Property Taxes at Ocean Isle Beach: Two Bills, Both Recently Reset
Ocean Isle Beach property owners pay two separate tax bills -- one to the Town, one to Brunswick County -- and both have been reset in the last few years: the Town raised its own rate 18% in a single vote to close a budget gap, and the County reset its entire rate structure after a 2023 revaluation that pushed values up roughly 75%. This page walks through what actually happened, what the current rates are, and what a buyer should confirm before assuming a number.
Two Bills, One Parcel
Every property at Ocean Isle Beach is taxed by two separate governments: the Town of Ocean Isle Beach itself (a municipal rate funding town services -- police, beach maintenance, erosion management, and town administration) and Brunswick County (a countywide rate funding schools, county services, and county-level infrastructure). Neither bill substitutes for the other -- an owner pays both, calculated against the same assessed value, typically combined into a single bill for convenience even though the two rates are set independently by two different elected bodies: the Town's Board of Commissioners and the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners.
This two-tier structure isn't unusual for an incorporated NC beach town inside a larger county, but the magnitude and timing of recent changes to both rates is worth understanding in detail before assuming a number found on a real estate listing site is current.
The Town's Rate: An 18% Increase, Then Held Flat
The Ocean Isle Beach Board of Commissioners raised the town's municipal property tax rate from 11 cents to 13 cents per $100 of assessed value for fiscal year 2024-25 -- an increase of roughly 18%. The motion passed on a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Mike Wade opposing, and was specifically framed around closing an operating budget gap; the two-cent increase was projected to bring in an estimated $739,457 in additional annual revenue, according to Brunswick Beacon (newsargus.com) reporting on the May 2024 budget workshop and subsequent vote. Unlike New Hanover County's Wrightsville Beach, where a 2025 revaluation triggered a large rate cut alongside higher assessed values, Ocean Isle Beach's rate increase was a straightforward response to rising operating costs on the town's existing tax base.
The adopted FY2025-26 budget held the town's rate flat at 13 cents per $100 -- no further increase was reported for the current fiscal year in the sources reviewed for this page. Whether the town is considering another increase for FY2026-27 was not independently confirmed this research pass; check current Board of Commissioners budget workshop materials, typically discussed each spring, for the most current status.
Brunswick County's Rate: Reset by a 2023 Revaluation
Brunswick County's own property tax rate for fiscal year 2025 (July 2025 through June 2026) is 34.20 cents per $100 of assessed value. That figure has held steady since the county's most recent countywide revaluation took effect January 1, 2023 -- a revaluation that raised countywide residential property values by roughly 75%, according to county reporting, which allowed the Board of Commissioners to drop the rate substantially from the 48.5 cents per $100 that had been in effect since 2016. The county's next scheduled revaluation takes effect January 1, 2027, meaning the current rate and value schedule remain in effect for the balance of the current cycle.
This mirrors a pattern seen elsewhere on the NC coast: a revaluation pushes assessed values up sharply, and the taxing body responds with a lower nominal rate calibrated to produce comparable or modestly higher total revenue -- meaning the rate drop itself does not necessarily mean an individual owner's actual dollar bill went down, since it depends on how much that specific parcel's value changed relative to the countywide average.
The Combined Rate -- and What It Doesn't Include
Adding the confirmed town rate (13 cents) to the confirmed county rate (34.20 cents) gives an approximate combined rate of roughly 47.20 cents per $100 of assessed value for the current fiscal year. This page states that as arithmetic on two separately confirmed, separately sourced numbers -- not a single officially published 'combined rate' figure -- and it does not include any additional levies that could apply to a specific parcel, such as a fire service district assessment, none of which were independently confirmed to apply (or not apply) to Ocean Isle Beach parcels specifically in this research pass.
For a concrete illustration of what that means in dollars: a property valued at Zillow's roughly $577,000 typical-value figure would owe approximately $2,724 in combined town-plus-county property tax at a 47.20-cent combined rate, calculated as $577,000 divided by 100 times $0.4720. A property valued nearer Redfin's $720,000 median sale price would owe approximately $3,398 on the same math. Both figures are this page's own illustrative arithmetic on two confirmed rates, offered only to show the scale of the combined bill -- not a substitute for an actual tax bill, which depends on the property's own current assessed value (not necessarily its sale price or a modeled estimate) and any additional levies. Get the actual current assessed value and tax bill for any specific parcel from the Brunswick County Tax Office before relying on this estimate.
Assessed Value vs. Market Value
It's worth being explicit about a distinction that matters more here than in a market with stable, slow-moving prices: a property's assessed value (the figure Brunswick County actually taxes against, set at the January 1, 2023 revaluation and unchanged until the next one in January 2027) is not the same as its current market value or sale price. Given how sharply Ocean Isle Beach's own market-price trackers disagree with each other -- Redfin and Zillow alone differed by well over $100,000 on this page's real-cost page -- and given that the county's assessed value was set at a single point in time nearly three years before this research was conducted, a buyer should not assume the assessed value on a current listing reflects either the sale price or the property's value under the next revaluation cycle.
This page does not state a property tax proration formula for a mid-year closing, nor does it state whether North Carolina's statewide homestead exemption, elderly/disabled exclusion, or circuit-breaker property tax relief programs currently apply, or at what income threshold, for an Ocean Isle Beach owner -- North Carolina does offer statewide programs along these lines, but this page did not independently verify their current eligibility criteria this research pass and does not want to state a stale or approximate number as if it were current.
What a Buyer Should Actually Do
Before making an offer on any Ocean Isle Beach property, pull the parcel's current assessed value and most recent tax bill directly from the Brunswick County Tax Office (not from a real estate listing site, which may show a stale or estimated figure), confirm whether any additional district levies apply to that specific address, and ask directly whether either the Town or the County is considering a rate change for the coming fiscal year -- budget workshops for both bodies typically happen each spring, and a rate that's flat today can change before you close.
Also ask about the timing of the next Brunswick County revaluation, scheduled for January 1, 2027: buying in the year or two before a revaluation means budgeting for the real possibility that your assessed value -- and therefore your tax bill -- could shift meaningfully once that cycle takes effect, in either direction, depending on how the specific property's value has moved relative to the countywide trend.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: Brunswick County's own website (brunswickcountync.gov) for the FY2025 county tax rate of 34.20 cents per $100, the January 1, 2023 revaluation and its roughly 75% average value increase, the prior 48.5-cent rate in effect since 2016, and the January 1, 2027 next-revaluation date; the Brunswick Beacon (newsargus.com) for reporting on the Town's May 2024 budget workshop and 4-1 vote raising the municipal rate from 11 to 13 cents per $100 for FY2024-25, the $739,457 projected additional revenue, and the FY2025-26 budget holding that rate flat; and Zillow and Redfin for the home-value figures used in this page's own illustrative tax calculations, both explicitly flagged elsewhere on this site as disagreeing with each other in a small, thin market. The combined ~47.20-cent rate and the illustrative tax calculations are this page's own arithmetic on two separately confirmed rates, not a single published combined figure. Facts not independently confirmed and not invented here include: any fire district or special district levy that might apply to a specific Ocean Isle Beach parcel; whether either the Town or County is considering a rate change for the coming fiscal year as you're reading this; and current eligibility details for any North Carolina homestead, elderly/disabled, or circuit-breaker property tax relief program. Confirm all current figures and eligibility directly with the Brunswick County Tax Office and the Town of Ocean Isle Beach before making a purchase decision. Nothing on this page is tax or legal advice.