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Crest Oak, Panama City (Southport), Florida

Forty-four homesites on about forty-five acres at the west end of Crooked Lane, in the Southport area of unincorporated Bay County, on the north side of North Bay across the water from Panama City. The approvals are in hand and the land is being cleared and graded right now. What does not exist yet is a homebuilder: the company on record is a land developer, the kind that installs the streets and the drainage and then sells finished lots on. So there are no floor plans, no prices and no opening date.

Two things here are worth your time. Forty-four lots on forty-five acres works out at roughly one lot per acre, which is low density by Panhandle standards and the most distinctive thing on the record. And the tract is mapped outside the special flood hazard area, which is not a given in this county.

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At a glance

Lots approved

44 single-family residential lots

Site size

About 45 acres, assembled from three parcels

Gross density

Roughly one lot per acre

Where

Southport area, unincorporated Bay County

Frontage road

West end of Crooked Lane

ZIP code

32409

Zoning

Low-density county residential, residential land use

Land

Held in fee by a land developer since 2022

State environmental permit

Issued autumn 2025, modified spring 2026

County development order

Issued spring 2026 for 44 lots

Stage

Site work under way as of autumn 2026

Recorded plat

None recorded yet

Special flood hazard area

Tract mapped outside

School district

Bay District Schools

Community development district

None of record in this county

Homebuilder

Not yet announced Get notified

Pricing

Not yet released Get notified

Floor plans

Not yet released Get notified

Lot sizes and dimensions

Not yet released Get notified

Street names

Not yet released Get notified

Homeowners association dues

Not yet released Get notified

Amenities

Not yet released Get notified

Water and sewer

Not yet established on the record Get notified

Model home

Not yet announced Get notified

First deliveries

Not yet announced Get notified

Details on this page are compiled from public entitlement records and are targets, not commitments. Pricing, floor plans, home counts, and timing have not been released by the builder and are subject to change without notice.

What is actually approved here

The county has issued a development order for a forty-four lot residential subdivision on about forty-five acres, and the state water management district has issued the environmental resource permit that authorises the stormwater and drainage work, with a later modification. Both read as issued and at the compliance stage rather than under review, which is the stage a permit reaches once the work it covers is being built rather than argued about. The land was assembled from three adjoining parcels and has been held in fee since 2022, so no purchase is waiting to close.

The zoning is one of the county's low-density residential districts with a matching residential land-use designation, the ordinary category for a rural-edge subdivision and consistent with the lot count approved.

Now the part that shapes everything else. No homebuilder has been announced. The party of record is a land developer, a company whose business is buying raw land, carrying it through entitlement, installing the infrastructure and then selling finished lots on to one or more homebuilders. That is a normal way for a Florida subdivision to get built, and it is why nothing about the houses is knowable yet. We are not naming a builder, because no evidence ties a homebuilder to this project.

Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the developer of this community or by any homebuilder later named here. Community and builder names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used for identification only. All community information on this page is compiled from public records and is subject to change.

The ground is moving

Here is what is happening on the ground right now. Current satellite imagery shows the land inside this tract being cleared and graded. A year ago the site read as continuous woodland. Today roughly half of it is bare ground, and that bare ground is not a random patch: it forms long narrow corridors cutting through blocks of remaining trees, which is what a road prism and graded lot pads look like from above. The change stops at the property line while the surrounding countryside is unchanged in the same images, and it holds across more than one clear capture.

The timing matters as much as the fact. The clearing comes after both the modified state permit and the county development order, so what is happening out there is permitted work rather than clearing that got ahead of its approvals. For a buyer that is the difference between a project being built and a project being planned.

Be clear about the limit. Imagery tells you earth is being moved. It does not tell you a schedule, and it does not tell you who will put houses on the pads. Site work also routinely pauses.

Here is the step that has not happened: no plat has recorded. A recorded plat is the document filed in the public land records that legally creates individual numbered lots, fixes their boundaries, names the streets and dedicates the rights of way. Until it records, nobody can convey you a lot. The county plat index carries no entry under this name, and the tax roll still describes all three parcels by section call with an empty subdivision field, which is the signature of unplatted land. That single fact is why lot numbers, lot sizes, street names, common areas and an amenity programme are not released rather than hidden: they do not exist yet in any form that could be published. One search note while you are looking: an established recorded subdivision sits immediately east of this tract, with its own plat and houses that have been there for years, so resale listings or long-standing addresses under a nearby name are not this project.

