Richmond Hills

Before Richmond Hills was a subdivision in any real sense, it was a handful of custom homes on a quiet road off the highway. People who owned the land, or bought a lot and hired a builder they knew, back when this side of Supply was still mostly pine and the highway was the only landmark worth mentioning.

There aren't many of them and they don't match each other. What they have is the deepest yards in the neighborhood, the oldest trees, and construction that was decided one house at a time rather than out of a plan book. A home out here that has stood through Floyd, Florence and Isaias has told you something about itself that no inspection report can.

These come up for sale rarely. When one does, it's worth a hard look — and a careful one, because custom construction from that era varies enormously house to house. That's a walkthrough conversation, not a listing-photo conversation.

How many

A handful

Built

Before the production phases

Style

One-off — no two alike

Stories

Mostly two level

Lot draw

Deepest yards, oldest trees

Availability

Rare on the market

Worth knowing

Quality varies house to house

This is the part of the story that matters, and almost nobody tells it.

For twenty years, new construction in Brunswick County was aimed at one buyer: the retiree from up north, cashing out a house in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and paying whatever the coast asked. Golf communities, gated entrances, amenity centers. All of it priced for somebody arriving with equity from somewhere else.

Meanwhile the people who actually ran this county — the nurses at the hospital, the teachers, the deputies, the shop owners, the trades who were building those retirement communities — couldn't buy into what they were building. They rented, or they bought something old and tired, or they drove in from somewhere cheaper.

Wade Jurney Homes came in and broke that. A Greensboro builder with a slogan that was also the whole business model: More Home, Less Money. They stripped out what didn't matter, held the plans simple, and delivered a remarkable amount of square footage for the price. Richmond Hills was just one of the neighborhoods where we did it, and it worked immediately.

My work with Wade Jurney Homes proved Brunswick County had a workforce buyer that nobody had bothered to serve — years before the national builders decided the entry-level buyer was worth chasing. The company was later acquired by Century Communities and the product line became Century Complete. The houses are still here, and they still do the job they were built to do.

Typical size

1,800 – 3,200 sq ft

Bedrooms

3 – 5

Baths

2 – 3

Stories

One level, some two-story

Garage

2-car attached

The pitch

Square footage per dollar

Built for

Working families, not just retirees

Now known as

Century Complete

Once Wade Jurney had proved the buyer existed, the nationals came. D.R. Horton entered Richmond Hills the way D.R. Horton enters a market — with volume, a tight plan menu, and an included-features package that made the math easy for buyers who didn't want to shop options.

If you're standing in a home here with a smart-home package, a two-car garage on a 50-foot lot, and a layout you're sure you've seen in three other Brunswick County neighborhoods, you probably have. That repetition is a feature, not a flaw: there are plenty of comparable sales, which makes these homes straightforward to price and to finance.

Typical size

1,400 – 2,200 sq ft

Bedrooms

3 – 4

Baths

2 – 2.5

Stories

One level and two-story

Garage

2-car attached

Included

Smart-home package typical

Comparables

Plentiful — easy to price

The active section today is Dream Finders Homes — a small, finite phase of roughly 37 homesites with a model open on Staples Mill Drive NW. Four plans, two of them single-level. Several homesites back to trees or sit on a cul-de-sac.

• Retreat
• Escape
• Garrett
• Prelude

Thirty-seven is the number that matters. This is not an open-ended phase that will be selling for another four years — when it's gone, new construction in Richmond Hills is finished, and the only way in is resale.

Pricing on this phase has generally run from the high $250s to the low $340s depending on plan, homesite and incentives. Builder pricing moves constantly. Treat any number you read online — including mine — as a starting point to verify, and remember that the on-site agent works for the builder. I don't.

Retreat

1,504 sq ft · 3 bd / 2 ba · one level

Escape

1,721 sq ft · 3–4 bd / 2 ba · one level

Garrett

1,773–1,889 sq ft · 3 bd / 2.5 ba · two story

Prelude

2,428–2,433 sq ft · 3–4 bd / 2.5–3 ba · two story

Homesites

50 ft wide, ~.15–.18 acre

Garage

2-car attached

Phase size

About 37 homesites

Between and after the production phases, regional companies and individual builders have filled homesites here. That's why the streetscape isn't uniform — you'll pass a 1,300-square-foot ranch, then a two-story with a side-load garage, then a 2024 build with board-and-batten siding.

Some buyers want the consistency of a single-builder subdivision. If that's you, this isn't it. If you'd rather your street look like it grew instead of getting stamped out, this is exactly it.

What it means practically: two houses on the same street can have completely different bones, warranty histories and finish levels. Same HOA. Same street. Very different home. I check before you tour, not after.