And, I presume, when tax time came up you submitted your CA state tax as out-of-state (and NC state tax as resident).
Except for cases two residences are lived in during the same year. Example, I have a couple of friends who have another home in FL for the winter, and also a couple who have summer homes in SC. In those cases, you keep your vehicle registered in the state you dwell in the most.
Buying a house doesn't necessarily make you a resident. It could be a purely economic decision. If you have the intention of returning to the other state, then your residence doesn't change. The totality of circumstance is used to determine your state of residence or domicile, and there can only be one at a time. If you take a temporary job in another state with the intention of returning to NC, you file tax returns in the other state as a non-resident and in NC as a resident, you buy a house in the other state as an investment and live in it while you are there, the purchase of the house does not make you a resident of that other state.
