Highway 17 cuts Prince George in half. Drive south past the Pawleys Island town limits and you'll pass one guard gate for the Ocean section, then another for the River section a short distance later, on the opposite side of the road. Two gates, two guard shacks, two clubhouses. On paper it reads like two separate communities that happen to share a name. In practice, everyone who lives there treats it as one neighborhood split by a highway rather than a deed line.
That's mostly true. It's also where the easy version of the story stops being useful to a buyer trying to decide which lot to put an offer on.
The Same Gate Code, Almost
Prince George was platted across roughly 1,900 acres of former rice fields and hunting land along the Waccamaw Neck, with the development plan capping the community at 150 total homesites. Real estate sites that track the community put the Ocean section at around 122 of those sites, which leaves roughly 28 on the River section across the highway. Only about 600 of the 1,900 acres were ever meant to be built on. The other 1,300 stay as preserved wetland, forest, and marsh, by design rather than by accident.
The amenity access matches that shared framing. An Ocean-section owner can walk the River Clubhouse's boardwalk on a Tuesday evening. A River-section owner can spend Saturday morning at the Ocean pool or send a kid to the tennis courts. Every description of the community, from the property owners association down to individual listing agents, says the same thing: residents on either side use both sets of amenities, not just the ones closest to their own gate.
That cross access is real, and it's the reason Prince George gets marketed as one neighborhood with two water features rather than two neighborhoods that share a mailing address.
The Deed Is Where the Two Sides Split
Follow the story past "what you can use" into "what you actually own," and the two sections stop looking alike.
The Prince George Community Association's own amenities page states it plainly for River-section lots: "Each lot comes with a deeded boat slip at a well constructed marina." That word, deeded, is doing real work. A deeded slip isn't a perk extended to you as a resident. It's recorded property, tied to a specific lot, the same way an easement or a right of way is tied to a parcel. It transfers when the lot sells, and a buyer evaluating that lot is evaluating a boat slip as part of what they're purchasing, whether or not the listing photos show it.
Ocean-section lots don't carry that. Multiple listings for Ocean-side property describe the arrangement the same way: owners have the opportunity to lease a marina slip when one is available. That's a rental relationship, not a title. It depends entirely on a River-section deed holder choosing not to use their own slip, and it can end whenever that owner decides to.
Two lots priced within the same range, one on each side of the highway, can look interchangeable on a spec sheet. One of them comes with a permanent, transferable asset. The other comes with a name on a waiting list.
Why the Marina Will Never Get Bigger
The River Clubhouse marina holds 28 slips, a figure that shows up consistently across the association's own materials and in brokerage listings for River-section property. Line that up against the roughly 28 homesites estimated on the River side, out of the community's 150-lot total, and the numbers land almost exactly on top of each other. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. It suggests the marina was built to match the River section's lot count one to one, with nothing held back as lease inventory.
That's the part that explains why leasing works the way it does for everyone else. There was never a pool of extra slips set aside for Ocean-section owners or future buyers. Whatever becomes available for lease only exists because a River-section owner isn't using their deeded slip that season.
It also means this supply is closed for good. Prince George's development plan has held at 150 lots and 1,900 acres for years, with the preserved 1,300 acres never slated for construction. No future phase adds River-section homesites, and no future phase adds marina slips. Once the last River lot sells, the number of people who can ever own a deeded slip at Prince George is fixed.
Ocean Section vs. River Section, at a Glance
| Ocean Section | River Section | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary water frontage | Atlantic beachfront | Waccamaw River / Intracoastal Waterway |
| Section-specific amenities | Ocean Clubhouse, pool, tennis, basketball, volleyball, nature trails | River Clubhouse with fireplace, boardwalk, 28-slip marina |
| Approximate homesite count | About 122 | About 28 |
| Marina access | Lease, subject to availability | Deeded, conveys with the lot |
| Typical homesite size | Ranges from under an acre to over 15 acres community-wide | Association materials describe River estate lots in the 3 to 11 acre range |
Listing prices for finished homes across the community have generally run from around $750,000 to several million dollars, and vacant homesites have listed anywhere from the high $100,000s to more than $2 million, depending on water frontage and acreage. Neither range tells you, by itself, which side of that table you're looking at. Only the deed does.
What to Ask Before You Write an Offer
If you're comparing a lot or home on each side of Prince George, the amenity list won't settle the decision. These questions will:
- Ask whether a specific slip number is referenced in the plat or the deed itself, not just described verbally by a builder or seller. A deeded slip should be traceable in the paperwork.
- If the property is on the Ocean side, ask the property owners association how leasing has actually worked in recent years: how many owners are typically waiting, and how often a slip turns over.
- If you're comparing two similarly priced lots on opposite sides of the highway, treat the deeded slip as its own line item in the comparison, separate from lot size or view, the same way you'd treat a dock or a garage.
- If resale matters to you down the line, remember that a deeded slip is a fixed, non-renewable asset in a community that will never add more of them. A leased arrangement isn't.
None of this changes what makes Prince George Prince George: the scale of the lots, the preserved acreage, the rare position between an ocean and a river inside one gated tract. What it changes is how you read two lots that look the same on a spec sheet. The brochure describes a shared neighborhood. The deed describes something narrower, and it's worth knowing which one you're actually buying before you sign for it.
If you're weighing a homesite or a resale in Prince George and want someone to walk the deed language with you before you write an offer, the Taylor Keenan Team works this stretch of the Waccamaw Neck every week and can help you sort out exactly what conveys with a given lot. Start your Lowcountry search — contact our team today.
