Kent County
Custom Home Builder in Smyrna, Delaware
Smyrna sits at the top of Kent County on the Route 1 and Route 13 corridor, and it has been absorbing growth pushing south from the Middletown area for years. For someone building, that means lots are available and the town is used to processing new construction.
- Drive from our office
- About 1 hr 5 min
- Permits issued by
- Town of Smyrna
- Typical ground
- Flat coastal plain, sandy loam
- Wastewater
- Town sewer in developed areas
A town that is actively growing
Smyrna has expanded steadily, and the practical effect is a town department with recent experience of new residential work rather than one dusting off a process. Lot sizes in the newer developments generally run a quarter acre and up, with larger parcels available on the agricultural edges.
Growth also means annexation. Land at the town's boundary can be inside or outside the corporate limits, and which it is determines whether the town or Kent County reviews your project, and whether town sewer is available to you. On a fringe parcel that is the first question to settle.
Town or county, and what it does to your lot size
Inside the town, Smyrna's own zoning applies. Outside it, Kent County's rules do, and there the Growth Zone Overlay District matters a great deal. Inside the growth zone on public sewer, county minimums drop to around 5,000 square feet for the agricultural districts with fifty feet of frontage. Outside it, the same districts want 200 feet of frontage and 150 feet of width.
And with no public sewer, the county floor is half an acre with 150 feet of road frontage regardless of district. A rural parcel near Smyrna that looks like it might yield a compact building envelope frequently will not.
Flat ground, straightforward excavation
This is northern Kent County coastal plain: flat, sandy loams, easy digging. The same well-drained agricultural soils that make the area good farmland make it good building ground. Basements are viable on most sites subject to the water table at your particular lot.
Duck Creek and the wetland systems east toward the bay put some parcels into flood or wetland mapping. That is a delineation question on a specific lot rather than anything that characterises the town as a whole.
The distance conversation
Smyrna is a little over an hour from our office, which puts it at the comfortable end of our northern range rather than the stretch. We can be on site the same morning without it being an expedition, and our regular framing and mechanical crews will travel there without a premium.
That is worth saying plainly because it is not true everywhere. We are honest about where the distance starts to cost you something, and Smyrna is not one of those places.
Nearby towns we build in
Smyrna sits in Kent 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 Smyrna?
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.