Wanchese, North Carolina.
Typical home $363,815 (+0.1% in a year). Kill Devil Hills, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,096 (+135%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $261 +0%
- $363,554$363,815 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $76,671 +27%
- $287,144$363,815 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Wanchese$1,910
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Wanchese, NC rose 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Wanchese, Dare County, North Carolina
Wanchese, in Dare County, had 1,522 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Dare County was 2.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in shops, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Wanchese is a small community at the southern end of Roanoke Island, on the Outer Banks. Its residents are younger than in much of the country, and fewer people live below the poverty line than you might expect. Winters are mild and almost snowless, summers are warm, and the year brings a fair amount of rain.
Work. Most residents work in shops, in schools, hospitals and social care, or in the building trades, and some work in farming, forestry and mining. Across Dare County, the largest workplaces include Dare County Schools, THE Outer Banks Hospital and Walmart. Unemployment in the county is lower than a year ago, and the county has added jobs. Few people in town work from home.
Things to do. Roanoke Island Festival Park and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, both protected historic areas, are a short drive away. Jockey's Ridge State Park, a protected area known for its great sand dune, and Coquina Beach, for a day by the water, are also a short drive off. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area for watching wildlife.
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- 726households
- 29%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 3%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Dare County had 20,728 jobs in 2025, 1.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 51° and lows near 36°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 73°. About 1 inches of snow and 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Manteo Airport weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Dare County
- Dare CountyGeneral public administration870
- Dare County SchoolsSchool district786FTE
- THE Outer Banks HospitalCritical access hospital324FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters231
- TargetDiscount department stores167
- Lowe's Companies, INCHomecenter126
- Publix Super MarketsSupermarkets and other grocery stores110
- Spring Arbor ManagementAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities95
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 32 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,437 people in all across the county; Wanchese has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- LightningVery high
- HurricanesVery high
- Coastal floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Wanchese’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Dare County and the Kill Devil Hills, NC metro.
Wanchese home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Wanchese$363,815
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Wanchese address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Wanchese — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.