Tooley Harbor is a water-access neighborhood off River Road inside Elizabeth City’s city limits — a planned community of roughly 400 homes being built out in phases, with a shared boat ramp reaching the Pasquotank River, both single-family and townhome sections, and full city utilities.
At a glance
| Location | Elizabeth City, NC 27909, inside city limits |
| Entry road | River Road |
| Home types | Single-family (277 MLS records) and townhomes (20 MLS records) |
| Single-family price range | ~$240,000–$680,000, median ~$400,000 |
| Living area | ~1,600–3,300 sq ft |
| Lot size | ~0.04–0.88 acres |
| Year built | 2007–2026; bulk of current inventory 2019–2026 |
| HOA | Mandatory on every home. $35/month ($420/year) as of 2026-08-196 — verify current fee before writing an offer; historical records show variance up to $1,672 by phase/assessment. Buyer should confirm the correct HOA management company with the seller prior to closing (see Money details) |
| Currently active or pending | ~23 listings (16 Active, 6 Active Under Contract, 1 Pending) as of this pull |
| Planned scope | ~400 total residences across 3 phases2 |
Data note: MLS figures pulled live from the SourceRE/HiveMLS feed, filtered to SubdivisionName = "Tooley Harbor", 341 historical records, all statuses, on 2026-08-19. This is a snapshot — prices and active-listing counts will drift; re-pull before treating a number here as current.
Housing stock
This is not a waterfront-lot-only community, and it isn’t landlocked either — most homes have shared water access rather than a private dock. The community’s boat ramp reaches the Pasquotank River, and several listings reference boat slips and a marina as planned or existing amenities. A real subset of lots — concentrated on Grand View Drive — are canal-front and carry their own waterfront flag in the MLS; the rest of the neighborhood sits on standard residential lots with access to the shared ramp, not private frontage. That distinction matters to a buyer: most homes here don’t come with their own dock.
The neighborhood includes a real townhome section — Spinnaker Street and Mizzen Way, roughly 20 units in MLS history, 3-bedroom/2.5-bath, priced generally below the single-family homes when sold, and some have also come up for lease rather than sale. Every one of these records names “Tooley Harbor” directly in the listing agent’s own written description (“Welcome home to Tooley Harbor,” “Brand-New 3-Bedroom Townhome in Tooley Harbor”) — confirmed against the primary listing data itself, not inferred.
Street names throughout are consistently nautical — Genoa Drive, Keel Way, Spinnaker Street, Staysail Drive, Yawl Street, Lands End Drive, Grand View Drive, Pleasant Drive, Mizzen Way — matching the “Harbor” branding. Current listings also reference named sections within the community — Cypress Bluff, St. Augustine, Charleston — which read as distinct phases or builder sub-brands rather than separate neighborhoods.
Two builders are independently confirmed as active in Tooley Harbor: D.R. Horton3 and Ryan Homes4. Some listing remarks also reference unnamed “local custom builders,” so this list may not be complete.
Nearly all homes are new or newer construction on full city utilities — water, sewer, electric, and natural gas — which several listings call out specifically as a step up from well/septic elsewhere in the county. Tankless water heaters and granite/quartz counters are the norm in the builder-grade homes, not the exception.
Money details
Every home carries a mandatory HOA. The community appears to be split across at least two, possibly three, separate HOA/POA entities, and this page states that plainly rather than picking one to name. The single-family section’s HOA is recorded on some listings as the “Tooley Harbor Homeowners Association”; the townhome section — marketed separately as “Tooley Harbor Villas” — is managed by Goodman Management Group, a Virginia/North Carolina community-management firm, phone (757) 716-7888, confirmed identically across seven independent real estate listings checked directly6. One listing for a Mizzen Way property separately names a “Mariner’s Landing Property Owner’s Association, Inc.” — whether that’s a third distinct entity, a canal/waterfront-section-specific POA, or a data-entry inconsistency on that one listing isn’t clear from what’s publicly checkable, and this page doesn’t guess. Because which entity actually governs a given home varies by section and isn’t reliably resolved from public listing data, the buyer should confirm the correct HOA management company directly with the seller prior to closing — don’t rely on this page, or any one listing, as the final word for a specific address.
As of 2026-08-19, real estate marketplace listings for currently-active homes consistently show $35/month ($420/year) as the standard fee, corroborated identically across four independent sources6 — this reconciles with MLS records showing “$420, billed annually” on many individual listings. But historical MLS records for the subdivision as a whole show real variance beyond that baseline, up to $1,672 on some records, almost certainly reflecting canal-access or amenity assessments on specific phases or sections, or the separate townhome/Villas association above. This figure carries an explicit as-of date on purpose: HOA fees change, and this page does not re-check itself on a schedule. Verify the current fee directly with the management company (link in the footnote) before quoting a number to a buyer or writing it into an offer.
