These two houses sit side by side on Rosebriar Avenue in the Green Hill section of South Kingstown, a popular vacation home community that borders the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

Surrounded by a sandy ocean beach, two salt ponds and the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge, Green Hill in South Kingstown is a popular yet private vacation home community.

Although public access to the shoreline is guaranteed by law, there is little public parking at Green Hill Beach, and private beach clubs and residences lay claim to most of the waterfront property in the neighborhood.

In addition to pricey oceanfront real estate, the neighborhood includes many residences with water views of Green Hill Pond, a salt pond that is also the site of a boat launch owned by the Green Hill Civic Association.

Joe Tenori, a real estate agent with Scotti & Associates, said the association, which also acts as a neighborhood “watchdog” group, also operates tennis courts and a private beach with a lifeguard at the pond.

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Tenori has lived in Green Hill since 1993; before that, he had been a longtime resident of the East Side of Providence. He said he and his wife bought their Green Hill residence in 1988 from his wife’s family, who had purchased it in 1962.

Many properties in Green Hill change hands in this way, Tenori said. But in recent years Tenori has also noticed a lot of transactions involving sales from families who purchased in the 1960s to new owners in their 30s and 40s.

Only “three or four” cottages in Green Hill survived the 1938 hurricane, and the neighborhood began to see a lot of development in the late 1950s, he said.

Green Hill has a number of associations and clubs; Tenori said one of them, the Green Hill Beach Club, is open to the public; dues are $1,000 a year, which gives members access to parking at the club’s lot at the beach and access to the clubhouse itself. “Right now, there’s no waiting list” to join the club, he said.

Tenori said the “the preeminent association of all” is the Hill Association at the top of Green Hill on Carpenter Drive; 88 house lots, and a 3 ½-acre property, including a private beach and parking lot at the end of Coast Guard Drive, were subdivided here from the former Carpenter dairy farm.

The neighborhood also borders the 800-acre Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge, which includes 640 acres of land and the 160-acre Trustom Pond, which is protected from shoreline development.

Tenori currently has “six or seven” listings in Green Hill. “It’s a very expensive area to buy in,” he said.

He said he sold three houses for more than $1 million each over the winter, but the mid-range market, houses priced from $600,000 to $1 million, has been harder hit by the market slump.

In January, Tenori said, he sold a two-acre oceanfront parcel with a house built in the 1970s for $2 million; and a house on Green Hill Ocean Drive recently sold for $3.8 million, he said.

One of Tenori’s listings includes two small cottages on a single lot on Rosebriar Avenue, for $699,000. The rear cottage, number 13, has only 360 square feet of living space and is in the process of being renovated. A 608-square-foot cottage, number 11, is closest to the street; it was built in 1925 but has been renovated inside. Tenori said “almost everybody in Green Hill has rented it at one time or another.”

“It’s very private here,” Tenori said. And it is even more secluded in the off-season. “Only 12 to 15 families live here year-round,” he said.

There were 17 houses listed for sale in Green Hill this month. Prices started at $295,000 for a 1972 ranch with 768 square feet of living space, two bedrooms and one bathroom, at 1811 Matunuck School House Rd., and ended at $2,195,000, for a four-bedroom stone-and-shingle contemporary built in 2005 at 115 Land N Sea Drive.

POPULATION: (South Kingstown, 2000) 27,921

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE: (South Kingstown, 2007) $355,000

INTERESTING FACT: Nearby Moonstone Beach is closed every year from April 1 to Sept. 15 to provide an undisturbed nesting habitat for piping plovers.

cdunn@projo.com