A developer plans to build 3,600 homes, including a mix of detached single-family houses, townhouses and apartments, just south of North Carolina’s fastest-growing city.
Contender Development bought the roughly 1,500-acre Midway Landing property, a half-hour drive south of Wilmington, in January for $35 million. The U.S. Census Bureau ranked the city the eighth-fastest growing metropolitan area from 2020, when the pandemic led many people to decamp to less populated parts of the country, to 2024. The metro area had 481,000 residents as of last July.
Aside from its proximity to the city, Contender’s project near the town of Bolivia in Brunswick County is also a mere 6 miles from Oak Island, a beach town on the Atlantic Ocean.
“Midway Landing is expected to include resort-style amenities and infrastructure improvements that benefit the surrounding coastal region,” according to a statement by Broadstreet Inc., a private equity firm that said this week it will invest in the project. Both Broadstreet and Contender are based in Greenville, South Carolina.
The residential construction company Ryan Homes will be a partner in Midway Landing’s development. Contender, which said in a statement that it controls some 30,000 house lots in the Southeast, has also collaborated with other large builders such as Lennar and D.R. Horton.
Ford Elliott, Contender’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that Midway Landing represents the company’s commitment to “vibrant, sustainable communities.”
United Van Lines, a moving company that tracks migration patterns, found in its 2024 report that Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, two hours to the south on the Atlantic coast, ranked high among U.S. cities for people seeking affordability without sacrificing quality of life.
Wilmington outranked two other rapidly growing North Carolina cities, Raleigh and Charlotte, in recent U.S. Census data. Wilmington’s population grew 13% from 2020 to 2024, while Raleigh, the state capital, grew 10% and Charlotte, 8%.
The first home sites in Midway Landing will be available for purchase in 2026, Contender said.