A developer is quietly building an entirely new neighborhood slated to be the largest subdivision ever created in Belfast.
Tucked west of the Belfast Municipal Airport and the Belfast Transfer Station off Lower Congress Street sits the growing Little River neighborhood that will eventually hold 48 single-family houses.
Benjamin Hooper, developer and owner of Little River Homes, began construction in 2024 and has since completed six houses, most of which buyers have already purchased and moved into.
Crews are now working on another six homes and have launched the second of the four-phase project. Ultimately, the project will take another four to five years to complete and cost an estimated $30 million, according to Hooper, who was born in Belfast.
The dozens of new homes are a stark change for Belfast, where housing is generally expensive and difficult to come by. The coastal community typically only sees 20 to 30 new units get built each year, according to Bub Fournier, director of Belfast’s planning and codes department.
“In Belfast, there have never been a lot of houses generated in any given year,” Fournier said. “We need a lot more housing, and the project at Little River Drive has a big impact.”
Low housing production coupled with the high demand Belfast saw during and since the pandemic have further tightened the region’s housing market and raised prices.
“We have a great town that people love to live in and come to, so price and demand are hard to do much about,” Fournier said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do as a state and in Belfast as well. We’re making progress, but I think everybody wishes it was a little faster.”
The homes Hooper is creating range from two to four bedrooms and can be anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 square feet, he said, but most buyers are looking for three-bedroom houses measuring roughly 1,800 square feet.
Regardless of their size, every house is ranch-style with an attached two-car garage and other high-end elements, such as granite countertops.
The homes are also designed to be energy efficient and low maintenance. This means each one has upgraded insulation, radiant floor heating and heat pumps, and every roof is built to hold solar panels, Hooper said. Buyers can pay an additional fee to have panels installed and have a home upgraded to net-zero, meaning the house produces as much energy as it uses.
Asking prices for the properties can be anywhere from $500,000 to more than $700,000, Hooper said. Other homes in the neighborhood sold for under $650,000 to nearly $730,000, Zillow records show. Another recently completed house in the development is on the market with a $634,000 price tag.
While Hooper knows the asking prices on his homes likely put them out of reach for young families earning a modest income, he hopes the additional housing helps stabilize the local real estate market.
The new houses have been popular with older adults looking for a place to downsize and age comfortably. This means the larger homes they were living in became available for younger families in need of more space.
The project didn’t receive pushback from residents when Hooper sought local approval, unlike other large housing developments planned in idyllic coastal communities. Both Hooper and Fournier credited that to the development’s more rural location and preserved greenspace.
“The only reason I was able to build this is because I don’t have any neighbors,” Hooper said.
The project sits on 100 acres that were previously undeveloped, but Hooper gave 35 acres back to the city to preserve wetland and preexisting walking trails.
Additionally, the new neighborhood sits outside the Route 1 bypass that snakes around downtown Belfast and denser neighborhoods. The land within the bypass is more expensive and developments planned in that area tend to draw more scrutiny from residents, Hooper said.
Hooper owns another 65 acres within Belfast’s Route 1 bypass that he initially hoped to create apartments on, but hasn’t yet found a way to build them at a price low enough to not require astronomical rents once finished.
He would like to create more housing for “the missing middle,” meaning people who earn 80% to 120% of area median income, as that restricts them from qualifying for housing assistance even though they often can’t afford a market rate property.
But the rising cost of labor, construction materials, land, engineering work and even permit applications means developers must charge high rent or purchase prices when the project is finished to make any profit, Hooper said.
For example, Hooper said the applications alone for local and state permits for his Belfast development cost $40,000.
“The only way you can pencil it out is to build high-end housing,” Hooper said. “It’s the only way to cover high building and engineering costs.”