Bellamy Failed Twice, Mallard Crossing Didn't: What Smithfield's New Home Pipeline Really Tells You

On February 17, 2026, the Smithfield Town Council sat through nearly three hours of public comment before voting 5-2 to deny a revised plan for the Bellamy subdivision, a proposal that would have brought more than a thousand new homes to a stretch of Wilson's Mills Road. It was the second time in about four months that the council had killed a version of that project.

Four weeks later, on March 17, the same council approved the preliminary plat for a different subdivision east of I-95 called Mallard Crossing, also sized in the thousands of units. Nobody spoke against it. The vote was unanimous.

If you're weighing a purchase in Smithfield right now, or comparing it against Clayton or another Johnston County town, those two votes matter more than any headline that lumps them together as "growth." They tell you where new-construction competition is actually going to land, and roughly when, which is a different question than how many homes get proposed.

Why Bellamy couldn't get through

Bellamy was pitched by Clayton-based Rock Tower Partners as 1,147 homes on nearly 500 acres, split between single-family lots and townhomes. The site sat close to a working hog farm that the Youngblood family has operated for more than two centuries. Under the revised plan, the subdivision's main amenity area, its pool and clubhouse, would have sat about 1,800 feet from that operation.

That proximity became the fight. The farm's attorney argued its long tenure deserved weight against a newcomer. A council member described the traffic study as raising the possibility of more than 10,000 additional daily vehicle trips on a road not built to carry that. Wilson's Mills, the neighboring town whose jurisdiction overlaps part of the site, told Smithfield the development could be "a wonderful neighborhood" in a different spot. After the second denial, the developer withdrew a related annexation request, and the project's future is genuinely uncertain rather than paused.

This is worth sitting with if you're evaluating land anywhere near an active farm operation in Smithfield's extraterritorial jurisdiction. It isn't a one-off. Council members on the planning board have flagged buffer distances, odor, and multi-generational agricultural operations as recurring friction points in other rezoning cases working through the same process.

Why Mallard Crossing sailed through

Mallard Crossing sits on land with a history. The same acreage was approved back in 2022 as Woodleaf, a 2,005-unit project from NRP Ventures that included 824 apartment units across two multifamily buildings. Woodleaf never broke ground. As the new developer put it to the council on August 5, 2025, the project failed "because it couldn't afford to happen."

A new team took over: real estate investor Mark Lyczkowski, working with Contender Development and homebuilder Ryan Homes. Their pitch was explicitly a correction of Woodleaf's math. They dropped every apartment unit, cut the townhome count by 224, and added more single-family lots instead, landing at 873 single-family homes and 454 townhomes. They also committed to funding the piece that had likely doomed the original plan: more than $10 million to extend water and sewer service under I-95 to reach the site.

The council approved that revised master plan on August 5, 2025 with no objections raised at the public hearing. The preliminary plat cleared in March 2026 at 1,326 units, a one-unit technical reduction from the amended master plan. Construction is set to begin in late 2026 or early 2027, built out in five phases through 2032.

Two projects, same council, opposite paths

There's a third data point worth noting for the same reason. The town's Local 70 mixed-use PUD, originally envisioned in the town plan as a residential and office center near the future I-42 interchange, was recommended in December 2025 planning documents to shift toward light industrial and commercial use instead. Whatever housing that parcel might have contributed is being redirected away from residential entirely.

What this means for current prices

Here's the part that should change how you read Smithfield's market data right now. Average sales prices in Smithfield rose 7.0% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025, outpacing the 2.9% increase across Johnston County as a whole. Homes in both markets were still selling in under 30 days on average during that stretch, even as days-on-market lengthened somewhat compared to a year earlier.

That's not what you'd expect if a thousand-plus new homes were about to hit the resale market. They aren't, not yet. The approved supply at Mallard Crossing doesn't start construction until late this year at the earliest, and full buildout runs to 2032. The proposal that would have added competing inventory sooner, Bellamy, has been rejected twice and has no construction timeline at all. The gap between "homes proposed" and "homes for sale" in Smithfield is currently measured in years, not months, and the geography of what eventually lands is narrower than the headline unit counts suggest.

If you're comparing new construction pricing as a benchmark, current listings give you a rough sense of where things stand. New-construction homes in Smithfield have carried a median price in the high $300,000s in recent listings, a meaningful premium over the town's broader resale median, which sat at a $339,000 median list price as of June 2026. Communities already selling include Lucas Park in the Brogden area, built by Ben Stout Construction, and the Townes at Wilson's Ridge in nearby Wilson's Mills, a D.R. Horton townhome community. Both sit closer to existing infrastructure than the contested Bellamy site, which is consistent with the pattern: projects with a clear path to water, sewer, and road capacity move, and projects without one stall.

What to do with this if you're buying, selling, or holding

If you're a buyer weighing Smithfield against Clayton or Selma on price alone, know that the new-construction wave everyone talks about is real but geographically concentrated east of I-95 and won't meaningfully compete with resale inventory until 2027 at the earliest. That's a longer runway than the "1,000+ homes coming" framing implies, and it's worth factoring into how urgently you shop right now versus how much leverage you might have in a couple of years.

If you're an investor looking at land near Wilson's Mills Road or other parcels bordering active farm operations, budget for the possibility of a multi-year approval fight rather than a quick rezoning. The Bellamy case shows a well-funded, experienced developer can lose twice on the same basic plan when a working farm and road capacity are in play.

If you already own in Smithfield and you're weighing whether to sell before more supply arrives or hold, the honest answer is that the competing inventory most likely to affect your price is still years out, and its scale depends on whether developers keep scaling back plans the way Mallard Crossing's team did, or whether more proposals meet Bellamy's fate.

If new construction is part of your search anywhere in Johnston County, it's worth understanding the process itself, including warranties, timelines, and what a builder actually owes you. We've laid that out in more detail in our guide to how new construction works for Clayton homebuyers, and the mechanics apply just as directly here.

A few common questions

Is Bellamy completely dead? Not officially. The council has rejected two versions of the plan, and the developer withdrew a related annexation request after the second denial, but no rule prevents a third attempt with a different design.

When will Mallard Crossing homes actually be available to buy? Construction is expected to start in late 2026 or early 2027, built in five phases through 2032. The earliest homes would likely reach the market a year or more after groundbreaking, not immediately.

Does the Local 70 shift away from residential use affect current housing supply? Not directly today. It removes a future source of housing that the original town plan had counted on, which narrows the field of parcels that could eventually add resale or rental competition.

Reading a market like Smithfield's takes more than a headline about proposed units. It takes knowing which projects actually have a path through the town's approval process and which ones are still fighting for one. If you're trying to time a purchase, evaluate land, or figure out what a listing near one of these projects is really worth, Enrich Realty tracks these local filings as part of how we advise clients across Johnston County. Start with a free home valuation and we'll walk you through what's actually happening in your corner of Smithfield, not just what's been proposed.