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Sunset Beach, NC

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Sunset Beach is a very small town located in the state of North Carolina. With a population of 4,391 people and just one neighborhood, Sunset Beach is the 196th largest community in North Carolina.

Sunset Beach real estate is some of the most expensive in North Carolina, although Sunset Beach house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.

Occupations and Workforce

Sunset Beach is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 90.26% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Sunset Beach is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sunset Beach who work in sales jobs (23.12%), healthcare (13.09%), and maintenance occupations (12.87%).

A relatively large number of people in Sunset Beach telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 14.81% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.

Setting & Lifestyle

Another notable thing is that Sunset Beach is a major vacation destination. Much of the town’s population is seasonal: many people own second homes and only live there part-time, during the vacation season. The effect on the local economy is that many of the businesses are dependent on tourist dollars, and may operate only during the high season. As the vacation season ends, Sunset Beach’s population drops significantly, such that year-round residents will notice that the city is a much quieter place to live.

It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Sunset Beach has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Sunset Beach has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Sunset Beach than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Sunset Beach may be for you.

Sunset Beach is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.

Demographics

Sunset Beach is one of the most well-educated cities in the nation. 41.37% of adults in Sunset Beach have at least a bachelor's degree. Compare that to the average community in America, which has just 21.84% with a bachelor's degree or higher.

The per capita income in Sunset Beach in 2018 was $54,410, which is wealthy relative to North Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $217,640 for a family of four. However, Sunset Beach contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Sunset Beach home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sunset Beach residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Sunset Beach include German, Irish, English, Italian, and Scottish.

The most common language spoken in Sunset Beach is English. Other important languages spoken here include French and Spanish.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.

People

In a nation where 1 out of every 4 children lives in poverty, the neighborhood stands out as being ranked among the lowest 0.0% of neighborhoods affected by this global issue.

In addition, priests and therapists would like to think they know the secrets to a truly successful marriage, but according to NeighborhoodScout's research, the folks of the neighborhood may actually hold the key. 74.5% of its residents are married, which is a higher percentage than is found in 98.8% of the neighborhoods in America.

Also, if you are planning to retire in North Carolina, this neighborhood should be on your must-see list. For many reasons, may be considered a retiree's dream neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and metrics, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety from crime compared to other neighborhoods in North Carolina, while also offering a diverse range of housing options. This, along with the vibrant mix of very educated seniors and other age groups who choose to live here, makes the neighborhood more retiree-friendly than 98.3% of neighborhoods in NC. If a North Carolina retirement is in your future, this neighborhood should be one of the places you visit.

Real Estate

Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 41.0%, which is higher than 97.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish and English ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry and 21.4% have English ancestry.

The Neighbors

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.

The neighbors in the neighborhood in Sunset Beach are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 64.0% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.

The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.

In the neighborhood, 33.3% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 30.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (25.8%), and 10.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.0% of households.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.

In the neighborhood in Sunset Beach, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (21.4%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (14.6%), and residents who report Italian roots (12.5%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (11.0%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (4.9%), among others.

Getting to Work

Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (44.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (82.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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Race & Ethnic Diversity
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Crime includes:
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Schools include:
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