Ocean Isle Beach, NC, has a new patio home community with a pickleball court. What we know
There’s a new community in Ocean Isle Beach as Brunswick County continues to see development growth.
The Courtyards by Carrell is a 66 unit patio home neighborhood with a community pool, pickleball court, fitness center and other amenities. The Courtyards is an active adult community with residents being generally 55 plus. Homes range in size from 1,418 to 2,832 square feet and offer two to four bedrooms, two to three bathrooms, and two to three-car garages.
Carrell Group — a Myrtle Beach-based custom home-building company— and Epcon Communities, a home and community building company, are leading the project.
Bruce Carrell is the president of Carrell Group and has built more than 1,200 homes in the Myrtle Beach, SC area. Carell said the model home will be done in three or four weeks, several units have been sold, and the project will be entirely sold and built by 2026.
“‘I’ve had an interest in creating our own communities, and for various reasons along the way had not accomplished that,” Carrell said. “One of the things that appealed to me about becoming part of their team is ... I went looked at some of (Epcon’s) communities, and my first impression was, these homes are a cut above the typical production style house, it looks like something I would build.”
He added that base home prices will be between $429,000 and $489,000, with potential residents choosing from four different designs. Carroll also said prospective buyers will get to add their preferences to the homes, too, including potential bonus rooms, gas cooking, flooring, cabinets and other choices.
Carrell also said he wants to build more communities in the future and is looking for land right now. Courtyards is not the only project underway in the area. Brunswick County— Ocean Isle Beach has the fifth highest home price in Brunswick County with a median home price of $650,000, according to Realtor.com— is undergoing major developments.
Less than 10 minutes away from Courtyards, Sea Trail Golf Resort & Convention Center in Sunset Beach is undergoing massive renovations to its three golf courses. The renovations, as well as the building of a new about 150 hotel, are expected to cost around $95 million. This doesn’t include the about 450 new multifamily homes and around 142 single-family homes being built near Sea Trail too.
Home prices are also rising in the area. In December 2023, the median sale price of homes sold in Brunswick County was $415,031, about an eight percent from the previous year, according to Rocket Homes.
With almost 1,100 homes for sale in Brunswick County right now, the value of homes has risen from around $252,741 at the start of 2019 to $421,621 at the end of 2023, according to Zillow’s Home Value Index. In comparison, Myrtle Beach home values were estimated at $295,796, according to Zillow’s Home Value Index.
Recent building trends could also be impacting custom home builders in the Myrtle Beach area, too.
Carrell, who has had a builder’s license since 1987 and built the first home in the Grande Dunes area, said Myrtle Beach is a shrinking custom home market, although there are still opportunities to build them.
“(Custom homes were) intended to be primarily around golf courses throughout the area, and there were a lot of golf courses built some years back, but that’s not been recurring for quite some time,” Carrell added. “Little by little, those lots get absorbed and built on, and there’s just fewer and fewer of them, and I’ve noticed quite a bit less number of Home Builders in our market than there used to be back when I started (it was) quite a bit larger group.”
He also said that tearing down old homes and rebuilding them could be an emerging market for builders. Myrtle Beach has one of the highest construction costs per square inch of any city in South Carolina regardless of quality, second only to Charleston, according to Today’s Homeowner.
