Blog

I suddenly realized that 2014 marks thirty years since I built my first new home; thirty years and what a time it has been.  I wanted to write this blog about these thirty years.  I started out working for the US Navy as a Nuclear Engineer, in the engineering department of one of the local shipyards.  I was young and full of energy.  While working full time, I built my first house.  That house was in the Pine Ridge section of Virginia Beach.  I enjoyed the process so much that it wasn’t long until I built my first spec home for sale right across the street from my house.

Within a year or two, I had to make a choice between building homes for myself or staying in a very secure, nice paying job where I had already been promoted to a senior nuclear engineer.  Well obviously, I took the step and over these thirty years I have had the pleasure of building homes for so many nice families: homes for bank presidents, navy families, teachers, professors, store owners, restaurant owners, doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, pilots, celebrities, college friends, shipyard employees, real estate agents, brokers and company owners.  Virtually every business and occupation is covered by our customers.  We have built well over 1,000 homes, probably closer to two thousand, I just haven’t had the time to stop and count.  There are very few fine communities that we haven’t built at least a house or two in.  Then there are several communities with several hundred of our homes.  I have built homes for families and when the children become adults I have even on several occasions built a home for them or I have built for the young families and then for the parents.

Thing is, after all of these years, I still love what I do and find it very rewarding to have homes with my footprint on them all over Tidewater.

I can assure you that I walked every one of those houses many times during construction and take the responsibility of building a home with the deepest of responsibility.  The engineer in me forces me to analyze every issue to get the best result.  I know it frustrates my employees and subcontractors, but we really do not want to give our buyers anything but the best built home we can for the best price.  We cannot be prefect but we really do our best to make it right.

I guess I could ramble on all day but what I want to say is if you are in the market for a new home, please rest assured that if you entrust us to build it you will be treated with the utmost respect and your home will be OUR priority.  I will personally examine every phase of the construction.

I should also mention that our people are top notch.  Our production manager, Paul,  has been with me since the early 1990’s.  Mark, our framing superintendent, has been with us since 1988; first he started by framing houses and then became our framing superintendent several years later.  Jeff, our customer service superintendent, has been with us since he was 19 years old.  Michelle, our office manager, has been with us for close to 10 years now.  I could go on about all of our subcontractors, but the point is, we work as a team and everyone will be focused on customer satisfaction.  Again, we can’t be perfect but we will please 99% of our customers.

So, how do you buy a house from us?  First thing is to look at our website and go visit our model in Ashville Park.  You can also contact us directly by calling Michelle at the office; she will either direct you to our sales manager, Vickie Sessler, she has also been with me since 1987, or perhaps Michelle will direct you to me.  Once you have taken the step and we are under contract you will be in direct contact with Michelle who will lead you through the selection process and in the field, Paul will meet with you in our pre-production planning session.  The purpose of this meeting is to get you and the person that will handle the the day to day, moment by moment, construction of your home.  Together at that meeting, we will go over the plans and specs in detail to ensure that we have interpreted, in the field, what you intended for your contract to say.  This is the easiest time to resolve any issues.  Then at the end of that meeting,  you will be given our direct phone numbers and we will start construction soon after.

Now, if during construction, you decide that you need to make a change, first you will contact Paul or Michelle.  Then a change request will get written and we will evaluate the change and cost, if any, and that is presented to you sometimes the same day or within a day or two.  The house continues on very quickly and when it is delivered to you we will have a lengthy walk through where you are encouraged to look at every aspect of the house.  The house is demonstrated and any damage is noted.  We do our best to make these repairs quickly.  We recognize that certain things will happen during the first few weeks or the first year.  We will give you the procedure to get us back and we will be available for this service work.  in face, we sell every home we build with a 10 year warranty through Quality Builders Warranty.  I might add that last year we won their “Builder of Integrity Award”.

So, I hope you have the opportunity to view our model home in Ashville Park or our homes in East Beach.  Remember, our intent is to always have at least one spec home available for quick move in (30 days).  Thank you for visiting our site.

Larry Hill