Stan Powell, Broker Local. Coastal. Trusted.
(910) 274-5067 StanPowell@SeaCoastRealty.com

Your Community Guide · Calabash, Brunswick County, North Carolina

MeadowlandsCalabash, North Carolina

The kind of Calabash neighborhood that grows on you quietly — mature streets, golf and lake views, room between the houses, and the waterfront a few minutes away. Wrapped around 7,054 yards of Willard Byrd parkland golf, it holds custom brick homes, the Centex Homes-built Savannah Lakes section and a handful of remaining homesites. The important part is knowing which version of Meadowlands fits the way you actually want to live.

18holes of Willard Byrd championship golf, on site
7,054yards from the tips; five sets of tees
1,400+square feet at the low end, past 3,100 at the top
2separate clubs — the Residents' Club and the Golf Club
~5 minto the Calabash waterfront and the seafood row

Course figures per the club. Home size ranges reflect what has historically traded here, not a guarantee for any individual home.

Stan Powell, REALTOR and Broker, Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage

Stan Powell

REALTOR® · BROKER

10020 Beach Dr. SW
Calabash, NC 28467

“I wanted to create these Community Guides because every neighborhood along our coast has its own personality, history, and little details that you simply can't see in a listing search. Over the past 20 years, I've worked with many of the builders who helped bring these communities to life, and I've watched them grow from the ground up. Along the way, I've had the privilege of welcoming so many people home here. These guides are my way of sharing what makes each community different, what makes them special, and why so many people are proud to call them home.”

See Every Active Listing in Meadowlands Live MLS · updated daily

One name, four very different buying decisions

Buyers say "Meadowlands" as if it is one thing. It isn't. The original custom sections, the Savannah Lakes section Centex Homes built, the craftsman street True Homes put up on Meadowbrook Lane, and the last remaining homesites were created decades apart by completely different companies. They price, inspect and appraise differently. Pick the one that fits and I'll send you live listings.

Meadowlands community entrance on Calabash Road NW in Calabash, North Carolina
The sign at the entrance off Calabash Road NW — a wooden oval with a cardinal on it. No gate, no guardhouse, no stone monument, and two minutes from the shrimp docks.

Meadowlands does not announce itself. There is no stone monument, no resort marketing budget, and no lazy river. What it has instead is a Willard Byrd course built to Audubon International guidelines that never got carved up, streets named for meadow plants, and a price point that puts a golf-front home here at what a non-golf home costs three miles east.

That understated entrance tells you something. People don't usually choose Meadowlands because they want a neighborhood to entertain them every weekend. They choose it because the streets feel settled, the course keeps long stretches of green space open, and everyday Calabash is close enough that dinner, groceries or a run down to the waterfront never feels like a project.

What follows is how I'd sort the inventory if you were sitting across from me at my Calabash office. Each collection has its own live search attached.

Sunset over a pond and fairway at Meadowlands Golf Club in Calabash, North Carolina
Evening across one of the ponds, fairway beyond. Long stretches of open green are what you're buying into here, whether or not you ever play.
The Meadowlands Golf Club clubhouse and pro shop above the pond in Calabash NC
The golf clubhouse across the pond. The course sits at the center of all four sections — but each one was built by different people, at a different time, to a different standard.

The custom sections

The original Meadowlands
Wide street with mature hardwoods in the custom section of Meadowlands
The part new construction cannot manufacture on day one: mature trees, wider setbacks, and homes that don't repeat down the street.

The core of the neighborhood — Meadowlands Trail, Wild Oak Lane NW and the courts running off them. No national production builder touched these. Owners bought a homesite, hired a local builder and put up what they wanted, which is why you can walk three houses in a row here and find three genuinely different floor plans.

Expect all-brick and brick-front elevations, deep crawl spaces, real crown molding, Carolina rooms framed in from the start rather than bolted on later, and side or courtyard-entry garages on the wider lots. Plans run from the mid-1,500s up past 3,100 square feet. The lots are the reason people buy here — several approach half an acre, which is close to unheard of in a Brunswick County golf community at this price.

