Neighborhoods of the Holden Beach-Ocean Isle ICW Corridor
This corridor's neighborhoods are not island neighborhoods -- they're a mix of gated, marina-anchored mainland communities and one genuinely working fishing town, all sitting on the marsh and mainland side of the waterway between Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach. This page names them specifically, rather than describing the corridor in generic terms.
Seascape at Holden Plantation: The Marina Community Across From Holden Beach
Seascape at Holden Plantation sits on the mainland directly across the Intracoastal Waterway from Holden Beach, a 500-acre gated community of roughly 500 single-family home sites set among mature live oaks and pines. Its own private marina -- featuring a dockhouse, a dual boat launch, and 75 slips with water and electric service for vessels up to 55 feet -- is, per the community's own description, considered by many locally to be among the finest private marinas in Brunswick County. The community markets its location as midway between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, each roughly an hour's drive away with its own international airport. Seascape's identity is built specifically around this corridor's water access, not oceanfront proximity: it's a mainland, forested, marina-first alternative to owning directly on Holden Beach's own barrier island.
Sommersett and Ocean Isle Marina & Yacht Club: The Mainland Gateway on the Ocean Isle Beach Side
On the Ocean Isle Beach side of this corridor, Sommersett is a gated community at the literal end of Sommersett Road, where the road meets the Intracoastal Waterway. Its marina operates as Ocean Isle Marina & Yacht Club -- certified as a North Carolina Clean Marina by the state's Department of Environmental Quality in January 2024 -- and accommodates vessels up to 60 feet in length and 14 feet in beam, with 30- and 50-amp shore power, WiFi, showers, an on-site bar, on-site mechanics and detailing, and both transient and seasonal dockage. The marina's own materials describe the location as 4 miles from Shallotte Inlet and 7 miles from Little River Inlet as ocean-access routes. Community amenities at Sommersett include a boat dock, boat slip access, a clubhouse, gated entry, and RV/boat storage -- a genuinely marina-centric community identity, distinct from an oceanfront Ocean Isle Beach address.
Brick Landing Plantation: Golf and ICW Frontage on the Lockwood Folly River
Between the two islands, Brick Landing Plantation is a gated community built around an 18-hole golf course -- known locally as "The Brick" -- constructed in 1987 along the Lockwood Folly River near the Intracoastal Waterway. The community mixes single-family homes with Intracoastal Waterway-front condominiums and townhomes, and sits roughly 3 miles inland of Ocean Isle Beach's own sand, near Calabash. Brick Landing's identity combines two amenities this corridor's other communities don't pair together in quite the same way: a mature, established golf course and direct ICW/river frontage, making it a genuinely different lifestyle product than either a pure marina community or a pure golf community elsewhere in Brunswick County.
Lockwood Folly: A Gated Golf-and-Waterfront Community in Supply
Lockwood Folly, in Supply, NC, sits where the Lockwood Folly River meets the Intracoastal Waterway -- a gated community combining a golf course with a mix of custom-built single-family homes, golf-course-view homes, marsh-view properties, pond-view homes, and true waterfront lots. Amenities include a community clubhouse, a boat ramp, a swimming pool, tennis and pickleball courts, and walking trails. Documented pricing here is real and current: a median sale price of roughly $595,000 in June 2026, up from roughly $512,750 in May 2025, at an average of about $250.65 per square foot, with homes selling in an average of about 183 days. That combination of amenity breadth (golf, water, and a real community infrastructure package) and documented current pricing makes Lockwood Folly one of the more concretely quantifiable neighborhoods on this corridor.
Varnamtown: A Real, Working Fishing Town, Not a Resort Community
Varnamtown stands apart from every other named community on this corridor: it's an incorporated town (since 1988) of 603 year-round residents at the 2020 Census, sitting on the banks of the Lockwood Folly River, and it is a genuine working fishing community rather than a planned or gated development. Its history traces to around 1860, when the Varnam family, followed by the Dixon and Galloway families, settled the area and built what the town's own history describes as a community of fishermen, vessel captains, and boat builders that has endured for more than 200 years -- shrimp boats still work out of Varnamtown today. Covering 0.97 square miles, Varnamtown offers a genuinely different corridor identity than the gated marina communities around it: small, year-round, working-waterfront, and directly tied to the fishing economy this whole stretch of coast was originally built on.
What Distinguishes This Corridor's Neighborhood Mix
Taken together, this corridor's neighborhood mix -- four gated, marina- or golf-anchored mainland communities (Seascape at Holden Plantation, Sommersett, Brick Landing Plantation, and Lockwood Folly) plus one small, real, working fishing town (Varnamtown) -- is a genuinely different housing-stock story than either Holden Beach's or Ocean Isle Beach's own barrier-island neighborhoods, which are dominated by vacation-rental-oriented oceanfront and near-oceanfront homes. A buyer choosing between this corridor and either island isn't just choosing water versus no-water, or price versus price -- they're choosing between an oceanfront vacation-rental market and a mainland community/marina-lifestyle market with a genuinely different mix of amenities, tax structure, and year-round character.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: Seascape at Holden Plantation's own website (seascapeatholdenplantation.com) for community and marina scale and location description; Ocean Isle Marina & Yacht Club's own website (oceanislemarina.com), NC DEQ's January 2024 Clean Marina certification press release, and Sommersett-area real estate listings for community and marina detail; Brick Landing Plantation/POA's own site (bricklanding.org, bricklandinggolf.com, playgolfmyrtlebeach.com) for its 1987 golf course origin and housing mix; neighborhood-level real estate tracking (ezhomesearch.com, reddoorcompany.com) for Lockwood Folly's amenities and June 2026 pricing; and the Town of Varnamtown's own website and Wikipedia for its 1988 incorporation, 2020 Census population (603), c.1860 settlement history, and working shrimp-fleet identity. Facts not independently confirmed and not invented here include: current home-price ranges for Seascape, Sommersett, or Brick Landing specifically; current POA dues at any of the four gated communities; and a Varnamtown-specific current median home price. Confirm current pricing and community documentation directly with a local agent and the relevant property owners' association before making a purchase decision. Nothing on this page is real estate advice.