Brunswick County officials have approved tens of thousands of new homes and apartments over the past decade. Despiteresidents seeing development take over, county development records show many of those units have yet to be constructed.
Brunswick's residential development dashboard shows 149 major residential developments totaling nearly 60,000 residential units have been approved since 2016. Despite earning approvals years ago, the vast majority of approved homes have yet to hit the market.
With the total number of approved units sitting at 58,313, not even half have been constructed. County records indicate only 9,104 units have been built, while another 1,224 were under construction when the data was exported.
That leaves more than 80% of approved
units in the queue for construction.
Single-family and other house-oriented developments take up the largest share of approved housing. County records show about 36,947 approved units are developments featuring single-family homes, townhomes and duplexes. The other 21,366 approved units were identified as multifamily housing, including apartments.
The pace of development approvals has also accelerated significantly in recent years. After several years of more modest approvals, the county approved 10,873 units in 2024 and 13,119 units in 2025, the highest annual totals in the dataset. So far this year, 8,374 units have been approved.
Despite the growing number of apartment proposals, the data lists approximately 1,172 multifamily units as built, compared to about 5,388 housing units. Both development styles still have a long way to go.
Several large developments account for a significant portion of the county's future housing pipeline.
Some of the biggest projects include: Canopy, a 3,700-unit development approved in 2026; Midway Tract, with 3,612 units approved in 2024; and Rice Creek, with 3,400 units approved in 2021. Other large projects include Evergreen, formerly known as Ashton Farms, with 2,950 approved units, and Timber Farms with 2,500 units.
Residential projects require a variety of permits before construction and are often built in phases that stretch across several years. Between earning permits, working with state entities and finalizing designs, it may take two or more years after approval before site work begins on a project.
With thousands of homes already constructed, tens of thousands of approved units remain unbuilt. For residents, that means the subdivisions and apartment complexes visible today represent only part of the growth that local governments have already authorized.
County officials maintain a residential development dashboard that tracks major projects approved since 2015. The dashboard reports 69,511 approved units when annexed, inactive and abandoned developments are included and notes that data are compiled from planning, permitting and addressing records and updated monthly rather than in real time.
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Savanna Tenenoff covers Brunswick County for the StarNews. Reach her at stenenoff@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: The gap between housing approvals and construction in Brunswick
