Low Quality, Low Integrity, High Pressure to Sign final Contract BEFORE final plans were approved, High Markup. Terrible experience with Brown Haven from the beginning. - I took the final plans to an outside architect before signing off. She showed me that there was a deck that was too small to be usable, too small even to stand on. She showed me the poor quality of trusses used which would make it cheaper to build but also make it impossible to ever use my attic space in the future, she showed me unsightly retaining walls and pillars that were the cheap way to manage water runoff and not industry standard. (Low Quality) - Eventhough my outside architect discovered several critical problems with the plans, Brown Haven wanted me to sign the final contract before these problems were fixed. They told me that this was their process and they "wouldn't change the process for me". Then threatened not to honor the very high land improvement estimate if I didn't sign off on the project before we had agreed on the final plans. (Low Integrity, High Pressure) - Home plans are not professionally designed (obviously). Brown Haven also does not have professionals to help you design the interior (bathroom and kitchen). They suggested that their sales person could design my bathroom! They rushed the design process several times because Brown Haven doesn't care about building the house you want, they just want to start building. (Low Quality) - Refused to participate in site evaluation for the build unless I had purchased the land- this makes no sense. Anyone looking to build is going to want to go through an extensive process of evaluating each potential lot and understanding the land improvement costs for each option. Brown Haven refused. (Low Integrity) - Then, Brown Haven underestimated the site improvement cost for the lot I did buy by over 100K! (Low Integrity) - Added an additional 30K fuel surcharge?? (Low Integrity) - Project manager hit on me for several months. Turns out that he's married. I suggested couples therapy, they seem to be doing better now. (Low Integrity) -Location manager lost interest in the project after stating that he had just built the same floor plan but with fewer additions and mine was going to be "better". I offered to share my home plan with him and encouraged him to build the exact same house for himself, if he wanted. That didn't help. My story: He didn't like a single woman building a "better" house than his! -Low Quality you can feel! I visited several of Brown Haven's build sites that were under construction to get a feel for their work. The homes felt like doll houses with thin walls and cheap materials. I'm not a contractor but the cheap, flimsy construction of these homes was obvious to me. Ultimately, Brown Haven does not care about you or your investment. They want to build the next cheap house at a huge mark up to you and they will pressure you to sign on the dotted line, even if they know there are huge problems with their construction plans. read more

Brown Haven just finished up on our house at Lake James. The Asheville office did a great job. We broke ground in March and finished up in late October. We finished on budget and very close to the original timeline. We customized almost every aspect of our home. The pictures speak for themselves. read more

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loved the process from start to finish. the communication was great. Quality build and beautiful homes.

Sales and design staff was tremendous. Communication started lacking as the build began. Project manager had several shortcomings understating our build and constantly asked us questions as the process proceeded all while the questions could have been answered by plans or design manual. Numerous quality issues with the home. AC was installed incorrectly, basement was flooded for months after numerous demands to dry it in during the build, vapor barrier wasn't installed correctly, numerous plumbing leaks, gutters had to be worked on 4 times, electrical outlets either missed or not correctly hooked up, poor tile work, shower enclosure was installed twice and still unacceptable, it goes on and on. They perform warranty work in house by using their staff (project manager and general manager) vs. the sub or vendor who did the work. The warranty work performed left water issues, paint issues, drainage/driveway issues, ect... all due to the fact they tried to save costs. We've spent thousands right after closing to correct issues we simply weren't happy with, it simply wasn't worth the fight to spend day after day waiting on them to show up to only piece meal repairs and have to come back again and again. If you do contract with them, check your contract and understand it thoroughly. We had to make a payment at 95% completion (progress payment), yet they weren't 95% complete. No bathroom fixtures, flooring, missing windows, paint not complete, no appliances onsite, AC units incomplete, grading not finished, ect.... When you question how they are 95% complete, they respond with a notice stating they are stopping construction until they are paid. Not a good feeling and trust was lost with us at that point. Overall we love our home and it's appearance with the design choices we made. We lost trust and confidence with the process which could have been avoided with proper communication and correct repairs made before and after closing. read more

