Custom home builder in Scotts Hill, North Carolina.

Here's what the rules decide for your Scotts Hill lot.

We build new homes and remodel existing ones in Scotts Hill, from our home base in Southport.

• A lot reached over an easement needs one at least 20 feet wide.
• On many creek and marsh lots, a new house sits 30 feet back from normal high water.
• For an ADU on well and septic, the drain field tends to set the limit before the codes do.

At a glance

Jurisdiction

Unincorporated. The parcel record decides which county applies.

Design wind speed

Pender side: 140 mph. New Hanover side: 140 or 150 mph, split at US 17 (2018 NC Residential Code).

Freeboard

Two feet above the base flood elevation, in both counties.

Permit counters

New Hanover side: Wilmington. Pender side: Burgaw or the Hampstead Annex.

Drive from Southport

About 47 miles, roughly an hour by road.

Residential Contractor License #109520 · Member, Brunswick County Home Builders Association

The freeboard is two feet in either county.

Jurisdiction

Unincorporated on both sides of the New Hanover / Pender county line; the parcel record, whatever the mailing address, says which county UDO applies

Jurisdiction, New Hanover side

New Hanover County Unified Development Ordinance (unincorporated)

Jurisdiction, Pender side

Pender County Unified Development Ordinance, with flood rules in the county Code of Ordinances (unincorporated)

Flood chapters

New Hanover County UDO, Article 9 (Flood Damage Prevention); Pender County Code, Chapter 18 (Flood Damage Protection)

Freeboard on both sides

Two feet over the base flood elevation; two feet over highest adjacent grade in a mapped area with no published BFE (New Hanover County UDO Sec. 9.5; Pender County Code Secs. 18-5 and 18-73)

Who reviews and permits

New Hanover side: Planning & Land Use for zoning, Building Safety for permits, Government Center, Wilmington. Pender side: Planning & Community Development for zoning, Permitting & Inspections in Burgaw or at the Hampstead Annex

Residential zoning districts

New Hanover side: a family that includes R-20, R-15, R-10 and R-7. Pender side: RA, RP, RM and MH. Some US 17 frontage is zoned commercial or planned development instead

Flood zone

The effective FEMA FIRM panel for the parcel, or the NC Flood Risk Information System viewer, read for the parcel itself

Ultimate design wind speed

New Hanover side, note h: 140 mph west of US 17, 150 mph east. Pender side, note j: 140 mph for mainland Topsail Township, which is where Scotts Hill sits; 150 mph only east of the Intracoastal Waterway; 130 mph for the inland remainder of the county. 2018 NC Residential Code, Table R301.2(4)

CAMA review

Estuarine shoreline work near the marsh: CAMA minor permits from New Hanover County's Local Permit Officers on the New Hanover side, and from the Division of Coastal Management's Wilmington office on the Pender side

Water and sewer

CFPUA on part of the New Hanover side; the Pender County Scotts Hill Water & Sewer District on part of the Pender side; well and septic elsewhere. Confirmed per parcel with the provider

Two different ordinances govern Scotts Hill, each on its own side of the line. On the New Hanover side, the county's Unified Development Ordinance sets the zoning districts, the dimensional standards, and, under Article 9, the flood damage prevention rules that apply to new construction in a mapped hazard area. On the Pender side, the Pender County UDO sets the zoning and accessory-structure rules, while a separate chapter of the county's code, Chapter 18, carries the flood damage protection standards on its own.

On the New Hanover side, the county's Planning & Land Use office runs the UDO. New Hanover County Building Safety issues and inspects building permits, at 230 Government Center Drive in Wilmington. At that same office, the county's Local Permit Officers handle a CAMA minor permit for work at the marsh edge. CAMA is the state's Coastal Area Management Act. Pender County splits the same work in two. Planning & Community Development runs the UDO there. Permitting & Inspections issues the building permit. It works out of Burgaw or the Hampstead Annex on US 17, a few miles north of the community and closer than the county seat. A lot near the line sends its paperwork south to Wilmington, or north to Hampstead, depending on which side it sits.