The appeal is more than brick, crown molding and lot size. These streets have had two decades to settle in. Trees have grown into the landscape, porches and Carolina rooms look out toward established yards, and the houses don't repeat every third driveway. For buyers leaving a newer production neighborhood up north, that individuality is usually what makes Meadowlands feel like a place with a history rather than a subdivision still waiting to become one.

View Custom-Section Homes Live MLS · updated daily
Home backing directly onto a fairway at Meadowlands Golf Club in Calabash NC
A golf-front lot on the custom side. Which hole and which side of the fairway you sit on changes the light, the view and the ball traffic — ask before you write.
Custom built home with stone front and covered porch on a wide lot in the custom section of Meadowlands, Calabash NC
Stone front, arched entry, a porch deep enough to use, and twenty years of landscaping filled in around it.
Typical size
1,550 – 3,100+ sq ft
Bedrooms
3 – 4, some with bonus up
Baths
2 – 3.5
Stories
Mostly one level
Garage
2-car, some side or courtyard entry
Lots
Generous; several near a half acre
Built by
Local builders, one home at a time
Amenity access
Meadowlands Residents' Club

Savannah Lakes at Meadowlands

The Centex Homes section
Brick front single family home in the Savannah Lakes section of Meadowlands
Consistent elevations and setbacks — the signature of a production section dropped inside a custom community.

This is the piece most out-of-state buyers don't realize is separate. Centex Homes developed Savannah Lakes as a planned section inside Meadowlands and built out one- and two-story collections in the range of roughly 1,400 to 2,700 square feet, three and four bedrooms.

Because it was a production section, the homes are consistent — same window packages, same framing crews, same era of mechanicals. For a lot of my relocation buyers that predictability is worth more than character; you know what you're inspecting. Split floor plans dominate, which works unusually well for buyers hosting family from up north for two weeks at a stretch. The section also reads younger than the custom streets, so you're a generation newer on roofs, HVAC and windows.

Savannah Lakes tends to make sense quickly to buyers who want the coastal move without taking on a complicated house. There's real inventory of one-level plans, two-car garages and manageable yards — the combination I hear over and over from people who want to travel, spend time at the beach, play golf, visit family, and come home to a house that's comfortable without becoming their full-time hobby.

Brick front home with a bonus room above the garage in Savannah Lakes at Meadowlands, Calabash NC
The bonus-room-above-the-garage side of the collection — brick front, front-load garage, crape myrtles grown in. Same window packages and same framing crews as its neighbors, which is exactly why you know what you're inspecting.
View Savannah Lakes Homes Live MLS · updated daily
Aerial view of the Savannah Lakes section and lakes at Meadowlands in Calabash NC
Savannah Lakes from above. Lake and fairway frontage is what buyers compete for here; interior lots trade for noticeably less.
Typical size
1,400 – 2,700 sq ft
Bedrooms
3 – 4
Baths
2 – 3
Stories
One- and two-story collections
Original builder
Centex Homes
Layout
Split-bedroom plans common
Home age
Newer than the original custom streets
Single level home with two car garage in Savannah Lakes at Meadowlands, Calabash NC
One level, two-car garage, a yard you can handle on a Saturday morning. The most-requested combination I get from relocation buyers — and there's real supply of it in this section.

The True Homes section on Meadowbrook Lane

Craftsman, 2017 onward
Streetscape of craftsman homes along Meadowbrook Lane in Meadowlands, Calabash NC
Meadowbrook Lane. A decade newer than the other streetscapes and visibly its own section — which is exactly why it should be shopped as its own section.

The newest full section of the neighborhood, and the one buyers most often don't know exists. In 2017, True Homes came into Meadowlands and built out Meadowbrook Lane with craftsman-influenced elevations — gabled porches with tapered or squared columns, shake and board accents in the gable ends, brick veneer skirting, wider trim, and covered front porches deep enough to actually sit on.

It reads differently from the rest of Meadowlands the moment you turn onto the street. The original custom homes are traditional coastal brick. Savannah Lakes is early-2000s production. Meadowbrook Lane is more than a decade newer than either, with the exterior vocabulary that took over new construction across the Carolinas in the late 2010s.

