Kingfish Bay

The entry point, and the plans I show most often to buyers who are still keeping a house up north. Two bedrooms, two baths, one level, on the community's smallest homesites — roughly 1,000 to 1,300 square feet of conditioned space wrapped in the same Caribbean detailing as the big homes: metal roof accents, Bahama shutters, a covered porch.

These sell as lock-and-leave second homes and as genuine downsizes. The thing buyers consistently underestimate is that a bungalow owner here gets identical amenity access to a Sunset Pointe owner — same pool, same beach club, same parking spot at Sunset Beach. Very few communities are structured that way.

For the right buyer the appeal isn't owning less house — it's having less house to manage. Lock the door, take the minute drive into Calabash, spend a few hours at the beach, or head north for the holidays without wondering what you left behind. These plans make the most sense when the goal is to spend more time living along the coast and less time maintaining the place you live in.

• Sunfish
• Bayfish
• Starfish I

Typical size

1,040 – 1,315 sq ft

Bedrooms

2

Baths

2

Stories

One level

Garage

1-car on most plans

Homesite

Smallest in the community

Builder base pricing

From the high $300s

The volume of the community. Three-bedroom plans in the 1,700 to 2,000 square foot range on modest homesites, most with the owner's suite on the main floor and several with a bonus room or loft upstairs for grandchildren. This is where a buyer coming from a 3,200-square-foot colonial in New Jersey usually lands once they've walked a few.

Watch the garage counts and the porch configurations here — they vary more between plans than the square footage does, and they're what you'll actually notice living in the house. Several plans put two single-car garages instead of one double, which reads very differently from the street and matters if you're bringing a second vehicle.

This is the collection I picture for buyers who want to downsize without downsizing the visits. The main-level owner's suite keeps everyday living easy, while the extra bedroom, loft or bonus room gives children and grandchildren a place that still feels like theirs when they come to the coast. The house lives small Monday through Thursday and opens back up when the family arrives on Friday.

• Grayling
• Yellowtail II
• Starfish II
• Parrotfish II
• Manatee
• Oyster Cay
• Coral Reef

Typical size

1,725 – 2,000 sq ft

Bedrooms

3

Baths

2 – 3

Stories

One level, several with a loft or bonus

Garage

1 or 2 car, varies by plan

Outdoor

Covered veranda; lanai on several plans

Builder base pricing

From the high $400s

The step up: two to four bedrooms, roughly 1,900 to 3,200 square feet, on larger homesites with the more elaborate elevations — deeper loggias, courtyard-entry designs, two-story plans with a full guest wing. The Palm Beach I is a genuine courtyard plan built around outdoor space rather than a hallway, which is unusual at any price in this county.

This is where Kingfish Bay starts to feel less like a beach-area subdivision and more like a home designed around the climate. Courtyards, deeper loggias and larger outdoor rooms create places you actually use — morning coffee out of the sun, dinner outside when the breeze comes up off the river, a quiet evening with the doors open and the inside and outside working as one room.

This collection is also where lot premiums start to move the number meaningfully. A wooded rear buffer, a pond view or a walk to the riverfront park can add real money to an otherwise identical plan. That's a negotiation, not a fixed price, and it's worth having somebody who has priced homesite premiums from the builder's side read the lot map with you.

• Antigua
• Aruba I
• Aruba III
• Bahama Bay
• Martinique
• Palm Beach I
• Palm Beach II
• Cardona
• St. Barts
• St. Markos
• St. Nevis
• Ambergris

Typical size

1,900 – 3,200 sq ft

Bedrooms

2 – 4

Baths

2 – 3.5

Stories

One and two-story plans

Garage

2-car, some 3-car split

Homesite

Larger; premiums apply on view lots

Builder base pricing

From the mid $600s

The top of the community, and the part most buyers never get properly explained to them. The Waterside plans are large single-family designs — 2,700 to 4,200 square feet — sited on the premium river, wetland and preserve-facing homesites. They're offered as published plans, but they're also the starting point for the custom program: the builder's in-house design team and consulting architects will modify a plan, or design from scratch, around your lot.

At this level I'd choose the homesite before I fell in love with a floor plan. The view, the afternoon sun, the tree line, the marsh, the way the breeze reaches the back porch — those are the pieces you cannot renovate later. The custom program matters because the house can be shaped around the reason you chose that particular piece of the Carolina coast in the first place.

Practically, that means two different transactions wear the same name. Buying a finished Waterside spec home is a straightforward purchase. Commissioning a custom home is a multi-month design and allowance process where the decisions you make in the first three weeks determine most of your final number. Those need to be represented differently.

• St. Vincent
• St. Lucia
• St. Thomas
• St. John
• St. Martin
• St. Croix
• Barbados

Typical size

2,700 – 4,250 sq ft

Bedrooms

3 – 5

Baths

2.5 – 5.5

Stories

One and two-story

Personalization

Plan modification or full custom design

Outdoor

Private pool and outdoor kitchen packages

Builder base pricing

From roughly $930,000

A private cul-de-sac of four estate-sized waterfront homesites at the end of the community, fronting the Calabash River with direct sightlines toward the Intracoastal Waterway. Homesites have been released starting at $1.7 million, with estate plans — Harbourview, Marshview, Riverview — running from roughly $2.0 to $2.6 million built.

The premium here isn't buying square footage or a bigger lot. It's buying waking up to water, watching the tide turn through the day, seeing boats work their way toward the Intracoastal, and having the river be part of the view from inside the house. For a buyer who has spent years saying someday we'll live on the water, this is the version of Kingfish Bay where that becomes the main event rather than the amenity.

The feature that separates Sunset Pointe from every other address in Kingfish Bay is private pier potential. That is a permitting question, not a marketing one: docks on this stretch run through CAMA and the Corps, and what a given lot can actually support depends on marsh line, water depth and riparian corridor. If a private dock is the reason you're buying, that question gets answered in writing before your due diligence money goes hard.

• Harbourview
• Marshview
• Riverview
• St. Croix (estate)

Homesites

Four, estate-sized

Frontage

Calabash River

Private pier

Potential, subject to permitting

Homesite pricing

From $1,700,000

Estate plans

3,500 – 4,250 sq ft

Built pricing

Roughly $2.0M – $2.6M

Amenity access

Full community amenities

Earlier phases are now old enough that homes are coming back to the market, and this is the part of Kingfish Bay the builder's sales office will not show you. A resale here often arrives with the expensive parts already done — screened lanai, pool, upgraded appliance package, landscaping that has filled in, window treatments, a second vehicle in the garage.

There's something a resale offers that a construction schedule can't: the feeling that the house has already settled into the neighborhood. The landscaping has grown in, the outdoor spaces are finished, the blinds are hung, and the punch-list year is behind you. For buyers who want to arrive at the coast and start using the house on day one, that can be worth as much as a builder incentive.

Sometimes it's the better buy and sometimes it isn't. When the builder is running an incentive on standing inventory, new can win. Comparing the two honestly requires pulling the actual closed numbers and adjusting for what conveys — which is a service I provide before you fall in love with anything.

Availability

Limited; turns over quickly

Typical advantage

Upgrades and outdoor living already paid for

Typical trade-off

No plan or lot selection

Attached homes

A small number exist; verify by listing

Homesites only

Select lots available — ask me