On the headline flood figure, the two ordinances agree. Freeboard is the extra height a code adds above the base flood elevation, the flood height the map sets for a parcel. Pender County Code Section 18-5 sets the line a house is built to, the regulatory flood protection elevation. It sits two feet above a published base flood elevation. On a mapped lot with no published figure, it sits at least two feet above the highest adjacent grade. Pender's rule adds one more case New Hanover's does not: in a future-conditions flood hazard area, two feet above the future-conditions flood elevation. Section 18-73 then holds the reference level, basement included, at or above that line. The rule covers new residential construction and any substantially improved house. Under Pender's code, a house counts as substantially improved once the work on it in any one year reaches half its market value.

New Hanover County's Article 9 lands on the same two feet. Its Section 9.5 sets the line two feet above the base flood elevation, wherever one has been set. In a mapped area where none has, the line sits at least two feet above the highest adjacent grade. So the freeboard matches across the county line. The base flood elevation under it comes off the effective FIRM panel for the parcel. That figure can differ between a lot at the creek edge and one on higher ground a short walk away. On a creek-side lot in either county, those two feet get paid for in the foundation, in fill, and in the run of the stairs. A finished-floor elevation set before the base figure is read, then corrected at review, moves the stair, the porch, and the driveway grade with it.

New construction in Scotts Hill still has open ground to choose from.

Pender side, UDO 5.3.2.E

A single detached unit, clearly subordinate to the house, capped at a third (33 percent) of the heated floor area of the principal dwelling, placed in the side or rear yard at the setbacks a principal structure would meet

Pender side, UDO 5.3.2.A.1

A separate path: as many as three residential structures on a single lot in a residential district, each carrying the district minimum lot size on a plat drawn by a licensed surveyor

New Hanover side, UDO 4.4.4.A

One detached ADU per lot, by right in the residential districts (Table 4.4.3), where the main house is single-family detached; one parking space; the main driveway outside RA; provider-documented water and sewer capacity, or Environmental Health well and septic approval

Each kind of project here usually starts from its own constraint. A new house near the water starts from flood review, and from the state's shoreline review. A renovation starts from the county's substantial-improvement clock. An ADU starts from the drainfield, or the utility tap.

Creek-front and wooded lots

Undeveloped creek-front parcels off the loop road, and wooded lots nearer the highway, are where new homes in Scotts Hill are most likely to go. New subdivisions are still appearing. Each lot brings its own mix of zoning district and flood review, and, at the water, Area of Environmental Concern review.

Renovation here keeps the house's orientation to the marsh.

Older houses worth renovating along Scotts Hill Loop Road often have an orientation to the marsh. A designer today would choose the same orientation again. Many sit on a foundation older than the flood maps in their present form. Renovating an older marsh-front house here starts from that orientation, and keeps it.

The work replaces what time and storms have worn.

• A new skin and air barrier over the existing frame.
• A roof rebuilt to meet the FORTIFIED roof requirements.
• Air handlers and condensers raised above the regulatory flood protection elevation.
• The airtightness target, applied to an old house one assembly at a time.

Substantial improvement is the line where a renovation has to meet new-construction flood rules. Both counties set that line at 50 percent of the structure's market value. Pender's Chapter 18 counts the cost of work over any one-year period. New Hanover's Article 9 counts it over any five-year period instead. Past that line, the whole house has to meet current elevation requirements. We price the scope against the right county's clock before it is fixed.

An ADU means two different tests here.

Scotts Hill puts two accessory-dwelling rules a few hundred feet apart. They regulate different things. Pender's rule is about the unit itself. It looks at how large the unit is against the main house, how many there are, and where it stands on the lot. New Hanover's rule is about how the unit connects instead. It looks at the kind of house it serves, where the car parks, which driveway it uses, and whether water and sewer can carry it. Its text even names CFPUA as the kind of provider that has to vouch for capacity. A lot that clears one county's test easily can struggle with the other's.

On either side, a well-and-septic lot usually meets its practical limit at the drainfield first. That happens before it meets either ordinance, because a second dwelling adds bedrooms, and bedrooms size a septic system. On a lot served by CFPUA, or by the Pender district, the question becomes whether the provider will document the capacity. On a large Pender-side tract, the three-structure path can suit a multigenerational plan better than a unit capped at a third of the house. It does ask for more land, and a fuller plat. Feasibility for a backyard unit here starts with capacity, and with the parcel record that says which rule actually applies. On a New Hanover-side parcel in a PD or RMF district, Section 4.4.4.A allows the unit only with a single-family detached house.