True Homes is a Carolinas builder founded in 2006 and headquartered in Monroe, just outside Charlotte. They run a coastal operation out of the Wilmington market, and that division is what covers Brunswick County — they've built in Carolina Shores, Ocean Isle, Sunset Beach, Leland and Southport as well. They describe themselves as a semi-custom builder rather than a straight production builder, and that distinction shows up here: buyers picked a plan and then personalized it through a design studio, so two homes on the same plan can differ noticeably inside. The Langley was the model plan on this street.

Craftsman style front elevation with columned porch on Meadowbrook Lane in Meadowlands, Calabash NC
The craftsman vocabulary True Homes brought in: a decorative truss in the gable, shake above the siding, stone skirting at the base, and a porch set back under the roofline. Nothing else in Meadowlands looks like this.
View Meadowbrook Lane Homes Live MLS · updated daily
Typical size
1,650 – 2,400 sq ft
Bedrooms
3 – 4
Baths
2 – 3
Stories
Mostly one level; some with bonus up
Builder
True Homes (Monroe, NC · coastal division)
Built
2017 onward
Style
Craftsman-influenced elevations
Model plan
The Langley
Common features
Screened porches, irrigation, two-car garages
Deep covered front porch on a True Homes craftsman home in Meadowlands, Calabash NC
Porches deep enough to use. A small thing that changes how a street behaves — people sit outside on Meadowbrook in a way they don't everywhere in the community.

New construction & the last homesites

Build here

Meadowlands is one of the few established golf communities in this corridor where you can still buy dirt. The remaining inventory is small and shrinking — a handful of lots, several of them golf-front, scattered rather than clustered in a new phase. When a listing here says "one of the last remaining lots," that is usually accurate rather than promotional.

There's something unusual about building a new home inside a neighborhood that already feels finished. You aren't waiting years for the trees, the neighbors and a community identity to show up around you. Here a new house can go on a golf or wooded homesite while the streets, the club, the course and the Calabash routine are already in place — new construction without living in a construction zone for the next five years.

Homes have gone up recently with local and regional builders working to-be-built plans on individual homesites. With no single production builder controlling a phase, you are not locked into one company's plan book or design center. You bring the builder — a real advantage, and also where most buyers get hurt when nobody is representing them. Before the lot goes under contract, the plan has to clear the POA's Architectural Design Standards review, and the driveway, footprint, patio and walkways all have to fit inside that lot's impervious surface limit. That is a math problem, and it is better solved before closing than after.

View Available Homesites Live MLS · updated daily
Wooded golf course homesite for sale in Meadowlands, Calabash NC
A remaining homesite backing to the course. Which way it faces, where the tree line falls and how it drains decide what this is worth — long before the slab goes down.
See Every Active Listing in Meadowlands
Recently completed new construction home in Meadowlands, Calabash NC
Recent construction on an infill lot. New homes sit beside twenty-year-old customs here — an appraisal wrinkle worth understanding going in.
Remaining lots
Limited; several golf-front
Builder choice
Open — no single production builder
Recent builders
Fox Homes and other local builders
Typical new build
~1,800 – 2,400 sq ft, one level
Approval required
Meadowlands ADS committee
Watch for
Per-lot impervious surface limits

The Residents' Club — and the golf course that isn't part of it

Meadowlands has two clubs, two buildings and two separate bills. The Residents' Club belongs to the owners and is funded by your POA dues. Meadowlands Golf Club is a public golf business. Confusing the two is the single most common mistake buyers make here.

The Meadowlands Residents' Club building and entrance sign in Calabash NC
The Residents' Club. The sign says it plainly — a private facility for homeowners and guests. This is the building your dues pay for.

I show a lot of communities in this corridor where the amenity package is the entire sales pitch: three pools, a lazy river, a resort café, and dues that reflect every bit of it. Meadowlands went the other way. One good pool, a fitness room that works, billiards, and a gathering room with a kitchen where the card groups and the social committee meet.

For a second-home buyer or a retiree on a fixed income, that math often wins. You are not paying every month for a water park your grandchildren visit twice a year.

The smaller scale is part of the appeal. A summer afternoon can mean a few hours at the pool without fighting a resort crowd; winter can mean a workout, a card game or a neighborhood gathering without leaving the community. Meadowlands isn't trying to be a cruise ship on land. It gives residents enough to be social and active, then lets Calabash, the beaches and the golf corridor provide the rest.

