A Coast couple builds vibrant homes on vacant lots in Long Beach. They’re selling fast.
They’ve built a block of colorful Key West cottages and now Sandpiper Townhomes that are close enough to the beach for a water view and an easy walk to the sand and downtown.
Dale and Shelia Stennett of Long Beach — similar to HGTV couples who work as a team to renovate or build houses — have flipped houses for years.
An advantage of being flippers in South Mississippi, he says, is the amount of still vacant lots near the beach in Long Beach and West Gulfport on which to build. In the 17 years since Hurricane Katrina, many of the homes and businesses that were destroyed in that area haven’t been rebuilt.
Dale Stennett has lived 50 years in Long Beach and said he prefers to build homes along that stretch of the South Mississippi Coast.
“It’s quiet. That’s why people retire here,” he said. Some of those Long Beach retirees found the cottage row the Stennetts built on Magnolia Street the perfect fit.
The two bedroom, two bath bungalows are 1,100 to 1,200 square feet and are complete with a white picket fence.
“We couldn’t build them quick enough,” he said.
His wife, a floral designer who he said loves color, longed to paint one of the cottages lavender. The buyer wanted that color, too, he said, and it’s now the “Wildflower Cottage.” The neighboring cottages they built sport tropical colors and names like Aloha, Seabreeze, Sunshine and Palm.
Growing into townhouses
Their newest project, four townhouses under construction south of East Fifth Street in Long Beach, are nearly complete and two already sold.
Sandpiper Townhouses are the first in the new C1HD zone that allows multi-family housing on lots between Fifth Street and the beach, he said.
Each of the townhouses has a garage underneath the 1,450 square foot unit, and while the units are attached, each is deeded on an individual lot so there are no homeowner association fees.
The lot is large enough they could have crammed 10 units onto the property, Stennett said, but they chose to limit it to four, each priced at $400,000.
The townhouses were built five feet above the base flood elevation and are out of the velocity zone. The large oak trees were kept to provide shade and charm and sprinkler systems were installed to reduce the cost of insurance and allow the buyer to apply to the city to get approved for short-term rentals.
The popular beach cottage design comes with finishes like quartz countertops, high-end appliances and decks to admire the water views.
The location is the biggest selling point as they are a block from the beach and just east of Jeff Davis Avenue for an easy walk to the Town Green, the restaurants, shops, library and the parades for Cruisin’ The Coast and Mardi Gras.
More housing to come
Stennett says they have projects similar to the townhouses and more Magnolia cottages in the works
“That’s a neighborhood I wanted to build out,” he said of Magnolia Street, where they’ve already started site work on the next phase of cottages on the street just west of downtown and a few blocks from the beach.
He started classes to get a real estate license, but was encouraged to become an investor — “and I never looked back,” he said. He was working for General Electric at the time and he and his wife made $13,000 on the first flip, doing much of the work themselves.
They now have a builder and subcontractors to do the construction, he said, while they find the opportunities and do the design.
The will continue to invest in Long Beach, he said, which is gaining traction as more than a bedroom community and has “All these vacant lots.”
The new Radish restaurant opened downtown, he said, the Juicy Caboosy is coming to the area and a casino could be built on the former K-Mart site just east of the townhouses.