On either side of the line, we build with vetted partners under Tropical Tides' direction, and hold North Carolina Residential Contractor License #109520. We design and direct Scotts Hill projects from Southport, about 47 miles and an hour away. The drive takes NC 87 to US 17, then the I-140 and NC 140 bypass over the Cape Fear and the Northeast Cape Fear. It rejoins US 17 north at the Kirkland interchange above Porters Neck. We're members of the Brunswick County Home Builders Association, and 910-946-5512 is the number to call.

Scotts Hill sits right on top of the county line.

Scotts Hill is an unincorporated run of highway astride the line between New Hanover County and Pender County. Two sets of county rules are in play here, and only one governs any given lot.

Scotts Hill runs along US 17. Porters Neck, on the New Hanover side, sits to the south, with Ogden farther down the corridor beyond it. Hampstead is the next stop north. Scotts Hill Loop Road leaves the highway on the Pender side. It swings east toward the Intracoastal Waterway, past wooded ground, older waterfront houses, and newer construction, to the marina. Rich Inlet, the natural inlet between Figure Eight Island and Lea-Hutaff Island, lies across the waterway from it. The community sits roughly midway between the Wrightsville Beach and Surf City bridges.

Two landmarks bracket the place, on opposite sides of the county line. Poplar Grove stands near the highway on the Pender side. It is a Greek Revival house from the early 1850s, at the center of what was a working peanut farm. One family kept it into the early 1970s. It has carried a National Register listing since the late 1970s. It has been open to the public as a museum for most of the years since. A short distance south, on the New Hanover side, Novant Health opened its Scotts Hill Medical Center on US 17 in 2026. That added a community hospital to a campus whose outpatient plaza had opened in December 2024.

Scotts Hill is unincorporated on both sides of the county line, so each lot answers to its own county. A parcel on the New Hanover side falls under the New Hanover County Unified Development Ordinance. That county's planning staff, in Wilmington, administers it. A parcel on the Pender side answers to the Pender County UDO, and to the county's separate flood damage prevention ordinance. Both are administered from Burgaw, the Pender county seat. A permitting office on the US 17 corridor in Hampstead, though, sits nearer the community than the county seat does. Zoning districts, the flood ordinance, accessory-structure rules, and which office answers the phone all change with the county. So the first fact a Scotts Hill site analysis establishes is which jurisdiction the parcel sits in.

The parcel identification number, checked against the county GIS layer, settles which county a Scotts Hill lot falls in. That is the same record a title company or a surveyor pulls before closing. The mailing address and the ZIP code are both shared across the line. Scotts Hill Loop Road and Poplar Grove both sit on the Pender side, and the Novant campus on the New Hanover side.

Next-door lots in Scotts Hill can carry different wind numbers.

The 2018 North Carolina Residential Code sets the ultimate design wind speed for both counties, in Table R301.2(4). Its county notes draw their own lines through Scotts Hill. On the New Hanover side, note h splits the county at US 17: 140 mph west of the highway, 150 mph east of it. North of the trumpet interchange where the bypass meets US 17 at Kirkland, there is only one US 17, the northward run of Market Street. A New Hanover-side parcel there is simply east or west of it. On that side of the line, a lot on the marsh side of the highway is designed for 150 mph. One a short walk west of it is designed for 140 mph.

On the Pender side, note j ignores the highway. It draws its lines by the Intracoastal Waterway and by township instead. East of the waterway, the figure is 150 mph. The part of Topsail Township west of it reads 140 mph. Everything farther inland, from Burgaw to Rocky Point, is 130 mph. The Pender side of Scotts Hill is mainland Topsail Township, so it reads 140 mph whichever side of US 17 a parcel sits on. Put the two notes together, and east of the highway, the county line itself becomes a wind line. A New Hanover lot there is designed for 150 mph, and the Pender lot beside it for 140 mph. West of the highway, the figure is 140 mph in both counties.