Pool and deck at the Meadowlands Residents' Club at sunset in Calabash NC
Enough amenity to enjoy, without turning every summer Saturday into a resort crowd. You can still find a chair here in July.
Meadowlands Residents' Club pool framed by pines and palmettos
Pines and palmettos on three sides. The pool sits in its own pocket of the community rather than out front on display.
Pond with fountain, clubhouse deck and fairway beyond at Meadowlands Golf Club in Calabash NC
The fountain pond off the clubhouse deck, fairway beyond. You don't have to play the hole to appreciate what it keeps out of your back yard: another row of rooftops.

Willard Byrd and David Johnson routed the course through meadows, hardwoods, freshwater lakes and wetland, and built it to Audubon International guidelines. Par 72, playing 5,041 to 7,054 yards across five sets of tees, 74.0 rating and 132 slope.

For a golfer, the course is the obvious reason to be here. For everybody else, it changes how the neighborhood feels. Fairways, ponds and hardwoods put breathing room between pockets of homes, and a lot of back yards look toward green instead of another row of rooftops. You don't need a tee time to appreciate that.

Which is why non-golfers buy here about as often as golfers do. An Audubon-guideline course means preserved wetland and open sightlines that a developer can't come back and fill in later — the view corridor behind your lot is protected by what it is, not by a promise.

Cart path curving along a pond beside a fairway at Meadowlands Golf Club
Cart path along the water. On a golf-front lot, which side of this you sit on decides how much passes your back yard.
Wide fairway and green with golfers putting at Meadowlands Golf Club in Calabash NC
Wide, gently rolling fairways and greens that run true. Five tee boxes keep the same hole fair for very different games.

Outdoor pool

Palm-lined pool deck at the Residents' Club. In my experience you can find a chair on a July Saturday, which is not true of every community around here.

Fitness room

On-site equipment, so you're not driving to Shallotte or Little River for a treadmill. Enough for most routines without a gym membership.

Gathering room & kitchen

Indoor social space with a kitchen, used for neighborhood events, card groups and club meetings. The heart of the social calendar here.

Billiards

Pool tables at the Residents' Club. A small thing that turns up constantly when residents describe why they like living here.

18 holes on site

Par 72, 7,054 yards from the tips down to 5,041 forward. Five tee boxes per hole means a single-digit handicap and a spouse who plays twice a month enjoy the same round.

Practice facilities

A full grass driving range — not mats — plus a putting green and a chipping and sand area, with a pro shop, snack bar and full-service bar in the golf clubhouse.

Wetland & wildlife buffers

Freshwater lakes, mature hardwoods and natural wetland run through the course corridor. Herons, deer and the rest of it come with the address.

Homes lining both sides of a fairway at dusk at Meadowlands Golf Club in Calabash NC
Homes down both sides of a fairway. This is what "golf-front" actually looks like here — wide separation, mature pines, and no two houses staring at each other across the turf.

Two clubs, two bills, two sets of rules

Living in the neighborhood does not buy you golf. Meadowlands Golf Club is open to the public, with its own memberships, rates and tee sheet, and your dues do not include greens fees. More than one buyer has come down here assuming otherwise. The upside is that people who don't play aren't subsidizing people who do — which is exactly why the dues here stay reasonable. If you do play, price the resident and annual options directly with the club before you build a budget around them.

Deck off the Meadowlands golf clubhouse overlooking the pond at sunset
The deck off the golf clubhouse, out over the water where the course comes back in. This is a public golf business — not the building your POA dues pay for.

The question everyone asks second

What the dues cover — and what the POA controls

Meadowlands runs on the low end for a golf-community address in southern Brunswick County, because the dues fund one amenity building and the common areas rather than a resort. Where this POA does have teeth is the architectural side. Both facts should shape your offer.

The quieter amenity package is part of Meadowlands' personality, but it also shows up in the budget. The trade-off is simple: fewer resort extras to pay for every month, with more responsibility left at the individual home.

