Holly Ridge Just Voted to Double Its Population. Its Home Prices Haven't Moved.

In August 2026, the median home price in Holly Ridge sat around $384,900, with the typical house spending 81 days on the market, six percent faster than the year before. Price per square foot actually dipped slightly month over month. Nothing about those numbers suggests a market bracing for change.

Seven months earlier, the town council voted 3-2 to annex roughly 1,226 acres of the old Camp Davis tract and clear the way for a development that could add up to 2,750 homes and 64 acres of commercial space. Town officials project Holly Ridge will grow from 6,000 residents across 14 square miles today to 14,000 residents across 30 square miles by 2033. That is not incremental growth. That is a town voting to more than double itself.

Those two facts should not sit comfortably next to each other. A market anticipating that much new supply usually shows it, either in a price slowdown as buyers wait for cheaper new construction, or in a spike as speculators move early. Holly Ridge is showing neither. The reason isn't that buyers haven't noticed. It's that the town engineered the growth specifically so prices wouldn't have to react.

The Vote That Set This in Motion

The measure is called Project Ajax, and the February 19, 2026 hearing that approved it drew an overflow crowd of roughly 200 residents to the Holly Ridge Community Center. Council members Brandon Longo and Joshua Patti voted against it. A petition opposing the annexation, posted on Change.org, drew hundreds of signatures. One resident's warning about building on a former military site became the line most local coverage led with: a blunt prediction that future health problems would be "on all of your hands."

Despite the opposition, the council approved four separate measures that night: the annexation itself, a reclassification to Planned Unit Development, a master concept plan, and a development agreement granting Holly Ridge Development Group LLC a 30-year vested rights period. The project spans the Onslow-Pender county line along the U.S. Highway 17 corridor, split roughly 1,295 acres and 1,950 units in Onslow County and 205 acres and 800 units in Pender County.

The Numbers That Explain the Calm

Here is the scale shift Holly Ridge voted for, next to what its housing market actually did over the same stretch.

A town planning to more than double its footprint while its housing market posts a 6% faster turnover than the year before is not a coincidence. It's a policy outcome. The council didn't wait for scarcity to push prices up and then react. It moved first.

Why the Town Chose This Path

The clearest explanation for that sequencing shows up in the developer's own economic impact presentation to the town in February 2026. An earlier version of the plan modeled 1,600 housing units at $275,000 each, producing a $440 million tax base before a single resident moves in. That math is the entire logic of annexing land before it's built out: municipal and county tax revenue starts flowing on the raw land value immediately, long before homes are occupied or schools feel the strain.

Mayor Pete Parnian has been consistent about the other half of the reasoning. The development, he told WNCT in January 2026, is meant to deliver workforce housing, homes priced for households earning between 60% and 120% of the area's median income, tied directly to the neighboring Camp Davis Industrial Park. That 700-acre logistics and manufacturing hub, whose tenants include Onslow Bay Boatworks and Gulfstream Steel & Supply, is already in its third construction phase, adding 417 buildable acres. The town isn't building housing speculatively. It's building housing to keep pace with an employer base it's simultaneously recruiting.

"Part of the growth is natural, part of the growth is because of the migration from different places in the country to here and again because we're building an industrial park," Parnian said at a June 2026 town hall.

That framing matters for anyone reading Holly Ridge's price chart. The town isn't hoping demand shows up and prices climb. It's building supply on a schedule tied to jobs it already has commitments for, which is precisely why the price data hasn't spiked. Supply and demand are arriving on the same timeline, by design.

What This Means If You're Comparing Holly Ridge Right Now

For a buyer cross-shopping Holly Ridge against Surf City, Hampstead, or Sneads Ferry, three things follow from all this.

First, the timeline is longer than the headlines suggest. Local reporting on the earliest Project Ajax move-ins settles on late 2027 or early 2028, though town officials have also said it could take two to three years from the February 2026 approval, which would push some phases into 2029. If you're buying today expecting immediate competition from the new supply, you're early. If you're buying today expecting to beat that supply to market, you have a real window.

Second, the workforce-housing price band tells you where new construction will land. At 60% to 120% of area median income, new Project Ajax units are being planned for a price point in line with what Holly Ridge already sells at, not a luxury tier that would pull the median up, and not a discount tier that would pull it down. That's a strong signal the town's own median won't move much even after delivery starts.

Third, existing gated and amenity-rich communities that sit apart from the Highway 17 corridor, places like Summerhouse on Everett Bay on the Intracoastal Waterway, aren't competing directly with workforce housing built to serve an industrial park. If Project Ajax absorbs most of the new middle-market supply, established waterfront neighborhoods could hold relative scarcity value simply because they're not the product the town is trying to mass-produce.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign

The public debate around Project Ajax has surfaced a few due-diligence items worth raising with any agent, regardless of which side of town you're considering:

• Ask about the town's infrastructure investment timeline. The Onslow Water and Sewer Authority confirmed a joint venture with Holly Ridge to fund a 750,000-gallon or larger elevated water storage tank and to upsize the water main between Dixon and Old Folkstone Road, both tied directly to accommodating the new development.
• Ask about school capacity. The development agreement dedicates land for a possible future school given existing overcrowding, and Onslow County Schools is already building a new Southern Elementary, though its location hadn't been finalized as of the most recent reporting.
• Ask about the environmental review status if you're looking at anything near the former Camp Davis footprint. Federal testing found PFAS compounds in shallow groundwater above the EPA's 70 parts-per-trillion screening threshold at a site the Navy has designated for further study, and that remedial investigation is ongoing. Under North Carolina law, sellers disclose known material facts about a property, though documented contamination outside a specific parcel's boundary may not trigger additional disclosure requirements. It's a fair question either way.

None of this is a reason to avoid Holly Ridge. It's the actual texture of buying into a town that's making an active, public bet on its own growth rather than drifting into it.

A Few Questions Buyers Keep Asking

Will Project Ajax raise my property taxes? The town's own economic modeling treats new tax revenue from the annexed land as a net gain for Holly Ridge's budget rather than a cost passed to existing homeowners, since the land itself enters the tax base before construction is complete. Confirm current rates with the Onslow or Pender County tax office directly, since neither county has published a rate change tied specifically to this project.

Is now a good time to buy in Holly Ridge, or should I wait for Project Ajax homes? That depends on what you're buying. If you want an established, amenity-built neighborhood like Summerhouse on Everett Bay, waiting doesn't help since that product isn't what Project Ajax is building. If you're comparison shopping strictly on price, the earliest new units aren't expected before late 2027, so waiting means waiting at least a year, possibly longer.

Does the industrial park change what kind of buyer Holly Ridge attracts? It's already shaping the plan. The workforce housing income band, 60% to 120% of area median income, is designed around the wages the Camp Davis Industrial Park's tenants are expected to pay, which points toward a market built for working households rather than second-home or luxury buyers, at least in the new-construction phases.

Holly Ridge's price chart looks quiet because the town made sure it would. That's a different story than a market with nothing happening, and it's worth understanding before you decide which side of that growth curve you want to be on.

If you're weighing Holly Ridge against the rest of the Topsail corridor, or want a read on how a specific neighborhood fits into what's coming, Coastal Living with Ariana Blevins can walk you through it. Schedule a free consultation and get a straight answer before you write an offer.