07/26/2026
Columbus County Land Hits $10,000 Per Acre.
If you are looking for land in Columbus County here is something you must know and I'll understand thoroughly.
That $10K number is real — and it's reshaping how cheap-parcel hunting works.
Here's the current snapshot for Columbus County:
The headline math.
Land.com is showing a median of $10,000 / acre right now with about 3,326 acres total on the market. Median lot size is 40 acres, median list price around $450,000, and average listings are running about 71 acres at $786,700 —
Homes are sitting about 78 days before moving.
Why the average look so high?
It's not one market, it's four:
• General vacant land: $10,000 / acre baseline
• Farms: $12,067 / acre median - the Whiteville / Chadbourn / Cerro Gordo corridor is driving this, lots of 40-acre blocks
• Recreational tracts: $4,096 / acre — cheaper, bigger (avg 108 acres for ∼$466k), that's your hunting / riverfront stuff around Fair Bluff, Nakina
• Timberland: $5,737 / acre — 300+ acre parcels
• Barndominium / ready-to-build: $28,260 / acre — small 1-2 acre lots with utilities, pulls the average up
Inventory shift this year
What I'm seeing:
1. Less small cheap stuff, more mid-size. The median 40-acre size tells you sub-5 acre lots under $85K are getting scarce — they're either snapping up fast or getting repriced into that $30k-$97k per acre downtown Whiteville range for in-town lots.
2. Total acreage is tight. ∼3,300 acres across the whole 938-square-mile county is not a lot. When a single 300-acre timber tract sells, it swings the total inventory 10%.
3. Price floor has moved. Even recreational land that used to trade at $2,950 / acre on Bill Hooks Rd type parcels is now competing with $4k+ medians.
Anything with road frontage near Chadbourn / Whiteville Hwy is being listed as commercial or future homesite at $12k+ per acre.
If you're hunting sub-$85K, you're basically looking at recreational or off-pavement 5-20 acre cuts, not the 40-acre median parcels — and you have to move faster than that 78-day median suggests, because the cheap ones go in weeks.
Here's what's actually live right now under and around that $85K mark:
Chadbourn area — that's your sweet spot. The clearest comp is 2999 Princess Ann Rd, 5.26 acres with a pond, listed at $89,000 but was at $84,900 recently, so right on your line. It's dual parcel, just outside town, that 5-acre tract format you see a lot of.
Whiteville — more inventory but smaller and more mixed. On Old Lumberton Rd you've got three side by side: 10.2 acres for $95k, 8.88 acres for $85k, and 5.51 acres for $65k, plus a 1.49 acre cleared lot on Whites Crossing Ln for $45k. Those Whiteville lots move quickly because they're cleared and have road frontage, but the price per acre is higher than Chadbourn.
Fair Bluff — almost nothing cheap right now. The only active tract that shows is 92 acres on Orange Street at $225k and it's already pending, which tells you recreational land there is getting bid up even though the county median for recreational is around $4k per acre.
What that shift means for you this year:
Chadbourn is still where you can get 5 plus acres under $90k, Whiteville is where you get 1 to 8 acres with utilities but you pay more per acre, and Fair Bluff you have to wait for something to hit or go bigger.
Get an inside scoop of properties coming on the market and see the parcels and the homes BEFORE everyone else does ..message me!
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