Aaron Cowdin says, "Our project was a gut remodel of our two level San Francisco Sunset tract home, including the creation of living space out of the unfinished lower level/garage.Before we started working with Realty Builders we had almost given up on being able to remodel our home. We had wasted money working with a design and build firm to get an unworkable design far outside of our budget. We decided to take our project to general contractors and see if anyone thought our plan could be executed, at least in part, for a better price.Some contractors didnt even show up. Some looked at our plans, gave us wildly different quotes, positive and negative, but it just seemed like another job to them. The moment that Victor walked into our home and talked with us about our project, I knew he was interested in more than just a job. He walked through every room and all around the exterior, we talked about the design we had paid for, we talked about how we lived and what we wanted from our remodel. Even at the first meeting he was riffing on our design, walking through ideas, talking about potential issues and how to solve them.A week later, Victor said something that sealed the deal for me. He said, Your design is not good. I can build it for you, but you will end up with a house of depressing little boxes. I want to make a house that you will love. He showed us that he had completely thrown out the original design options and created something new, himself.After many months of engineering, demolition, permitting, construction, material shopping, designs, etc. I am writing this from the home that Victor designed and his crew built. He was 100% right. We love our home. It is bright, airy, built for both entertaining and private spaces, organically connecting both the main floor and our garage level now converted to wonderful living space.Realty worked hard to stick to the contracted price, and for all known items, they did exactly that. Because we were remodeling an old San Francisco home, of course there were surprises and extra options. Each time a surprise came, or an optional change came up, Realty let us know about the change and gave us multiple options with various prices for those options. So while we went somewhat into extra budget, we had a lot of choices in how to meet surprises and how to pay for them.I know nothing about construction, but friends and family who do would often come by the house during construction and comment on the high quality of the work being done. When I was present for inspections, I often heard the inspector make off hand positive comments about the quality of the work. Generally we breezed through inspections for this reason.When there were issues, Realty fixed them. When there were problems, Realty would address them. When some of our subcontractors failed, Realty stepped up and dealt with the failures. We are very satisfied and will work with Realty again."See more
