Artisan’s Corner: Ben Davis of Craig Builders

Here at Nest Realty, we love the businesses that help turn a house into a home. In this series, we’ll chat with the builders, architects, designers, and other artisans behind these local businesses.

In this installment of Artisan’s Corner, we sit down with Ben Davis of Craig Builders, a local building firm that’s been serving Charlottesville for more than 60 years.

Craig Builders

 

Nest Realty: Tell us about yourself! How did Craig Builders get started in Charlottesville?
Ben Davis: In the early 1900s, Sam Craig’s grandfather, Samuel Daley Craig, practiced his trade of designing and building in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1957, S. Daley Craig Jr. moved to Charlottesville to serve the expanding housing needs of UVA and Craig Builders was formally established. For the past 40-plus years, Sam Craig has guided Craig Builders as we adapt to the ever-changing local home building market.

NR: Why does Craig Builders build homes?
BD: It brings us great satisfaction to see a home come together from something that started as just an idea and a conversation with one of our customer representatives. Our family of employees is a special group of people we’ve selectively matched to specific roles within the company. We have a tight-knit group of exceptional team members who share our guiding principle of being highly productive each day. We all strive to anticipate and serve the needs of our customers exceptionally well in each of our respective roles. In addition, everyone works hard to be highly respected in the community for the work we do each day. As a small business, Craig Builders’ primary reward is witnessing the satisfaction of our customers throughout their entire building experience.

NR: What sets you apart? What makes you different from other builders?
BD: We are fortunate to have a great group of builders in the area and we encourage everyone to shop around to find the right fit for their goals. We make long term decisions since we know the importance of being here for our customers for generations to come. One big part of that is that we limit the number of homes we build each year in order to preserve our reputation for quality construction and customer service. This allows us to really focus on each customer—to provide them with the most enjoyable building experience we can.

From a technical standpoint, we still use tried and true building methods such as two by six exterior walls. We’ve also got a great energy efficiency program we call NextGen, and customers tell us they love our custom made mahogany front doors.

We serve a unique niche in that we offer a semi-custom building experience in popular communities that historically haven’t been accessible to custom builders. Our on-staff drafting team gives our customers the ability to modify our floor plans to best suit their lifestyle. We include a lot of features that would normally be an upgrade in our base price. We would like our customers to be able to upgrade if they want to, but not feel that they have to. Therefore, our base prices may appear a little higher at a surface level, but our customers find us to be a great overall value based on everything we include in each home.

We offer customers peace of mind by standing behind our homes with our unique in-house warranty. We encourage customers to ask around about our reputation, since many past customers, and Realtors, will have a “Craig Builders Story” about an example of when we’ve helped out with a home that we built many years ago. Our customers tell us that one of the reasons they choose us as their builder is their confidence that we’ll be there for them, should they need it, in the future.

Another great benefit we offer is that we provide each customer with an exact move-in date upfront in order to help each customer plan their move. We have developed a reputation for always being on time, since we want to make building a new home an enjoyable experience for each customer. Knowing an exact move-in date upfront also makes it easier for our Realtor partners to sell the home that our customers may be moving from or line up the move with the end of their current lease.

NR: What is your proudest accomplishment as a builder?
BD: It’s the small things that add up to the big accomplishments for us. For example, on every house, we ask each other if we are proud of the home we just built and the level of service we offered to this customer. If that answer isn’t yes, we get back to work until we are satisfied and look to make improvements to our process for the next customer.

We like to tell our customers that we don’t have a good reputation for quality because we are perfect and don’t ever make any mistakes. That’s an impossible standard to live up to, since like every home builder and sub-contractor, we make mistakes all the time. Unlike building a car, building a home is not a perfect process, since you may have 100-plus different specialized companies building parts of each home. Our customers choose us not because we are perfect, but because they trust that when a mistake does happen, we’ll do what is fair to make it right. It makes us very proud to be able to stand behind our work in this way and know our teammates are doing the same.