The fine print
A minimum heated square footage of 2,200 sq ft applies to non-canal-front lots on Grand View Drive specifically, per two separate listing remarks for lots on that street — a real, quoted figure, but scoped to that one street, not a neighborhood-wide covenant. Check recorded covenants before repeating a minimum for any other street.
A meaningful share of homes ever listed in Tooley Harbor show as Canceled or Expired rather than Closed — consistent with a builder-driven, multi-phase, spec-and-to-be-built community where not every planned model or lot makes it to a completed sale. Not a red flag on its own, but worth setting expectations with a buyer looking at a to-be-built listing that plans can change.
School zoning is not fully consistent across sources, and this page states the disagreement rather than picking one silently. J.C. Sawyer Elementary is confirmed consistently, both in MLS records and independently on third-party listings. Middle school shows as River Road Middle School in the large majority of records, including every independently-checked listing — Elizabeth City Middle School appears in a minority of MLS records and looks like the outlier. High school zoning is genuinely less consistent: MLS records show Northeastern High School, Pasquotank County High School, Pasquotank High School, and ECP Early College High School across different listings, but every independently-checked third-party listing specifically names Pasquotank County High School — ECP Early College is a regional application/choice program, not a separate attendance boundary, so its appearance on some listings likely reflects a chosen program rather than a second zoned high school. Confirm current zoning for any specific address with Pasquotank County Schools before promising a buyer a school.
No flood zone claim is made on this page. Some individual listing remarks describe their specific lot as being in an “X flood zone” (FEMA’s lowest-risk category), but that is per-parcel agent marketing copy, not a verified FEMA panel lookup, and it is not true of every lot in the community. Flood zone status varies by parcel — check the FEMA flood map for the specific address; this is one of the highest-liability yes/no questions to get wrong in coastal NC real estate.
Location & access
Tooley Harbor is reached via River Road, which the neighborhood’s address also anchors to: 1713 River Rd, Elizabeth City, NC 27909.1 Real driving distances, computed via Google Maps from that address on 2026-08-19:
- Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City: 1.6 miles, about 4 minutes, via River Rd and Weeksville Rd
- Elizabeth City State University: 1.2 miles, about 2 minutes, via River Rd and Parkview Dr
- Downtown Elizabeth City: roughly 4.3–5.8 miles depending on route, about 9–11 minutes
- Sentara Albemarle Medical Center: 6.0 miles, about 11 minutes, via NC-344 N
Municipal sewer service to the subdivision is confirmed by the City of Elizabeth City’s own capital-projects documentation: “A pump station has been constructed that serves the complete Tooley Harbor subdivision and has been accepted by the City.”5
Travis’s read
My read: this is a great new-home community with a firm foundation behind it — real city utilities, real builders, and enough closed sales by now to give you proven comps instead of just a builder’s asking price. It might not be the right fit for everyone, but there’s something here for almost anyone, from an entry-level single-family home to a low-maintenance townhome.
Notes
- Google Maps resolves "Tooley Harbor, Elizabeth City, NC" to 1713 River Rd, Elizabeth City, NC 27909 — checked directly 2026-08-19; River Road as the entry road confirmed by broker. ↩
- Wetherington Homes ("Tooley Harbor offers 400 planned residences and is to be constructed in three phases") and The Real Estate Group ("The community contains 400 planned residences...") — two independent real estate marketing sources, checked directly, both citing the same figure. ↩
- D.R. Horton confirmed as an active builder in Tooley Harbor via three independent real estate marketplaces checked directly: Homes.com, Realtor.com, and NewHomeSource, all listing "Tooley Harbor by D.R. Horton" as a builder community. ↩
- Ryan Homes confirmed via Livabl, listing "Tooley Harbor Single-Family by Ryan Homes in Elizabeth City NC." ↩
- City of Elizabeth City capital projects update PDF (elizabethcitync.gov), dated Aug 28, 2024, confirming a pump station serving the complete Tooley Harbor subdivision, accepted by the City. ↩
- HOA fee ($35/month) and management company (Goodman Management Group, (757) 716-7888) checked directly, as of 2026-08-19, across seven independent real estate listings: Zillow ("HOA fee: $35 monthly"), Redfin ("POA monthly fee: $35... managed by Goodman Management Group"), Homes.com (×2, including phone number), The Bryant Group Real Estate ("HOA/POA Fee: $35 per month"), RE/MAX Alliance, Realtor.com, and pope-realestate.com — all independently naming the same figure and management company. Verify current status directly with Goodman Management Group at gmgva.com before quoting this fee to a buyer; this page does not re-check it on a schedule. The single-family section's separate "Tooley Harbor Homeowners Association" name and phone (559-760-1150) appeared on one Realtor.com listing for a single-family home, distinct from the townhome/Villas section's Goodman Management Group contact above — unresolved discrepancy, see the Money Details section. ↩