Commercial refrigeration
8,753
estimated covered units across about 1.7K serviceable locations
$2,468,346 / year
scheduled PM at $282 per unit, saturation scenario
About $935,503 gross profit at 37.9% margin
Size one building and your market share →Commercial building market
The commercial building stock in Wilmington, NC
Wilmington, NC holds about 5,191 serviceable commercial buildings. That is about 22 buildings for every competing plumbing and HVAC location.
Growing but crowded
Local plumbing and HVAC employment grew faster than the metro median, but this metro has fewer buildings per competing location than typical.
Commercial building stock in Wilmington, NC
We count about 5,191 commercial buildings over 4,000 square feet. This building stock is relevant to HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and fire protection.
Counts are by structure, not parcel, and are a coverage floor rather than a complete census. We do not attach an all-trade revenue total because the available billing model is mechanical-only and would mislabel the opportunity for every other trade.
Serviceable buildings
5,191
commercial structures over 4,000 sqft
Largest building segment
2,267
multifamily
Plumbing and HVAC context
22
buildings per NAICS 238220 location, not an all-trade rival count
| Building type | Buildings | Share of counted stock |
|---|---|---|
| Multifamily | 2,267 | 43.7% |
| Office | 1,026 | 19.8% |
| Worship | 478 | 9.2% |
| Education | 468 | 9.0% |
| Warehouse / distribution | 316 | 6.1% |
| Healthcare | 251 | 4.8% |
| Government | 248 | 4.8% |
| Hospitality | 123 | 2.4% |
| Industrial / manufacturing | 14 | 0.3% |
How this is countedSources, filters, and the scope of the competitor benchmark.
Buildings are counted per structure inside Wilmington, NC, from FEMA/ORNL USA Structures, filtered to commercial occupancies over 4,000 square feet and excluding structures under 3.2 meters tall. Counts are a floor because coverage varies by place.
Competitor counts and employment are Census County Business Patterns for NAICS 238220, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors. They are retained as a clearly labeled mechanical-market comparison, not presented as roofing, electrical, or fire-protection competition.
Equipment market sizing
Buildings are the first denominator. Units are the useful one.
We apply national CBECS equipment incidence to the measured Wilmington, NC building stock. Refrigeration also includes local Census food-service and grocery establishments. These are planning estimates, not equipment censuses.
Elevator service
1,248
estimated covered units across about 422 serviceable locations
$4,763,616 / year
recurring service at $3,817 per unit, saturation scenario
About $1,443,376 gross profit at 30.3% margin
Size one building and your market share →The estimate excludes multifamily and industrial buildings because CBECS does not support those mappings here. Refrigeration covers scheduled maintenance only. Elevator service excludes repairs and modernization.
Where Wilmington, NC sits against the other 99 metros
Buildings per competing location against metro plumbing and HVAC employment growth from 2018 to 2023. Wilmington, NC is outlined.
Top right: more buildings per rival, with faster local trade employment growth.
Top left: fewer buildings per rival, with faster local trade employment growth.
Bottom right: more buildings per rival, with slower local trade employment growth.
Bottom left: fewer buildings per rival, with slower local trade employment growth.
consolidatingfragmentingstableBubble size = serviceable commercial building count.
Quadrant lines are the medians of the places plotted, not fixed thresholds, so a position means "compared with everywhere else measured here" rather than passing some absolute bar. The y-axis is CBSA-level plumbing and HVAC contractor employment from Census County Business Patterns, measured directly for 2018 and 2023.
Metros with a similar amount of work
Closest to Wilmington, NC by serviceable building count, which makes them the fairest comparison for a contractor weighing an expansion.
Asheville, NC
5,146 serviceable buildings
25 buildings per rival location
Fayetteville, AR
5,361 serviceable buildings
22 buildings per rival location
Ogden, UT
5,379 serviceable buildings
18 buildings per rival location
Deltona, FL
5,445 serviceable buildings
18 buildings per rival location
Lancaster, PA
5,480 serviceable buildings
26 buildings per rival location
El Paso, TX
5,697 serviceable buildings
26 buildings per rival location
Frequently asked questions
How many serviceable commercial buildings are in Wilmington, NC?
About 5,191 in the Wilmington, NC Metro Area: structures with a commercial occupancy, over 4,000 square feet, and tall enough to be real premises rather than a garage. That count is a floor rather than a census, because national structure coverage is uneven by metro.
How many competitors are there in Wilmington, NC?
232 plumbing and HVAC contractor locations (US Census County Business Patterns, NAICS 238220, 2023), which works out to about 22 serviceable buildings per location. Read that as an average over a very uneven field: most locations in a typical metro have fewer than five employees and are not competing for a portfolio of commercial service contracts.
Is the mechanical trade workforce growing in Wilmington, NC?
Plumbing and HVAC contractor employment in the metro grew 87.8% from 2018 to 2023, measured directly by US Census County Business Patterns for NAICS 238220. This measures trade employment, not construction demand.
Does a building in Wilmington, NC bill more than the same building elsewhere?
Not measurably. We tested it: once you control for WHICH CONTRACTOR services a building, state explains almost none of the variation in revenue per building and county barely more. Climate looked like a 1.7x driver as a group mean and disappeared under a within-contractor control. So the total here differs from another metro because the COUNT of buildings differs, not because a building is worth more. No regional multiplier is applied.
Sources, and what this deliberately does not claimThe Census name for this metro, every source, and why no regional multiplier is applied.
This page covers the Wilmington, NC Metro Area, Census CBSA 48900, 4,955 square kilometres of land area. Buildings are counted per structure inside that boundary polygon rather than by any address field, because the national structure dataset leaves its ZIP, state and city fields empty across whole regions: keying on them reports near-zero for real places.
Building counts: FEMA/ORNL USA Structures (CC BY 4.0). Competitor counts and employment: US Census County Business Patterns, NAICS 238220, 2023 with 2018 as the trend baseline and the same industry vintage across both. Construction growth: US Bureau of Economic Analysis state GDP by industry, NAICS 23. Population, education and income: American Community Survey 5-year. This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Building counts are useful across trades. The competitor and employment figures on this page are limited to NAICS 238220, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors, and should not be read as electrical, roofing, or fire-protection density.
Machine-readable, free to cite with attribution under CC BY 4.0: geo-building-stock.json, version 1.0.2.
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