Service areas
Custom Home Builder in Kent County, Delaware
Kent County is flat, it is farmland, and the soil under most of it is some of the best building ground in Delaware. Greenwich loam, the state soil, runs through the central agricultural belt here. It drains, it compacts predictably, and it rarely produces the surprises you get closer to the coast. The complication in Kent is not the dirt. It is whether your lot sits inside the county's Growth Zone.
The Growth Zone Overlay decides your lot size
Kent County writes its area and bulk requirements around a Growth Zone Overlay District. Inside the growth zone, on public sewer, the numbers get tight: Agricultural Conservation and Agricultural Residential lots can go down to 5,000 square feet with fifty feet of frontage and setbacks of twenty feet front, five feet side and ten feet rear. RS1 runs similar at forty-five feet of frontage.
Outside the growth zone the county pushes the other way. AC and AR want 200 feet of road frontage, 150 feet of lot width, and setbacks of thirty feet front, fifteen feet side and thirty feet rear. RS1 and the other residential districts sit slightly easier at 150 feet of frontage and 100 feet of width.
And the rule that catches most people: with no public sewer, the minimum lot is half an acre and you need 150 feet of road frontage, whatever the district says. If you are looking at a rural parcel in Kent, that half acre is your floor.
Permitting in Kent
Unincorporated land goes through the Kent County Department of Planning Services. Dover, Smyrna, Camden, Clayton, Harrington and Milford each run their own permitting, and Clayton is the odd one, because the town straddles the Kent and New Castle county line. Which side of that line your lot falls on changes the county review behind the town review.
Septic systems are permitted by DNREC's Ground Water Discharges Section at 302-856-4561. The sequence matters here more than people expect: the Class H soil evaluation and the system design come first, because the approved system footprint constrains where the house can physically sit. We would rather find that out before the plans are drawn than after.
Dover has a wrinkle the rest of the county does not
Dover Air Force Base sits on the east side of the city, and the air installation compatible use zones around it carry noise contours and height considerations that reach into residential areas nearby. If your lot is on that side of Dover, that is a question to settle early rather than at permit review. We cover it on the Dover page below.
Towns
Where we build in Kent
Kent County is the middle of the state and the easy half of our range. Dover is about fifty minutes from our Millsboro office, Milford closer to thirty, and nothing in the county is more than about an hour and ten.
The rest of Delaware
We build in all three counties. See New Castle County and Sussex County, the full service area list, or go back to the homepage for completed work and how we price a build.
Thinking about building in Kent County?
Send us the parcel number and we will tell you what we find before you spend anything. Zoning district, sewer or septic, who reviews it, and whether the lot will take the house you have in mind.