Condo towers, filled bayside lots and rear-alley garage townhouses
Most of Ocean City's housing went up in two decades: the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 survey dates about 70 percent of its units to the 1970s and 1980s, and 46.2 percent of all units sit in buildings of 20 or more units. High Rise Row, from 94th to 118th Street, is made up entirely of buildings eight stories or taller.
West of Coastal Highway, the town's 2025 Comprehensive Plan says, much of the land under the bayside neighborhoods was created by filling the bay, then subdivided and sold as bay-front, canal or inland lots. The plan treats those bayside areas, zoned R-1 single family, as the exception to the island's mixed-use pattern, and Caine Woods, Montego Bay and Little Salisbury all sit on canals in the town's dredging program.
The same plan flags a newer building type, the rear-alley garage townhouse condominium, which has converted multiple blocks of the LC-1 commercial district. Across the bay, 85.4 percent of Ocean Pines housing is detached houses with a median build year of 1992, and mobile homes make up 9.1 percent of West Ocean City's units.
