Sussex County
Custom Home Builder in Selbyville, Delaware
Selbyville sits in the far south of the county right on the Maryland line, close enough to the coastal resorts to feel their pull but far enough inland that land is still reasonably priced. It is a working town rather than a resort one, and the building work here reflects that.
- Drive from our office
- About 25 min
- Permits issued by
- Town of Selbyville
- Typical ground
- Very sandy, low water-holding capacity
- Wastewater
- Town sewer in town, septic outside
Inland pricing, coastal access
The appeal for most people buying here is the arithmetic: you are fifteen to twenty minutes from Fenwick Island and Bethany, but you are paying inland Sussex prices for the land. For a family that wants a substantial house and access to the coast rather than a beach block address, it works well.
In town, Selbyville handles its own permitting and town sewer serves the developed area. Outside, county AR-1 applies with the usual three-quarter-acre septic minimum and the 150-foot width rule on numbered roads. Route 113 runs through here and is a numbered road, which catches people looking at frontage parcels.
Sandy ground, and what that means
Southern Sussex soils are the sandiest in the state, with correspondingly low water-holding capacity. For building that is broadly good news: excavation is easy, percolation is usually strong, and gravity septic systems are often achievable where they would not be on wetter ground.
The downsides are real but manageable. Very sandy soil needs proper compaction under slabs and footings rather than an assumption that sand is self-compacting. And landscaping on this ground struggles without irrigation and soil amendment, which is worth budgeting for rather than discovering the first dry August.
Not quite the flood picture of the coast
Selbyville is inland enough that most of the town is outside the coastal flood zones that govern Fenwick and Bethany. Low ground along the ditches and tributaries that drain toward Little Assawoman Bay is a different matter, and specific parcels do carry floodplain designations.
Being outside a flood zone removes a significant cost and design constraint. It is one of the practical reasons a Selbyville build often delivers more house per dollar than the same brief ten minutes east.
The Maryland line
The state boundary runs along the south edge of town, and it is a hard line for permitting: a lot on the Maryland side is Worcester County's jurisdiction with entirely different rules, inspectors and licensing. We work in Delaware. If a parcel you are considering turns out to be south of the line we will tell you straight away rather than taking the job and figuring it out later.
Nearby towns we build in
Selbyville sits in Sussex County. We cover the rest of it too, and the main site has our completed work and how we price a build.
Thinking about building in Selbyville?
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.