Ground-up builds, teardown-and-rebuilds, and down-to-the-studs transformations of houses worth keeping. Three routes to the same result — a house that was designed around how you actually live, built by a company that came up building the structure.
The three routes
Almost everyone who calls us about a custom home starts in the same place: they love the town, they don't love the house. What they haven't worked out yet is which of the three routes gets them there.
The answer usually comes down to the lot, the zoning, and how much of the existing structure is genuinely worth saving. That's a site visit and an afternoon of research, not a guess — and it's the first thing we do, before anyone talks about design or budget.
An empty lot, or one you're buying. Everything from site work and foundation through to the last coat of paint, on a house that doesn't exist yet.
The Bergen County reality. You want the street, the school district and the lot — but the 1950s cape sitting on it is past saving. It comes down, and a new house goes up in its place.
The bones are good and the location is right. Strip it to the frame, fix what's wrong structurally, and rebuild the entire house around a new plan — often with an addition and a second story.
The cheapest custom home is usually the one where somebody told you the truth about the existing house on day one.
Where we come from
Being straight with you about this matters more than a marketing line: we came into custom home work through the structure.
Bavila Homes frames new construction for general contractors. When another builder has a house going up and needs the floor system, the walls, the roof and the tie-ins done right and done on schedule, we're the crew that gets called. We've stood in a lot of houses at the stage where every decision is still visible — before the drywall hides who did what.
That is an unusual road into custom home building, and it is the reason we took it. The part of a house that decides whether it still feels right in twenty years is finished long before anybody picks a paint colour — and it is the part this company came up doing.
Every trade on your project is selected, contracted, scheduled and paid through us, from people we have built alongside for years. You hold one company responsible for the whole house.
One contract · one schedule · one number to call
Route one
A lot, a set of drawings, and a house that has never existed before. The most freedom, the longest runway, and the route where the early decisions matter most.
Buildable land in Bergen County is scarce and rarely simple. What looks like an empty lot is often an empty lot for a reason — a wetlands buffer, a steep grade, an easement running through the middle of it, a septic system where the driveway wants to go. We'd rather find that in week one than after you've paid for architectural drawings.
If you're still shopping for a lot, bring us before you close. A walk of the property and a read of the town's zoning schedule costs you nothing and has talked more than one client out of a purchase that would have cost them badly.
| Best when | You have — or are buying — a vacant, subdividable or knock-down lot, and you want the plan drawn around you rather than adapted to an existing footprint. |
|---|---|
| What's included | Site work and excavation, foundation, framing, roof, windows and exterior envelope, mechanical rough-ins, insulation, drywall, interior trim and millwork, flooring, paint, and final grading. |
| Watch out for | Utility connections. Bringing water, sewer, gas and electric to a lot that has never had them is a real line item and the timing is controlled by the utility, not by us. |
| Typical duration | Design and approvals commonly run three to eight months depending on the town, then construction. Neither number is a promise — we give you a schedule for your specific project after feasibility. |
Route two
You bought the location. The house came with it.
Much of the housing stock around Westwood, Hillsdale, River Vale and Old Tappan was built between the 1940s and the 1960s for a way of living that doesn't match how anyone uses a house now — small kitchens, closed-off rooms, low ceilings, one bathroom upstairs. Some of those houses are worth reworking. Some of them are worth replacing, and pretending otherwise costs people a fortune in renovation dollars spent on a plan that was never going to work.
The advantage over a raw lot is real: utilities are already at the street and usually already at the house, the property is already an approved building lot, and the tax and title picture is clean. The constraint is that you are rebuilding inside today's zoning — setbacks, lot coverage, building height and floor area ratio all apply to the new house even though the old one may have been grandfathered.
| Best when | The lot and location are what you're buying, and the existing house is functionally obsolete, structurally compromised, or too small to expand within setbacks. |
|---|---|
| The zoning question | What you can build is decided by the town's schedule, not by what's there now. We pull it and tell you the real envelope before you commit to a design. |
| Demolition | Utility disconnects, an asbestos and lead survey where the age of the house calls for it, demolition permit, the take-down itself, and disposal. Handled as part of the contract, not left to you to arrange. |
| Variances | Sometimes the house you want needs relief from the board. That's a real timeline — months, not weeks — and we'll tell you honestly whether it's worth pursuing or whether the design should be reworked to stay by-right. |
Route three
Down to the studs, back up to a different house. The route people underestimate, and often the right one.
A lot of houses here are worth keeping. The foundation is sound, the lot placement is better than anything today's setbacks would allow, and there's a scale and a detail to the original that a new build won't reproduce. What's wrong with them is the plan, the systems and the envelope — all of which are replaceable.
This is where coming up through framing pays. Once a house is stripped, everything ever done to it is visible: the notched joists, the header that was never a header, the addition tied in with nails and optimism. Knowing what you are looking at — and what it will cost to put right — is the difference between a plan and a guess.