Generally funded by dues

  • Residents' Club building and grounds
  • Pool and pool service
  • Fitness room and gathering room
  • Common areas and entrance landscaping
  • Street lighting
  • Association management and insurance

Not included — budget separately

  • Golf. The course is a public business with its own fees
  • Your lawn, landscaping and irrigation
  • Your roof, siding, paint and exterior upkeep
  • Termite bond and pest control
  • Trash and recycling arrangements — confirm the current setup

How it's governed

  • Architectural Design Standards, with published documentation
  • Separate applications for new construction and for modifications
  • Impervious surface limits calculated per lot
  • Rules covering pets, signs, trash storage, vehicles and exterior maintenance

Getting around

Inland enough to be quiet, close enough to matter

Meadowlands sits on the north side of Calabash, reached off Calabash Road NW at the CVS light or in from Hickman Road. That inland position is why the lots are bigger and the prices are lower — and it costs you almost nothing in drive time to the things you came here for.

Callahan's Nautical Gifts and the shops along Beach Drive in Calabash, North Carolina
Callahan's and the shops along Beach Drive. Small town, but not a thin one — people drive here from the beaches.
Waterfront restaurant deck and fresh shrimp shack on the marsh at Calabash, NC
The restaurants back onto the marsh, and the shack on the right sells what came in that morning.
Shrimp boats docked on the Calabash waterfront at sunset near Meadowlands
Five minutes changes the feel of a location. Meadowlands is inland and quiet, but this is still your hometown waterfront.
Meadowlands Trail NW street sign and meadow plant themed street names in Calabash NC
Meadowlands Trail NW. The naming convention runs to meadow and wetland plants all the way through the community — a useful tell when you're checking an address.

Calabash calls itself the seafood capital of the world and mostly gets away with it. From Meadowlands you are a few minutes from the docks, the restaurant row, groceries, a new Walmart Supercenter, the pharmacy and the practical errands that decide whether a place is livable in February and not just in July. The other advantage is the state line: North Myrtle Beach, medical specialists, an airport and big-box retail sit a short drive south, while you keep North Carolina property taxes and a Brunswick County pace.

The location works best when you picture an ordinary day instead of a vacation week. Play nine or walk the neighborhood in the morning, pick up groceries five minutes away, meet somebody for seafood on the Calabash waterfront, and still be home before the evening disappears. When family visits, Sunset Beach is close enough for an easy beach morning and North Myrtle Beach is close enough for dinner and entertainment — without having to live in the middle of either one.

The Kindred Spirit mailbox and bench in the dunes on Bird Island at Sunset Beach, North Carolina
The Kindred Spirit mailbox, out at the west end of Sunset Beach on Bird Island — a notebook in a mailbox where people leave whatever they came to say. Fifteen minutes from Meadowlands, then a mile or so on foot.
Calabash waterfront & the seafood row
~5 min
Walmart Supercenter, groceries, pharmacy, everyday errands
~5 min
Sunset Beach — the sand
~15 min
North Myrtle Beach
~20 min
Ocean Isle Beach
~25 min
Shallotte
~20 min
Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center
~25 min
Myrtle Beach International Airport
~40 min
Wilmington
~55 min
Golf courses within 15 miles
Dozens

Streets you'll see in the listings

If the street sounds like something growing in a field, you're probably inside Meadowlands. If you're cross-referencing addresses from a portal, these are in the community:

Not a complete list, and the Savannah Lakes section has streets of its own. Send me an address and I'll tell you which section it falls in and which set of documents applies to it.

If Meadowlands isn't quite the fit

Most buyers looking here are weighing two or three Calabash-area communities at once. These are the ones I'd put beside Meadowlands, and I've written up each of them the same way.

Questions I get about Meadowlands

Who tends to like Meadowlands most?

In my experience it clicks with buyers who want an established neighborhood, golf-course or natural views, useful amenities without a resort-sized dues package, and quick access to Calabash and the beaches. It's especially worth a look if you care more about the lot, the setting and everyday convenience than about having the newest amenity complex in Brunswick County. If what you want is a big social calendar built for you, I'll point you at communities in this corridor that do that better — that's a fair trade to talk through before you spend a weekend touring.

Is Meadowlands a 55+ community?