Though only in Design and Planning stages, Ethan and the BH Team have been actively engaged and helpful all along. From design compatibility to comparative analysis, build site design, pricing estimates, desired vs practicality and cost comparisons of add-on options have all been very helpful along the way. Plenty of patience and happy to research and get back, they've gone out of their way to assist in the design and planning process. read more

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Update: Brown Haven stepped up and made good on helping us concrete the driveway. We love our new home and can't wait to move in! I want to be very clear: We are head-over-heels in love with the house itself. For the price, the workmanship is outstanding. Matt Bair and the crew were very responsive to issues that crept up during the build (one was pretty massive; DM me for more information). Bottom line: we can't wait to move in. And that's where this review begins. We'd love to move in, but we can't. The slope of the gravel driveway - that slopes down toward the house, mind you - is so steep that we're afraid we can't get a moving truck down to the house and then get it back out. After our final walkthrough, we *almost* couldn't get out of the driveway. Our tires merely spun in the gravel. After two attempts, we finally found enough purchase to lurch out into the road. Hence, our fear that if our Highlander almost didn't make it out, a U-Haul doesn't stand a chance. You see, Brown Haven will only provide a gravel driveway, and that's fine. This was (initially) no big deal to us; we figured we'd pave/concrete sometime in the distant future. During the build, we raised concerns about the slope of the driveway, but were told that "once gravel is laid down, it won't be an issue." Well, here we are. Matt, our project manager, was there the day we almost didn't make it out. Later, we informed Matt that we can't move in because we're afraid the moving truck will get stuck in the driveway. His response was to refer us to paving and concrete vendors. I don't want to paint Matt as the bad guy here; he is following Brown Haven protocol. We are disappointed that Brown Haven didn't contact us to find out how they could help us out in this situation *that they created*. We feel that they bear the responsibility of providing us with reasonable access to the house that they built for us. TL;DR: Brown Haven built a lovely house that we can't access. We're now forced to contend with the additional expense of paving the driveway just so we can move in. Update: We spoke with Matt Bair, Project Manager, and Cory Dunning, GM of the Brown Haven Asheville office, yesterday, and they are unwilling to help us remediate the situation beyond providing a few paving and/or concrete vendors to fix the driveway. As mentioned in the first update (below), Matt had already done that. The paving vendor concurs that the slope is too steep to use gravel and that something must be done to make it usable. While he is going to provide me with an estimate, he doesn't think paving is the best solution; he thinks concrete is the way to go. (Brown Haven's concrete vendor ghosted me after our initial conversation). Another reputable paving vendor that we spoke with also refused to take on the job due to the extreme slope. To illustrate the point of how bad the situation is, we have now had four separate potential vendors tell us that they had difficulty leaving the driveway, having to put their trucks into 4-wheel drive mode to exit the driveway. While we understand that we built a home in the mountains, we shouldn't be required to have a 4-wheel drive vehicle just to exit the driveway. One thing from our conversation that bears mentioning. We were accused of "trying to get a free driveway out of Brown Haven". No, Brown Haven, we simply want a driveway that's reasonably and safely accessible and usable. What we have now is *not* that. read more

They promise to have someone come a different periods of time after your house is built you will never hear from the warranty program to come do these periodic check-ins and when you do have to call , for any issues you're always giving some story about how it's not under warranty etc etc and oh maybe you should have thought that. read more

Made an appointment to talk to a sales rep we did the sales rep never called us back never sent out a contractor I called to reach out one more time and he still didn't get back to us. It was if they didn't need our business. I would definitely not recommend there customer service to anyone. I'm sure if their customer service and communication was as bad as it was before we started building the house I'm glad that we didn't go through with building a house with them. read more