Second stories, dormers, rear additions and reworked rooflines usually come along with this, because once you're opening the house up, the marginal cost of getting the space right is far lower than doing it as a separate project later.
| Best when | The foundation and location are good, the floor plan is wrong, and the systems are at end of life anyway. |
|---|---|
| Usually includes | Full interior demolition, structural correction and reframing, new windows and exterior envelope, complete electrical, plumbing and HVAC, insulation, and every interior finish. |
| Why people choose it | Existing foundation and footprint, an easier path through zoning, and a shorter approval runway than a full rebuild in most towns. |
| Honest caveat | Past a certain point — when the foundation needs replacing too, or the structure has to be so heavily altered that little original framing survives — a teardown is the better value. We'll say so if that's what we find. |
Process
The same spine on all three routes. What changes is how much of the early work is demolition and how much is site work.
We walk the property, pull your town's zoning schedule, and tell you what is actually buildable — setbacks, height, lot coverage, floor area. If your idea doesn't fit the envelope, this is where you find out. Free, and occasionally the most valuable conversation in the whole project.
Before drawings, a realistic range for what you're describing, in writing, with the assumptions it rests on. A number that turns out to be half the real cost isn't a favour to anybody.
Architectural drawings, and structural engineering where the project needs it. We work with architects we know, or with yours. We're in the room during design, which is where the expensive surprises get caught — while they're still lines on paper.
A written contract with a real scope and a real allowance schedule. Vague allowances are how a project quietly grows by twenty per cent, so we spell out what's carried for windows, cabinetry, tile, fixtures and flooring.
Building permit plus electrical, plumbing and fire sub-permits, pulled in our name. Variance or board approval where the design requires it. Municipal timelines vary enormously — some towns are weeks, some are months — and we'll give you a realistic read on yours.
Utility disconnects and take-down on a rebuild; clearing, excavation and grading on a new build. Then footings below frost depth, foundation walls, waterproofing and drainage, inspected before backfill.
Floor system, walls, roof. Then sheathing, roofing, windows, doors and housewrap, so the house is weathertight before anything that can be ruined by water goes into it. This is our crew, not a sub.
Electrical, plumbing and HVAC rough-in, then insulation and air sealing, with inspections at each stage. Nothing gets closed up before it's signed off, and everything gets photographed before it's covered.
Drywall, interior trim and millwork, cabinetry, tile, flooring, paint and fixtures. The stage where the house stops being a project and starts being a house — and where our carpentry shows.
Final inspections, CO, and a full walkthrough with you. Punch list closed before final payment, not after.
Money
We don't publish a price per square foot, because the same square foot in two different houses can differ by a factor of three and quoting an average would just be a way of setting you up for disappointment.
What we will do is tell you, early and in writing, the range your project sits in and what would move it. These are the levers that move it most:
| The site | Grade, rock, water table, access for equipment, tree removal, and how far utilities have to come. Two identical houses on two different lots are not two identical projects. |
|---|---|
| Shape & roofline | Corners, offsets, dormers and roof planes cost money. A complicated exterior is a genuine design choice with a genuine price — worth making knowingly. |
| Kitchens & baths | The two rooms that swing a budget the hardest, because they carry cabinetry, stone, tile, plumbing and appliances all in one place. |
| Windows | A large order of good windows is one of the biggest single line items in a custom house, and one of the few you feel every day for thirty years. |
| Finish level | Trim detail, millwork, flooring, hardware, fixtures. The structure of a house has a fairly narrow price range. The finishes do not. |
| Soft costs | Architectural and engineering fees, surveys, permit fees, utility connection charges, and municipal escrows. Real money, frequently left out of other people's numbers. |
Straight answers
The paperwork
On a job this size, verify all of it — ours and anyone else's you're considering.
| NJ HIC registration | #13VH06851300. New Jersey requires home improvement contractors to be registered with the Division of Consumer Affairs, and the registration is publicly verifiable. |
|---|---|
| Business registration | New Jersey Registration #1793045. |
| Insurance | General liability and workers' compensation. Certificates on request — and worth requesting from every contractor who quotes your project. |
| Permits | Pulled in our name on all permitted work. A contractor who asks you to pull the permit yourself is asking you to carry their liability. |
| Workmanship warranty | One year on labour and installation from completion. Manufacturer warranties on materials pass through to you separately, and we hand over the documentation rather than making you chase it. |
| Written contract | Required in New Jersey above a threshold amount, and standard practice for us at any size. Scope, allowances, payment schedule and change-order procedure all in writing before work starts. |
Coverage
Bergen County and the neighbouring Passaic County towns, from our shop in Westwood. Close enough that the people running your project are on site, not managing it from three counties away.
Not on the list? Call — we probably cover you. More about us →
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