Craig Builders

NR: What upcoming projects are you most excited about?
BD: It’s an exciting time for new construction in our area. We’re really exciting about some new homesites in Old Trail Village that back to mature trees for privacy—some with mountain views! We are currently building Townes with mountain views, one level living Villas backing to trees, and a series of farmhouse inspired homes that we’re really excited about (email [email protected] for more info).

Park Lane is a brand new community located across from Claudius Crozet Park. We are the exclusive builder in this community and have introduced a series of modern farmhouse designs that have been very popular with those wanting the first choice of homesites. Our model home is under construction and will open in July.

In Belvedere, we just sold out of main level living Village Homes, but will release more homesites in the coming months once development work advances. We are down to our final Courtyard homesites, and if you haven’t seen the model at 905 Belvedere Blvd. yet, you should make a point to check it out. Our customers love the combination of natural light, one level living, and a private outdoor courtyard. We all eagerly wait for the opening of The Center at Belvedere, which is where many of our customers will make new friends and join in on their excellent program schedule.

In Glenmore, we’ve been building in a new section called “Glenmore Highlands” that has exterior yard maintenance included. The much anticipated final phase of homesites was just paved this month and customers are starting to pick out their favorites. The exterior design of Glenmore Highlands offers a great new look in an already popular and vibrant community. Nester Marc Ammons is our Glenmore expert.

Be sure to check out our website to see everywhere that we’re building currently. We also do build one to two custom homes “on your lot” per year for customers who may want to build one of our plans on their land in Albemarle County. The communities mentioned above are all available for 2020 and 2021 move-ins. We’re actively planning for 2022 and 2023 move-ins for communities that will soon break ground from a development standpoint. We are often contacted by landowners who love the look of our homes, asking if we’d be interested in guiding them on how best to develop their property.

Craig Builders

NR: What are some ways you give back/strengthen our community?
BD: We love to support local organizations in the community, and especially appreciate the folks who give their time and resources to each cause. While we wish we could support every good cause in our community, we try to support as many as we can. We especially enjoy supporting various youth programs, AHIP, and many others—on my office bookshelf right now, I’m looking at photos of little league teams, a robotics team, and PTO thank you cards from organizations we’ve supported over the years.

NR: What is your favorite part of being a builder?
BD: There are few things better than seeing the happiness of a customer when they walk through their brand new home knowing the years of enjoyment that they have ahead of them.

NR: What do you love most about the Charlottesville area?
BD: This is one of those “How much time do you have?” kinds of answers, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. Most of our company grew up here, so we are very biased in that we think Charlottesville is the one of the best places to live in the country. We love the small town feel, the quality of life the area provides, the great views, the energy from UVA, having two top notch hospitals (three including Augusta Health), and the many social opportunities to connect with the people who live here or are visiting.

We also build homes for a lot of customers moving here from somewhere else. It’s fun to hear the stories of “I went to UVA and knew I always wanted to live here one day,” or, “We came for a wedding and fell in love with the area.” A very popular trend we’ve seen recently has been grandparents moving here to be close to their new grandchildren, since it’s such a great place to raise a family.

Craig Builders

NR: What one piece of advice would you give to someone setting out on the home building journey?
BD: Make a list of all the things you want to improve about your living situation and then connect with someone who can help make those goals a reality. It’s rare that you’ll be able to get everything on your list, but it’s our goal to guide customers in prioritizing their wants and needs to get as close as possible. One great piece of advice we heard once that is very true to the customers we serve: Have you ever bought something from a store that was on sale but later wished you had paid a little bit more, or waited a little longer, to get the exact design, color, or size you really wanted? If so, keep this in mind when shopping for a new home.

Many folks we talk to will often say that they wished that they had started looking for a new home sooner so that they had time to build exactly what they wanted. Our team of customer representatives can be a great resource for anyone thinking about improving their living situation now, or in the future. Let us know how we can help!

To learn more about Craig Builders, visit https://craigbuilders.com/. Check back soon for another Artisan’s Corner profile!

Spread the love

Written by
Posted in Charlottesville
Tags: , ,
Comments closed

Comments are closed.

Join our Newsletter

×