Our guide to finding the Best Home Builders in California

When you’re building a new house, choosing the right home builder is absolutely critical to your final outcome.

You want the style to reflect your architect’s drawings and the final product to be of significant quality (to reduce future maintenance costs). Perhaps one of the most overlooked factors is finishing the construction on time, let alone on budget.

Time is money and delays can be very costly, especially if you’re leasing another property or paying finance costs prior to your move in date.

You want to find custom home builders in California who you can trust from start to finish — ones who are licensed, have good reviews, and  a solid history of successful projects.

Our proprietary California home builder matching and recommendation service will give you the most accurate list of custom home builders who specialize in exactly what you’re after. Failing that, you can browse through a list of the top builders in the great state of CA below.

The Largest Home Builders in the USA

If you’re after a bespoke home design, these aren’t necessarily the companies you want to contract. However, if you’re after a list of the industry heavy-hitters, this is accurate. Most of the players at the top of this list are publicly traded companies. This 10 ten list is ranked in order from highest revenue to lowest.

Top 10 home builders in the USA by Revenue

This 10 ten list is ranked in order from highest revenue to lowest for the year of 2016. Data courtesy of Probuilder.com

1 – DR Horton Inc $12,239,900,000

2 – Lenna Corp. $9,558,517,000

3 – PulteGroup Inc. $7,451,314,931

4 – CalAtlantic Homes $6,354,869,000

5 – NVR Inc. $5,709,223,000

6 – Toll Brothers $5,279,508,453

7 – KB Home $3,575,548,000

8 – Taylor Morrison $3,425,521,000

9 – Meritage Homes Corp. $3,003,426,000

10 – Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. $2,733,741,000

The Home Builder Market in California

Historically speaking, the housing market is one of the most significant indicators of the overall economy’s health and the same could be said for the state of California. Growing demand for home buying is reflective of rising consumer confidence.

Custom Home Builders vs Tract Home Builders

There’s a large difference between a tract home building company who construct many similar houses at a time versus a smaller custom home building company who specialize in single custom home projects.

If you’re a landowner and need just one or two houses built for yourself the above list is not a suitable starting point.

You need a tailored list of general contractors, who are familiar with your particular area and all the associated local regulations. We can quickly send you a tailored list sent to you via our homebuilder concierge service if you fill out a few basic details online.

How we determine which builders are better than others

For the purposes of this discussion, we will ignore the tract home builders and focus just on the small to medium custom home builders in Northern and Southern California.

• Reviews: we’d consider looking at customer reviews closely, however they only tell part of the story. Online customer reviews can easily be manipulated by marketing companies to give a false appearance.
• Permit Activity: At BuildZoom we analyze Government (permit) and building industry data in order to lend a less opinionated view to the bigger picture. For example, if a new home builder has a handful of reviews, but we detect that they are building one luxury home per week in suburbs full of discerning residents, then this company would appear higher on our list.  Customer reviews by themselves will only tell part of the picture.
• Licenses: It is true that in some states, a contractor may not need a license, however in most states (especially with home builders) a license is required in a particular category. License data will quickly reveal whether they are a specialist in a particular contracting area or not. For example, perhaps you a considering hiring a general contractor who has the capability to build a house for you, but a specialist licensed home builder would be a safer option.
• Responsiveness: We look at how receptive each contractor is to your particular project and how active they are at responding to new enquiries. If the contractor doesn’t do projects similar to what you are needing or isn’t responsive enough, we will simply match you with a better option to save everyone’s time.
• Industry awards: Most of the more serious firms will apply for and be awarded recognition by industry associations. These associations typically hold annual award ceremonies and can be a good indication of which contractors are consistently producing good work.

Architectural Styles and Quality Home Building

A good way to follow which building firms are producing good work is to first look at the design phrase of a new home project.

Two good websites which we’ve found which do a good job at regularly reviewing the architect scene in California are San Francisco Architects and Los Angeles Architects

Often by asking these leading Architects for recommendations on who they use for the build phase is a good indication of who the best home builders are in the local area for their particular design style. However, don’t be surprised if they don’t tell you the names of the contractors they use as this forms part of their competitive market edge.

Californian Home Builders Analysis in 2015

Back in 2015 we decided to take a closer look at the home builders driving residential growth in California, by listing those issued the most permits from California building departments in 2014.

This list considers home builders that focus on new residential construction, including both single and multifamily housing; firms that mainly focus on home remodels or repairs were omitted. The total number of building permits includes different types of projects (not just new homes). The median value however, omits permits that reference home maintenance.

After considering the top 25, a few things jumped out:

• Lennar leads the pack – With 2,538 California building permits in 2014 alone, this Miami based national home builder far exceeds its competition.
• Out-of-state home builders well represented  – 10 of the top 25 home builders are headquartered outside of California (including one in Canada). Out-of-state home builders accounted for nearly half of all building permits represented on the list.
• William Lyon Homes and Western National Builders had high median job valuations due to their focus on larger, multi-unit condos and apartments.

If you have specific questions, comments or are interested in learning more about our data, you can e-mail our data team directly

Note:  To ensure the median valuation was reflective of new construction projects, we set a lower bound for the job valuation assigned to the permit at $200,000. 

General Information About Custom Home Builders

Great home building companies need to know more than just construction as they have to supervise a bevy of subcontractors while having a good knowledge of local permit regulations. This includes building codes, zoning regulations and other inspection compliance matters.

The very best contractors also typically have a good working knowledge of all the other associated disciplines which feed into the end result. This includes interior design, landscape architecture, building architecture architecture, engineering and most importantly (but often overlooked in the contractor selection process) project management skills.

How to select the best home builders

Luckily if you use our sourcing service, we only provide you a pre-screened list of possible home builders who we know are reputable. However, if you’re just curating a list via internet research or on the word of your friends, make sure you ask some of these questions before deciding on your final choice.

1. What’s your level of experience, how many years have you been doing this?
2. How many other projects similar to this have you done before ?
3. Exactly who will be working on the project?
4. Do you directly employ the workers or just hire subcontractors?
5. Can I speak with some past customers ?
6. Show me an example of a current jobsite?
7. Can you give me the addresses of some houses you have built?
8. Are you and your employees licensed and insured?
9. Are you licensed and what exact licenses do you hold?
10. What other training and affiliations do you have?
11. How do you charge, and what does that include?
12. Can you give me a written estimate?
13. What do your services include?
14. How will I be charged for parts and materials?
15. When can your job get done?
16. What is your policy for change orders?
17. What happens when the cost exceeds the budget? What about changes to materials or labor pricing?
18. What will I need to provide?
19. Are there any important considerations or concerns you foresee with this project?
20. Do you have a planned timeline for project completion? What happens in the event that you experience delays – do you have contingencies in place?

Remember, you can quickly find custom home builders in California on BuildZoom

We will tailor the provided list based on your location, project size and scope so you’re not just trawling through meaningless lists. You can then select from our first provided list or ask for more if you find them unsuitable.

So it doesn’t matter where in California you are – Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco or Sacramento, you can easily find a great list of custom home builders, perfect for your new home build.