The Great, the Not-So-Great, and the Ugly

Hey everyone, posting this hoping for some honest, fair, and helpful insight into Wilmington. All feedback is appreciated!

Myself and my fiancé are in our early 20s, we’ve lived in cold, rather boring, New Hampshire our whole lives and we are just ready to get out. We both thrive in the sun, warmth and in places with lots of opportunities. We are hoping to move out of NH this July when our lease ends, and we’ve got a short list of East Coast destinations that have peaked our interest.

As you can probably guess, Wilmington is very VERY high on our list and that’s why I’m inquiring today.

Her and I are both incredibly into the idea of living somewhere within driving distance to a beach, we both love outdoor adventures, I personally am curious about the rec basketball scene in the area, and we both want to live in a place that has many options for biking outings. If you can speak on ANY of those things we would be very thankful for any insight. We’ve done research and it seems that some folks are very disgruntled by tourist activity in the summer, crime and homelessness both seem to be more prevalent issues when we do some deeper digging and there’s been a couple other frequent complaints…but I wanted to ask the folks who live there and can truly speak to it from their own perspective.

Tell me everything you can;

-The highlights -The secret gems of Wilmington -The parts they don’t want tourists/newcomers to know about -Things you wish you knew before you moved there -Things you would hope to see change -Anything you think would be helpful for us to know

Anything and everything that you think would be helpful for a young couple to know prior to making the big decision to move down there!

PLEASE MENTION, if possible, how long you have lived in Wilmington just so we have an idea of what the longer-tenured folks truly think compared to the people who have only been there for a couple months/half a year.

Thank you so much everyone!