. A wider query over the town and its edges returned 305 flood zone polygons, 105 of them Zone AE including 18 mapped as floodway, and those follow the Northeast Cape Fear River and the creeks rather than the built-up grid. Pender’s flood maps here were largely revised effective January 17, 2025 and 13 Duplin panels carry the same date, so an older determination may be stale. Pull a current one, and price flood insurance near the river whatever the zone says.

Two counties, two tax bills, two reappraisal clocks. Duplin County charges 0.58 per $100 of value for fiscal 2026-27, down from 0.735 before its 2025 revaluation, with the next reappraisal in 2030. The Town of Wallace adds 0.53, so the combined rate on the Duplin side is 1.11. On the Pender side the county charges 0.7375 and the combined rate is 1.2675, and Pender’s last reappraisal was 2019 with the next due in 2027. The 2025 Duplin revaluation, its first since 2017, moved a lot of assessed values. Ask what last year’s bill actually was rather than trusting a rate.

Water and sewer depend on the town line too. Wallace runs its own water distribution, wastewater treatment and stormwater system, so inside the limits you are on town utilities. Outside them wells and septic are normal, which means a well test, a septic inspection and the permit file before due diligence ends.

Insurance should cost less here than on the coast, but still quote it. Wallace is more than forty miles inland and every listing we sampled sits outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, a different risk profile from the barrier islands. That does not make the quote automatic. Read the wind and hail deductible, often a percentage of the dwelling amount rather than a flat figure. Our guide to coastal homeowners insurance walks through it.

The economy is agriculture and protein processing, and it is concentrated. Duplin County’s list of its 25 largest employers, drawn from NC Commerce data, is led by Butterball, Smithfield Foods, Duplin County Schools and House of Raeford, each 1,000 or more, then Murphy Family Ventures and the county at 500 to 999 and Lear Corporation at 250 to 499. That base is stable and narrow, and it means hog and poultry operations are part of the landscape and sometimes part of the air. Drive the area at different times of day before you commit.

Growth here is deliberate rather than inevitable. The town is working a strategic plan built with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, aimed at downtown and small business. Nothing here moves at the pace of the coastal counties, and for most buyers we bring here that is the point.