One lot to the acre: what low density actually buys you

Forty-four lots on about forty-five acres is roughly one lot per acre gross, and that deserves a paragraph of its own because it is unusual. Most new subdivisions in this region run four or more lots to the acre, and plenty run considerably denser. At a quarter of the typical density the character of the place is simply different: more space between houses, more of the existing canopy likely to survive between pads, and a street network carrying forty-four households rather than two hundred.

Set expectations correctly on one point, because it is the most common misreading of a density figure. Gross density counts the whole site, including the streets, the drainage and any buffers, so the lots themselves will be meaningfully smaller than an acre. How much smaller is settled at platting rather than now, so anyone telling you a lot size today is guessing. Note too that a forty-four lot community is small, and small communities rarely carry a resort amenity programme; nothing has been published here, so do not assume a clubhouse or a pool.

Flood mapping, wind and the Bay County insurance picture

The tract is mapped outside the special flood hazard area, tested across the whole property rather than at a single point. In this county that is a real distinction and not a formality: a great deal of Bay County land near the bay, the bayous and the creeks is inside the mapped area.

Be precise about what it buys. In practice it generally means a mortgage lender will not require you to carry a flood policy, a straightforward saving on an escrow payment. It is a statement about the one percent annual chance flood, a statistical line rather than a promise, and it says little about heavy-rainfall flooding, which here is governed by the permitted stormwater system being built now. Mapping also gets revised. Outside the mapped area makes flood coverage optional and inexpensive, which is different from unnecessary.

Wind is the bigger number on a Panhandle policy, and anyone buying in Bay County should understand why the market here is what it is. Hurricane Michael came ashore in this county in October 2018 as one of the strongest storms to hit the continental United States, and the rebuild has shaped everything since: construction costs, contractor availability, roof ages across the existing housing stock, and insurance pricing and appetite.

The practical upshot is that buying new is the strongest lever you have on that cost. A house built to the current wind code, with a new roof, documented roof-to-wall connections and impact-rated or shuttered openings, is precisely what a wind-mitigation inspection credits, and roof age is the single biggest driver of premium on older Panhandle housing. Get a real quote on a specific plan and lot rather than an area average, and ask what the named-storm deductible is, because it is normally a percentage of insured value rather than a flat sum.

The cost stack: taxes, utilities and district assessments

On property taxes, the number you want does not exist yet. The land sits on the roll as large undeveloped parcels, so its present assessment tells you nothing useful about a finished house. Your bill is calculated on the completed home, and the first full tax year on new construction typically jumps hard from whatever the raw land was carrying. Because this site is unincorporated county rather than inside a city, there is no municipal millage on top.

Florida's homestead exemption and the assessment cap that goes with it are statewide, set by state law rather than by Bay County, and they do not come with the house. They begin after you own and occupy the home as your permanent residence and file for them, so the first year is usually the unsheltered one. If you are moving from another Florida homestead, ask about carrying your accumulated assessment benefit across: it is portable and routinely left on the table.

On district assessments there is good news, stated as what the record shows rather than as a guarantee. The state's current accounting of non- ad-valorem levies by county lists no named community development district anywhere in Bay County, and these parcels sit in the ordinary unincorporated county tax district, so no district bond assessment is expected here. That is worth more than it sounds if you have shopped new construction elsewhere in Florida, where such an assessment can add well over a thousand dollars a year for decades and never appears in the advertised price.

One cost item is genuinely unresolved and we are not going to guess at it. Whether the finished lots will be served by county central water and sewer or by a private well and a septic system is not established on the public record: the parcel record carries no service-area designation for any of the three parcels. That is normal for unplatted land, and a real open question on this side of the bay, where both arrangements are common. It is not a small difference. Central service means connection fees and a monthly utility bill; a well and septic shift cost into the purchase price, put a drainfield on your lot and bring their own maintenance horizon.

Southport, North Bay, and getting around

Southport is not a town and has no city government. It is the unincorporated stretch of Bay County on the north shore of North Bay, and that geography explains most of what it is like to live there. The bay sits between you and Panama City, so the connection south is by way of State Road 77, the north-south spine that carries this side of the county across the water and into the city. On the ground the surrounding fabric is large-lot rural residential and working timber, with established subdivisions filling in along the paved roads.