The gap matters for more than the number. Section R4601.1 of the same code applies Chapter 46, the state's coastal and flood-plain construction standards. It reaches every site in the 150 mph zone. It also reaches regulatory floodplains, and coastal high hazard and ocean hazard areas. A New Hanover-side lot east of US 17 comes under Chapter 46 by its wind zone alone. A Pender-side lot at 140 mph comes under it only if the FIRM panel for that parcel puts it in a regulatory floodplain. The site analysis records both the table row and the flood status, before a truss package or a connector schedule is priced. Every connection in the load path is sized from them.

What those figures change is the load path. A higher ultimate design wind speed pushes uplift and lateral pressure further up the roof-to-foundation connection. That shows up in truss uplift straps, sheathing nailing schedules, and how the wall ties into the foundation. A homeowner would notice none of it on a walkthrough. The zone figure is also only half the calculation. Exposure category reads the open marsh, water, and tree cover upwind of the house. The engineer settles it lot by lot. A lot facing open marsh can read a harsher exposure than a wooded one inside the same zone. Coastal physics as a design brief sets out the argument in full.

Wind is also a salt question here. Scotts Hill sits close to the sound and the Intracoastal. Salt-laden air reaches well past any lot with a direct view of the water. It arrives on ordinary onshore afternoons, as well as in storms. Onshore wind carries that salt inland. That is why fastener and cladding durability choices are made for a wooded interior lot much as for a marina-front one. Connector metallurgy is chosen for distance from the water. Cladding is chosen to tolerate being salted and rinsed, on repeat. A flashing sequence is drawn on the plans.

On Scotts Hill Loop Road, the marsh takes back some of the acreage.

Scotts Hill Loop Road, on the Pender side of the line, carries the community's waterfront character. The water along it drains toward Futch Creek. Scotts Hill Creek was dammed about a century and a half ago into a ten-acre mill pond behind Poplar Grove. It spills into Foy Creek, on the south side of the loop road. Foy Creek then joins Futch Creek, on its way to the waterway.

Lots on that fringe front tidal creek and marsh. Once the marsh edge and any required buffer are drawn on the survey, the buildable ground is often smaller than the recorded acreage suggests. Behind the fringe, wooded interior parcels and a scatter of newer subdivisions fill the ground between the loop road and the highway. There, soil, tree cover, and drainage matter more to a design than tidal exposure does.

Some of that woodland now has a different use. The Abbey Nature Preserve covers about 62 acres of the old Foy land behind Poplar Grove. The mill pond and its trail network sit inside it. The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has held conservation agreements over it since 2007. Pender County ran it as a public park under a lease starting in 2022. The county now owns the preserve outright, after a donation from Mungo Homes. A separate easement, entered in 2009, covers the 14-acre museum tract at Poplar Grove itself. The rest of that Foy holding, some 240 acres on Scotts Hill Loop Road, was sold in 2022 for residential development under the Pender UDO.

A marsh-front or creek-front lot in Scotts Hill answers to its county's flood ordinance. In many cases, it also answers to the state's estuarine shoreline Area of Environmental Concern, or AEC. That AEC reaches 75 feet landward of normal high water. Along waters the state classifies as Outstanding Resource Waters, it reaches 575 feet instead. Inside it, new development sits 30 feet back from normal high water, apart from water-dependent structures such as docks. Impervious surface is capped at 30 percent of the AEC area of the lot, or 25 percent along Outstanding Resource Waters (15A NCAC 07H .0209). We draw both lines onto the survey before a footprint goes down.

The flood zone comes off the effective FIRM panel for the parcel itself, or off the state Flood Risk Information System viewer. It is read for the lot. A lot that shows clean and dry on a decades-old plat can sit differently on the current map. A creek-front lot, in particular, can sit inside a mapped special flood hazard area well back from the visible waterline.

Access is its own line item on this kind of lot. Some creek and marsh parcels reach the public road by a private drive over an easement. On the Pender side, the UDO puts numbers on that arrangement, in Section 5.3.2.B. The house needs a lot on, or reached from, a public road at least thirty feet wide. A lot that gets there by easement needs an easement no narrower than twenty feet. Twenty feet is tight, once a culvert, a turnaround, and a concrete truck have to share it. On either side of the line, we read the recorded width off the plat before a garage or a turning area goes on a plan.

