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I'm 25 and sick of living in WA state. I need to find out if i'm able to start planting my roots down in Wilmington. I got out of a long relationship which landed me living with my mother.(sad) It's become to hard to live here so we discussed moving back to NC. As a teenager I lived in Apex, Angier area, and Benson, NC. We had a chance to move to wilmington but went to Albuquerque, NM instead. Now i'm in WA state and I now know why they have a high rate of suicides and pedophiles. We were thinking about moving to wilmington in the spring but, due to our apts. guidlines on breaking our lease and the hospital sueing my mother multiple times, we now have to wait until Dec. or sometime next year. What i would love to know is if moving there is a good choice? Is it a good place to start fresh? How is the job market?(big & small jobs) And what is the min. wage? so i can find out if i could afford a place and pay what we would owe to the other apt. at the same time if we decide to break lease.(it would cost us about 5,000+ depending when we would be able to move) I'ved lived in a lot of cities, large and VERY small, so I expect wilm. to be that "perfect" middle ground that i hope for. Even tho i really don't expect it to be perfect. I hope someone can help with updated info cuz i could really use it. Thanks
i also to would like some info on wilmington mainly the 27 South 29th St, Wilmington NC, 28403 area. i found a nice looking home there but i dont know anything about that area.
Job market is pretty poor right now. Min wage is federally set so.. what $7-8 (something like that????).
Unless you are highly educated and qualified, most jobs seem to be in the service industry (it is a beach/college town, after all)
Its a great area, but can be tough to find work, especially coming in with nothing and probably needing to find work quick.
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Originally Posted by unomomentoporfavor
I'm 25 and sick of living in WA state. I need to find out if i'm able to start planting my roots down in Wilmington. I got out of a long relationship which landed me living with my mother.(sad) It's become to hard to live here so we discussed moving back to NC. As a teenager I lived in Apex, Angier area, and Benson, NC. We had a chance to move to wilmington but went to Albuquerque, NM instead. Now i'm in WA state and I now know why they have a high rate of suicides and pedophiles. We were thinking about moving to wilmington in the spring but, due to our apts. guidlines on breaking our lease and the hospital sueing my mother multiple times, we now have to wait until Dec. or sometime next year. What i would love to know is if moving there is a good choice? Is it a good place to start fresh? How is the job market?(big & small jobs) And what is the min. wage? so i can find out if i could afford a place and pay what we would owe to the other apt. at the same time if we decide to break lease.(it would cost us about 5,000+ depending when we would be able to move) I'ved lived in a lot of cities, large and VERY small, so I expect wilm. to be that "perfect" middle ground that i hope for. Even tho i really don't expect it to be perfect. I hope someone can help with updated info cuz i could really use it. Thanks
I'm sorry I have no advice, as I will be moving to NC in a few months, and have never been there except driving through. I just wanted to say I hope everything works out for you. We actually would love to relocate to WA state in a few years, as that's always a state I've wanted to live. Anyways I hope you get there soon, and good luck!
What i would love to know is if moving there is a good choice? Is it a good place to start fresh? How is the job market?(big & small jobs) And what is the min. wage? so i can find out if i could afford a place and pay what we would owe to the other apt. at the same time if we decide to break lease.
Wilmington is not a place that is friendly to your wallet; there's a reason that most of the population in NC or SC lives inland. Most of us here are paying much more to live near the ocean, and the same can be said for Myrtle Beach or Charleston.
So no, an expensive resort town is not a place I'd recommend for a person to "get on their feet" financially.
Wilmington is not a place that is friendly to your wallet; there's a reason that most of the population in NC or SC lives inland. Most of us here are paying much more to live near the ocean, and the same can be said for Myrtle Beach or Charleston.
So no, an expensive resort town is not a place I'd recommend for a person to "get on their feet" financially.
Curious for more info on that. What do you find more expensive?
With Wilmington in the mix for possible relocations, I didn't find the costs to be higher on a number of key things but do know that insurance for houses etc is higher. (I actually have "lived" there off and on for about a 1.5 year period so some feel for area). Getting information as to how the higher insurance issue plays out from realtors is like pulling eye teeth (though I really don't know how hard it is to pull eye teeth ).
