Most Expensive Places To Live In North Carolina For 2020

The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In North Carolina For 2020

1. Boone

The median income in Boone comes in at $19,574 and the median home value is $260,700 for 2020.

2. Kill Devil Hills

Kill Devil Hills is a town in Dare County, North Carolina. The population was 6,683 at the 2010 census, up from 5,897 in 2000. It is the most populous settlement in both Dare County and on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Kill Devil Hills Micropolitan Statistical Area is part of the larger Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC Combined Statistical Area.

The median income in Kill Devil Hills comes in at $53,000 and the median home value is $237,100 for 2020.

3. Asheville

Asheville is a city and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 12th-most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The city's population was 89,121 according to the 2016 estimates. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, with a population of 424,858 in 2010. Asheville is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center, the world's largest active archive of weather data.

The median income in Asheville comes in at $47,803 and the median home value is $242,500 for 2020.

4. Wilmington

Wilmington is a port city and the county seat of New Hanover County in coastal southeastern North Carolina, United States. The population is 112,067; according to the 2010 Census it is the eighth most populous city in the state. Wilmington is the principal city of the Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area, a metropolitan area that includes New Hanover and Pender counties in southeastern North Carolina, which has a population of 263,429 as of the 2012 Census Estimate.

The median income in Wilmington comes in at $45,450 and the median home value is $237,700 for 2020.

5. Woodfin

Woodfin is a town in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 6,123 as of the 2010 census. It is part of the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for Nicholas Washington Woodfin, a renowned lawyer and statesman of early North Carolina, under whom Governor Zebulon Vance clerked as an attorney. Woodfin is the only municipality bearing the name Woodfin in the United States. The town was incorporated in 1971, although the community itself dates back to at least the mid-19th century.

The median income in Woodfin comes in at $46,992 and the median home value is $202,500 for 2020.

6. Pineville

Pineville is a suburban town in the southernmost portion of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina situated in the Waxhaws district between Charlotte, North Carolina and Fort Mill, South Carolina.

The median income in Pineville comes in at $48,324 and the median home value is $208,300 for 2020.

7. Elon

The median income in Elon comes in at $59,962 and the median home value is $246,900 for 2020.

8. Carrboro

Carrboro is a town in Orange County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 19,582 at the 2010 census. The town, which is part of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill combined statistical area, was named after North Carolina industrialist Julian Shakespeare Carr.

The median income in Carrboro comes in at $59,202 and the median home value is $350,800 for 2020.

9. Hendersonville

The median income in Hendersonville comes in at $38,412 and the median home value is $175,000 for 2020.

Morehead City is a port town in Carteret County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 8,661 at the 2010 census. Morehead City celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding on May 5, 2007. It forms part of the Crystal Coast.

The median income in Morehead City comes in at $43,847 and the median home value is $223,400 for 2020.

How We Determined The Most Expensive Places To Live In The Tar Heel State For 2020

The two most important things to think about when it comes to being able to afford if you can live comes down to:

1. How much do money do I make?
2. How much do I have spend to live there?

You need to understand your costs in the context of how much money you make.

For example, if the median household earns $100,000 and spends $40,000 on housing it's actually cheaper to live there than a place with a median income of $50,000 and housing costs of $21,000. You might spend more on housing, but you have more money overall to play with.

With that example in mind, we derived several statistics from the latest Census American Community Survey 2014-2018 around incomes and costs. They are:

• Median Home Price / Median Income (lower is better)
• Median Income / Median Rent (Higher is better)
• Median Home Price

We added simply median home price because high home prices generally correlate with higher expenses for all costs related to homes (heating, electricity, etc).

You can then compare these metrics in each of the places in North Carolina to figure out which is the most expensive.

What you are left with is a "Cost of Living Index" by taking the average rank of each of these metrics for each city.

So we used that cost of living index in order to rank all of the 132 places in North Carolina that have more than 5,000 people.

The place with the highest cost of living in North Carolina according to the data is Boone. You can download the data here.