We get this question a lot, usually a few weeks into working with someone: "Wait, is Devin helping me too, or is that a different search?" It's a fair thing to wonder. Most people are used to real estate working the way it does on TV, one agent, one client, one deal, start to finish. That's not really how we run things, and once people understand why, it usually clicks pretty fast.

Morgan Beatty Group is Shana Morgan and Travis Beatty, plus Devin Sprinkle, Erin Waller, and Vickie Foster, all working out of RE/MAX Essential here in Wilmington. When you reach out to us, you're not getting one person juggling New Hanover, Brunswick, and Pender Counties solo. You're getting a team that splits that ground up and actually knows it, instead of one agent stretched thin across three counties that don't always move at the same pace.

Why One Agent Covering Three Counties Gets Complicated
New Hanover, Brunswick, and Pender Counties look close together on a map, but they behave like th ...

Every summer around this time, we start hearing a version of the same question from out-of-state families: "Is it too late to close before school starts?" Right now it isn't, but the window is getting narrower by the week. New Hanover County Schools kicks off the 2026-27 year on Monday, August 24, which gives families relocating from out of state roughly four weeks to close, unpack, and get a kid registered somewhere new. It's tight, but it's doable if you know where the real time crunches are.

We work with several relocating families every summer, and the surprises are rarely about the house itself. They're about everything that has to happen around it.

The School Enrollment Piece Trips People Up First

If you're moving into New Hanover, Brunswick, or Pender County, your child's assigned school depends on your home address, not just which town you land in. Two houses ten minutes apart can feed into completely different elementary schools. This means the neighborhood conversa ...

We had a buyer last month fall in love with a house eight minutes from Wrightsville Beach, only to find out during due diligence that her insurance quote was nearly triple what she'd budgeted. Nobody had lied to her. Nobody had hidden anything. She just hadn't known to ask the right questions early enough, because nobody outside coastal NC really explains how insurance works differently here.
If you're house hunting anywhere near New Hanover, Brunswick, or Pender County this summer, this is the conversation we wish every buyer had before they wrote an offer, not after.
It's Not One Policy, It's Three
Homes further inland usually need one homeowners policy and you're done. Coastal NC doesn't work that way. Depending on where a home sits, you may need a standard homeowners policy (which covers most things except wind and flood), a separate wind and hail policy through the NC Beach Plan for eligible coastal counties like New Hanover and Pender, and a flood policy through the Nation ...

 
We get some version of this question almost every week: "Okay, but what actually happens once I decide to buy?" It's a fair question. Most of what people know about home buying comes from HGTV or a friend's story from a different state, and North Carolina does a few things differently than wherever you're moving from. So here's the real, unglamorous version of what it looks like to buy a home in Wilmington with us, from the first phone call to the day you get keys.

It Starts With a Conversation, Not a Showing
Before we ever pull up a listing, we want to know what you're actually trying to solve for. Are you chasing a beach lifestyle, more space for the kids, an easier commute, a retirement spot with a golf cart and a porch? The answer changes everything about where we look. Wilmington isn't one market — downtown, Midtown, Carolina Beach, Wrightsville Beach, Hampstead, and Leland all feel like different towns with different price points and different tradeoffs. If yo ...

Every few weeks someone asks us the same question, usually over coffee or in a DM: "Is it a good time to buy?" It's a fair question, and the honest answer depends on where you're looking and what you're trying to do. So instead of a vague answer, here's the real, current picture — pulled straight from the numbers, not guesswork.

Inventory Has Loosened Up
For a couple of years, Wilmington buyers dealt with painfully thin inventory — see something you liked, and it was gone by the weekend. That's shifted. Cape Fear REALTORS® reported that homes ended January 2026 sitting on the market for an average of 86 days, up over 21% from a year earlier, with 5.4 months of inventory on hand — itself up about 10% year over year. By March, new listings, pending sales, and closed sales had each jumped roughly 30% month-over-month, and active listings climbed to just over 4,100.

In practice, that means buyers have more to choose from and more time to make a decision t ...