Several national retirement directories list Meadowlands and Savannah Lakes under "active adult," which leads a lot of buyers to assume it is age-restricted. It is not marketed as an age-restricted community, and the population skews retired simply because of where it is and what it costs. Age restrictions are a legal matter set by recorded covenants, so never take a directory's word for it — I'll pull the current governing documents and you can read the actual language.

Do my POA dues include golf?

No. Meadowlands Golf Club is a public course operating as a separate business, with its own greens fees, memberships and tee sheet. Your dues fund the Residents' Club and the common areas. This is the most common misunderstanding I correct with buyers relocating here, and it cuts both ways: golf costs extra, but non-golfers aren't paying for a course they never use.

What amenities does Meadowlands have?

Owners have the Meadowlands Residents' Club — an outdoor pool, a fitness room, billiards, and a gathering room with a kitchen used for neighborhood events. The 18-hole Meadowlands Golf Club sits on site but operates separately as a public course, so golf is not included in your dues. There is no lazy river, no resort café and no second pool, and the dues reflect that.

Who built which part of Meadowlands?

Four groups, across about twenty-five years. The original streets — Meadowlands Trail, Wild Oak Lane and the courts off them — were built one at a time by local custom builders. Centex Homes developed and built the Savannah Lakes section with production plans in the early-to-mid 2000s. True Homes built the craftsman homes on Meadowbrook Lane starting in 2017. And the remaining homesites are open to whatever builder you bring. Four builders means four different sets of materials, mechanicals and warranty histories under one community name.

What's the difference between Meadowlands and Savannah Lakes at Meadowlands?

Savannah Lakes is a section inside the community that Centex Homes developed and built out with one- and two-story production plans, roughly 1,400 to 2,700 square feet in three- and four-bedroom layouts. You'll see it listed both ways in the MLS — sometimes as "Meadowlands," sometimes as "Savannah Lakes at Meadowlands" — which is exactly why buyers searching portals miss homes. I search it both ways.

Can I still build a home in Meadowlands?

Yes, though the supply of homesites is small and shrinking, and several of the remaining lots are golf-front. You choose your own builder rather than being tied to a production builder's plan book. Before you buy the lot, the plan has to clear the POA's Architectural Design Standards review, and the driveway, footprint, patio and walkways all have to fit inside that lot's impervious surface limit. Better solved before closing than after.

What should I know about buying a golf-front lot or home?

Which hole and which side of the fairway you're on changes everything — morning sun versus afternoon glare, cart path traffic, and how many balls end up in your yard. A home behind a landing zone lives differently than one behind a green. I walk the hole with buyers before we write, and I'll tell you honestly when a "golf course view" is really a view of a cart path.

The custom homes are older. Should that worry me?

Not automatically, but it changes what you inspect. On a one-off home from the early 2000s I want eyes on the crawl space, the roof age and documentation, the HVAC age, the original lot grading and drainage, and whether any additions were permitted. Well-built customs from that era often outperform newer production homes on framing and materials. The variable is the individual builder.

Can I rent my home out?

Rental rules and minimum lease terms are set by the recorded governing documents and can be amended. Never assume based on a listing remark or what a neighbor did five years ago. I get the current covenants and any rental amendments in front of you before you go under contract.

How's the resale market here?

I publish a branded market snapshot for Meadowlands covering absorption rate, days on market and closed price trends by section. Ask me for the current edition — it's free and there's no obligation attached to it.

Thinking about Meadowlands?

Whether you're already watching one particular house or still trying to work out which Calabash community fits you, I'm glad to help you sort through it.

Send me the address you're considering — even if you found it on Zillow, on Realtor.com or on another agent's website. I'll tell you which section it sits in, what I know about who built it, what I'd want investigated before an offer, and how it stacks up against the other options around Calabash and Carolina Shores.

Sometimes the best first step isn't scheduling a showing. It's understanding what you're looking at.

Send me an address to look at

Stan Powell, Broker / REALTOR® · Your New Home Advisor · (910) 274-5067

Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage

Stan Powell

REALTOR®, Broker

CNE · ABR · e-PRO · CSP

Cell (910) 274-5067 Office (910) 579-8471 StanPowell@SeaCoastRealty.com

Office

10020 Beach Dr. SW
Calabash, NC 28467