I realize that each house may differ/flood zone issues etc/but I figure that the wind/hurricane type insurance could be defined. One agent sent me some figures on property tax for New Hanover county as well as the city but the sheet was based on 2007.............since sales tax has increased in NC during that time period, I wasn't really sure just how accurate the rest of the info was.
Housing itself seems to be in a free fall in Wilmington area. Every day i see properties that are significantly lower than their 2005 prices and there is a drop in virtually every part of the area.
So further defining of what you find higher in Wilmington compared to say Charlotte/the Triangle/other parts of NC would be helpful.
Last edited by mzfroggez; 01-24-2011 at 06:40 AM..
Reason: missing parenthesis
Curious for more info on that. What do you find more expensive?
real estate, mainly.
insurance costs are higher here for obvious reasons, and are rather opaque, as you pointed out.
also, though, local governments on the coast incur higher costs to maintain coastal infrastructure. High salinity corrodes water and sewer lines much faster. County money is often needed to dredge waterways, to renourish beaches, and to connect islands together with infrastructure -- costs that most cities don't have to incur. Stormwater fees are high so people can pave, live on, or drive upon drained swampland.
and depending on where exactly you live, you may pay tourist prices for consumables like milk, vegetables, meat, and gasoline (like i do).
to understand how this is challenging for the average person in wilmington, you must contrast these costs against local wages, not the wages you're used to, and not what you might have earned in another city.
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Housing itself seems to be in a free fall in Wilmington area. Every day i see properties that are significantly lower than their 2005 prices and there is a drop in virtually every part of the area.
yes, but it really does depend on so many factors. the price dynamics of a 6 bedroom oceanfront house are drastically different from your upper-middle class homes, or your ranch houses, or your bottom-end stuff. I suppose that's true of everywhere, but I think that wilmington's market is more extreme than others in Nc. IMO our market has more in common with Florida than it does with Charlotte.
looking at household income distribution in wilmington. i posted this data a while back, i don't recall the source:
2% of households earn over $250k/year.
12% of households earn between $100k and $250k.
31% of households earn between $50-$100k.
26% of households earn between $25k - $50k/year.
29% of households earn less than $25k/year.
(2.2 people per household in Wilmington)
So looking at how many high-income people we have (or don't have, rather), and doing some crude math, you can conclude that all these $400k+ houses were not put to market with the local wage-earner in mind. There is a clear expectation that someone from DC or NYC will always show up with a half million dollars in hand and a hankering to live in small town North Carolina.
Many dwellings under $300k are relatively expensive (Compared to similarly-waged places), due to the "crowding" effect -- steep demand for something, anything, that is affordable to the common person.
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So further defining of what you find higher in Wilmington compared to say Charlotte/the Triangle/other parts of NC would be helpful.
It makes little sense to compare costs of Charlotte or the Triangle, without also adjusting for A) Wages and B) Job availability.
I could probably earn 20% more in those cities, doing the same work. Not only that, but I could pick and choose between many more positions, some of which offer upward promotion. None of that exists here, for me. This is just one example of course.
When you ask for advice, you take what people give...if you only wanted sunshine and rainbows, you should have specified it.
To answer your question literally--nobody can tell you whether you "should" move somewhere or if it is the "right" choice, because we aren't you. People can mention positives and negatives (though apparently you are only interested in hearing the positives), but only YOU can decide whether the place (any place) is for you.
If you want to read something that's nothing but glowing and positive, go to the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce site--I'm sure that will sugar-coat everything and make it sound like nirvana. But people giving you "disappointing" advice are just trying to be realistic. Would you rather get an overly-inflated impression of somewhere that is unrealistic?
Personally, I would absolutely recommend coming to look for yourself before even thinking about moving anywhere. I wouldn't even put someone on my "radar" until I'd seen it for myself.
As far as jobs, NC's unemployment is quite high and (as you can verify by searching this forum) a lot of folkssay most of what's available in WILM is service-industry stuff at very low pay and probably part-time.
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What do you find more expensive? 
(though I really don't know how hard it is to pull eye teeth 
). 