Be realistic about the tradeoff, because it is the whole decision. Shopping, services and restaurants cluster down in Lynn Haven and Panama City rather than within walking distance, and you will drive for most things. What you get in exchange is land, quiet, tree cover and a price per acre the built-up side of the bay does not offer. Drainage from this area runs into the Deer Point Lake system, and Deer Point Lake is both the recreational centre of gravity for the north-bay communities and the county's drinking water reservoir.

The employment picture is worth understanding before you commit to a commute. Panama City proper carries the hospitals, the county government, the port and the downtown, and Panama City Beach to the southwest is the region's tourism engine, with a seasonal rhythm that affects traffic as much as jobs. East of the city, Tyndall Air Force Base is a major employer and the site of a very large post-hurricane reconstruction programme. A Southport address puts you north of all of it: further out, with more land than any of the in-town alternatives.

We are not going to publish drive times we have not measured. The right move, and it costs you one morning, is to drive your own commute in both directions at the hour you would really make it.

See the cross streets on a map

Schools

Bay District Schools serves the entire county, so the district is certain. The attendance zones over this tract read as Southport Elementary for the early years, and Deane Bozeman for middle and high school. Deane Bozeman is a combined campus serving the north-bay communities and carries a strong local reputation, which is a real part of why families look at this side of the water. We are not going to quote a rating or a test score, because the honest version of that claim is that it is well regarded locally.

Two caveats, and they matter. Attendance zones are reassignable, and districts redraw them when growth demands it. And these lots have no addresses yet, because no plat has recorded, so nothing can be run through the district's own address lookup today. Once a lot has a real address, check it there yourself, and if a particular school is the reason you are buying, make it a written condition of the contract.

What buying before a plat records actually involves

A lot development is two businesses stacked on each other. The first is happening now: a developer carries the entitlement risk, installs the streets, the drainage and the utilities, gets the plat recorded and ends up owning finished lots. The second begins when those lots are sold on to a homebuilder who puts houses on them. Nothing about the second has been decided here, so nobody can price a house for you, nobody can show you a plan, and lot lines can still shift when the plat is drawn.

What that leaves you is a way to watch it, and the sequence here is predictable. The next public milestone is the plat recording, which converts the site into numbered lots with street names and addresses. Lots then usually begin appearing in a builder's name on the tax roll in blocks rather than singly. Then the first building permits get pulled, typically a model and one or two speculative homes, and a sales presence follows. Knowing early buys you time to think rather than urgency.

The honest tradeoffs

Start with the biggest, which is uncertainty about the builder. With no homebuilder named, you cannot evaluate the thing you would actually be buying. Construction quality, the standard specification, how warranty claims get administered and how a company behaves when a closing slips are the substance of a new-home purchase, and none of it is knowable here yet. If you need to be under contract within a few months, this is not your community.

Second, a site being graded today is a site with construction traffic on it for a long time, and an early buyer lives beside the work. Third, there is no published amenity programme and at forty-four lots you should not expect one. Fourth, the utility question above is open, and that kind of open question changes a monthly budget. Fifth, Southport is a drive from almost everything, which is the price of the land and the quiet.

And a general one. Everything here is a snapshot of a record that moves. Approvals get modified, lot counts change during platting, plats record later than anyone expected, and timing slips. The facts on this page are what the public record showed as of early November 2026.

Buying new construction with someone on your side

There is no sales office here and no model home, so your first contact with this community will almost certainly be a registration rather than a visit. That is where the representation question quietly gets decided, and most people do not realise it until afterwards.

The person at the desk in a builder's sales centre works for the builder. They are usually knowledgeable and pleasant, and they are also paid by, and loyal to, the party on the other side of your contract. If you walk in alone, nobody in the room is reading the contract on your behalf. You are entitled to your own representation, and on new construction it generally costs a buyer nothing extra, because builders budget for a buyer's agent whether or not you bring one. Where people lose it is timing: most builders will only recognise your agent if that agent is named at your very first registration, and a Saturday visit to a model is a registration.

That matters more than usual at this stage, because a pre-construction contract is not a resale contract and the negotiating room sits in unfamiliar places. The questions worth having someone ask for you: how the deposit is held, when it goes hard, and what happens to it if the schedule slips or the plat changes the lot you selected; whether the price is locked against cost escalation; what the builder may substitute for specified materials; what the structural warranty covers as distinct from the one-year fit-and-finish cover; whether you may bring your own inspector before closing; and, on this site, what the utility arrangement is and who pays to connect.

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