We researched many builders in the Western North Carolina vicinity and we ended up choosing Brown Haven to build our home. They did not disappoint!! Tom V. helped us with the sales side and Cory D. was our construction manager, both of which were a pleasure to work with. We've lived in our home for a year now and we have yet to see a nail pop or crack, which we experienced in every other home we've had built. (This was our 3rd home to design and have built and it's by far our favorite.) The design studio has so many gorgeous finishes to choose from, something for every unique style. Thank you, Brown Haven Homes for doing such a phenomenal job! read more

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building a home from brow haven I suggest you be sure you have no warranty or items to be fixed on punch list are done before you sign final agreement. they have yet to fix and complete their work after almost two years of request. they have promised and not followed through. it's now going on second year. they built a nice home but their follow up and warranty is the worst in the business and I have been in the trade for thirty years. as I see it my warranty will continue until a year after they complete all the task. don't expect help from them after closing read more

It's been two years since Brown Haven walked away from our house claiming it was complete. Rock on front of house not complete, floors sagging and noisy, cabinets damaged during installation but not repaired, slopy trimout on cabinets, crooked walls and corners, none of the interior doors would close and latch due to poor installation. Missing trim inside house, patio door does not work properly, water heater does not work properly. We spent 30K to fix issue with flooring lacking proper underpinning. Brown Haven repeatedly assured us that they would fix all items on punch list that was over a year ago and we can't get them to respond to anything. Stay away from them they and a poor quality contractor that doesn't care about their clients. read more

We have a very fine, high quality home built by Brown Haven. The general manager of our project had always been very accommodating and wonderful to work with. Our house is under warranty for 1 year. The few minor issues we've had, they have been very kind and quick to fix the issues. read more

Loved that we were able to build our dream vacation home with minimum effort from our permanent residence in Florida. We put our faith in Brown Haven's turn-key builders policy and also used one of their approved lenders that helped us make it all happen, and we are very glad that we did so. We are very pleased with our completed home and all of the detailed finishings that we chose. We had some minor issues during the build process that are as always expected and the process took slightly longer than what we had originally planned but our project manager, Chuck, was outstanding in helping us get the keys to our home by the date we wanted. Both Chuck (Project Manager) and April (Designer) were wonderful to work with. We would definitely recommend anyone looking to build a home with little to no hassle to call Brown Haven. We had a wonderful experience and hope that they will too. read more

Brown Haven will try hard to force you into a quick decision and ask you to sign a general contract within the first hour of meeting. The customer is mandated to use Brown Havens choice in lender which is highly questionable. I recommend that you find a reputable local Asheville builder that honors the traditional arrangement in keeping construction and financing separate. I went to Brown Haven with a local bank loan commitment in hand for $625,000 and yet their new policy, as of just 2 weeks ago, is to force the customer to use one of their approved lenders. read more

After doing a lot of research we decided to go with Brown Haven to build our new home. The process was very simple and the options were great! We worked with Tom to get the house designed exactly the way we wanted it. He was very patient and knowledgeable. Then Brian, our contractor, to over. Brian was amazing and he cared about every detail. Thanks to Brian and Tom our home is exactly what we wanted and is beautiful! We love it. We are almost a year in and no major problems. The little problems we did have have been fixed quickly and without any issues. We are so glad we went with Brown Haven and would suggest the Asheville office to anyone looking to build. read more

Love dealing with this company. Treat subcontractors greatly and pay in a timely manner.

Building a home and managing all the details takes time and effort and to add extra complexity, I lived 600 miles away from Asheville during the entire process. I found the Brown Haven staff very flexible, accommodating, and professional throughout the entire process. The design process of modifying the home layout and assistance we received choosing our interior fixtures from their showroom was uncomplicated and met my accelerated timelines. I learned to trust the skills, quality and integrity of my building team, Cory and Chuck, as when issues arose, which they always do when building a house, we worked together to resolve them. Best of all, I was able to stay abreast of the construction progress through the weekly, sometimes daily, pictures that they posted to my Brown Haven portal. Since we lived out of the area, and didn't have a local mortgage company, Brown Haven also referred us to Envoy Mortgage for financing. Brenda was great to work with. The financing was very straight-forward and we were able to sign e-documents and close remotely. Brown Haven was a great contracting partner. read more