We are considering moving within Arlington and possibly into a new build. Most likely a spec house to be purchased near or after completion.
Do you have recommendations of builders to use or ones to avoid? For those who purchased from a builder, did you use a realtor? |
BCN is the way to go if it’s in your budget. We did not use a realtor. |
MR Custom Homes builds beautiful houses and has a lot going up in Arlington |
BCN has a volume business. If you just want a spec home or a home where you can pick a few finishes without being confronted with an overwhelming amount of decisions, they are probably the best choice. |
Thank you. Any thoughts on Classic Cottages, Beaconcrest, or Enhanced Homes. |
The ones that tend to be better built/reviewed are MR, Spring Street, Cherry Hill Custom Homes.
Beaconcrest, Classic Cottages, BCN tend to be more in the middle, with mixed reviews. Evergreene tends to have much more mixed experiences. Bode is popping up everywhere, but haven't heard much about them. And there's a few smaller builders as well. |
The sales lady at beaconcrest is a pill. Very difficult to work with, like does she want to make a sale?? |
We bought a Beaconcrest home. I wouldn't go so far to say its shit craftmanship, but I also wouldn't recommend it to a friend. |
We built with MR and it was a great experience and we've been very happy with the house after living in it for about 2 years. We did go with a realtor, mostly because we didn't realize we'd be buying new construction when we started looking.
Enhanced was really unimpressive when they did a renovation on our previous house. Used materials not suited for the job, didn't take responsibility, ultimately ghosted us. Would not recommend. |
Stay away from BeaconCrest. Others are mid grade |
MR and Spring Street for sure. |
We bought a Spring Street house and used an agent who was horrible. The builder’s agent saved us in many ways and did everything for us. She even told us about a great program for our kids at the local school. If you buy a Spring Street you may not need an agent. |
OP here, summarizing the feedback so far:
Seems like M-R, Cherry Hill, and Spring Street have the best reviews and that confirms what I have heard. They seem to be building some of the larger and more expensive homes. BCN is maybe in above group or perhaps a notch below with Classic Cottages? Not much good has been said about Beaconcrest unfortunately. To the person who used Enhanced for a home renovation, how long ago was that? They are building on some lots in a location we are interested in. Re: realtor, it seems like easy money for them on a new build. I can’t imagine they are providing 40-50k (2% commission on a 2-2.5 mil house) of value on a new build. |
BCNs craftsmanship is way above classic cottages! We went with classic, and although we do love our home, it’s not the same quality of craftsmanship I see in my friends with BCN homes. The other thing about classic is they seem to rush at the very end, so we had to have people coming back for months to finish/fix things. It’s the same with two other families that we know who went was classic as well. |
Our project was about 5 years ago and the subsequent problems went on for about 12-18 months after that. Back when they were more focused on remodeling and roofing. We liked working with them on the design/build, things were on schedule, we had a great rapport with the owner, we thought we were happy with the finished product, and then we started to have trouble. They pretended to care about remediating it and made some half-hearted attempts, but became unresponsive when the issues weren't resolved. I actually raved about them to friends and neighbors in the beginning, but we ultimately learned they'd cut corners and used wrong materials for the job which resulted in a bunch of issues. Compared to a house build, our addition was relatively small - I can't imagine having these kinds of issues on the scale of a whole house. |