Water and sewer follow the county line, because each county built its own system. On the New Hanover side, the provider is Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. Its mains reach the north end of the county along the US 17 corridor, and serve some of the parcels toward the sound. We confirm with CFPUA's Development Services group whether a main can reach a vacant lot, and at what tap cost. On the Pender side, the county's own utility runs a Scotts Hill Water & Sewer District, one of several districts Pender County Utilities operates. Coverage inside the district runs street by street. We confirm capacity for a specific lot with the district. Away from both systems, a well and a septic system remain the ordinary arrangement. That holds on much of the wooded interior ground on either side of the line. The septic permit is issued by the applicable county's Environmental Health staff. Near the marina and along the tidal fringe, grading has to answer to marsh hydrology as well as to the drainfield. So the utility answer is settled alongside the moisture and drainage strategy, before a floor plan assumes one.

We confirm the county before we read the ground.

A Tropical Tides site analysis is formal and written. It is finished before design begins, and kept in the client's project workspace. On most coastal lots, its first page is about water and wind. On a Scotts Hill lot, the first page is a parcel identification number instead. The parcel-first site analysis pulls the PIN, and sets it against both counties' GIS parcel layers. It records which county's ordinance governs the ground. The zoning district, the flood chapter, the permit counter, and the wind-speed row in the code table all follow from that one answer.

Once jurisdiction is settled, fitting the house to its parcel starts with the site itself:

• Flood zone classification, against the current FIRM panel or the NC Flood Risk Information System.
• The Area of Environmental Concern line, where a lot fronts a creek or the Intracoastal.
• Wind exposure category.
• Orientation to the marsh, or to whatever tree line stands between the house and the water.
• Tree cover.
• How the lot reaches the road.

On a wooded interior parcel, the document is likely to spend more of its length on soils, drainage, and trees than on the tide. It asks where water goes in a heavy rain, and which trees are worth designing around.

On the New Hanover side, the analysis also works out which residential district applies. The county's residential family includes R-20, R-15, R-10, and R-7, each with its own lot-size and setback structure. Some Scotts Hill parcels sit outside them. Frontage along the US 17 corridor sometimes carries commercial or planned-development zoning instead. On the Pender side, the residential districts include RA, RP, RM, and MH. RP stands for Residential Performance. Which district a Pender-side lot carries comes off the county zoning map. We confirm it with Pender County Planning & Community Development before a site plan assumes one.

FORTIFIED Gold means the same thing on both sides of the line.

East of US 17, the county line drops the code's design wind speed from 150 to 140 mph. The Futch Creek marsh, the salt air, and the August humidity run right across that line anyway. The design standard follows the marsh. Every house we design here pursues FORTIFIED Gold, the top tier of the IBHS program. An independent evaluator checks the roof, the openings, and the connections from ridge to foundation. Whether the permit is reviewed in Wilmington or in Burgaw, the drawings answer to the same criteria.

The lower figure can read like permission to do less, and a continuous load path matters at 140 mph as much as at 150.

Alongside FORTIFIED Gold, every design carries an airtightness target below 1.0 ACH50. It is a design target, and a blower-door test has to confirm it before handover. The Futch Creek marsh explains why it matters here. On a still summer evening, the air coming off the marsh is hot and humid. Inside a cooled house, any gap in the envelope becomes a place where that air meets a surface colder than its dew point. That can happen deep in a wall, where condensation can sit for years unseen. The answer is an air barrier, specified as one unbroken line on the drawings, then checked in the field seam by seam:

• At the sill plate.
• Around every window.
• At each pipe, duct, or wire that passes through it.

The target follows the design inland as well, onto the wooded parcels behind the loop road. Those parcels lose the direct marsh exposure, but keep the same hot, humid coastal air. Ventilation behind a sub-1.0 envelope sets out why a tight envelope and a deliberate fresh-air supply work together. The airtightness target and its test comes paired with equipment sized to the calculated load of the house. Sized that way, the equipment runs long enough to bring the humidity down before it short-cycles off. The FORTIFIED evaluation runs at the framing stage. A first blower-door test runs before drywall, where a finding can still change the work. Both are scheduled around the inspections of whichever county permits the house.