GJ Gardner Homes Denver

We worked with GJ Gardner Denver to build a 3-car garage with a second level 1,000 sqft apartment and couldn’t be happier about how well it was built. We are renting it as an AirBnB and all of our guests comment on the beautiful finishes and attention to detail. The group at GJ Gardner were wonderful to work with and a huge help as we navigated through the permit, design, and procurement process. Our project is now more than a year old and we continued to be impressed by the quality of the build.

I've been impressed with the quality construction, beautiful finishes, and their responsiveness on the few repairs I've needed over the year.

I would recommend using a different builder. We worked with GJ Gardner Denver, specifically Dave P and Jeff V for about 10 mos. We paid them $14,000 as a deposit, but they never delivered on what turned out to be empty promises. I expect that a reputable builder would refund the deposit if they could not successfully submit plans for permit, but not GJ. The plans we paid them to develop, were rejected by the city multiple times over the course of several months. The personnel at the city office said they were truly surprised by the incompetence of this group. In addition, we would go several weeks at a time with phone calls not returned- maybe we shouldn't have been surprised, knowing that Dave P works much of the time from his house in Mexico. Our build was going to cost about $700k not including the land, but they treated us as though we were their very lowest priority (who knows, we probably were). In short- I wish we had used a different builder. We found their promises to be empty, and after 10 months of dealing with them, we had to fire them. Unfortunately that's a lot of wasted time and money. I would highly recommend you consider looking elsewhere and be very leery of anything they say. They seem like nice people, but I doubt they cared at all about us, our family, or building our home.

This builder, GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC employs business practices that are questionable at least and possibly straight out unethical. If you choose to do business with this builder, I strongly suggest that you are represented by an experienced real estate broker and also consider a real estate attorney to review any and all agreements/contracts. Here is the experience my wife and I had with this builder. First, it is important to understand that GJ Gardner Homes Denver is just a franchise name that the local builder Bulldog Renovations LLC has purchased. It gives you no assurance of a larger company that will stand behind a project and give you protections. Furthermore, this particular builder for many of its construction projects creates shell limited liability corporations (LLCs) that exist for the duration of the project. Once a project is complete and sold, the builder can dissolve the LLC which may limit your ability to get major problems addressed if you encounter any. Also because of this structure, you may negotiate on some details of a project or contract without knowing if the person negotiating is authorized to make binding decisions on behalf of the LLC in charge of the project. My wife and I had been looking to relocate to the Denver area. We have spent several months looking at properties in the Denver Highlands and Sloan’s Lake areas. Several times we viewed homes in various states of construction by GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC. We found the exterior of these homes to have an interesting exterior architecture; however the dreary, uninspiring interior design of these homes were not to our liking. In order to get the best of both, we decided we would try to work with the builder to identify a home build project in an early phase so that we might be able to select more interesting and stylish interior design elements. After meeting the GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC builder’s agent and seeing several early stage projects that they had advertised and marketed, we found one that piqued our interest. We worked with our real estate broker to establish a competitive market price. During the course of this work, the builder’s agent was not very forthcoming with information about the finishes and special features that the home would have that would impact the market price. In hindsight we probably should have walked away from the deal at that point, however we were very interested in the home. After several rounds of offers over several weeks that we made on the house, we finally agreed to a price the builder had offered and were prepared to sign the binder to lock us into the next phase of agreeing on the terms of the construction contract. We indicated to the GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC builder’s agent that we were ready to sign the binder, and were told to hold off because there were some revisions the builder needed to make. A day went by and then we got a call from our real estate broker informing us that the builder pulled the offer and no longer wanted to sell to us. I can only think of several reasons that a builder would act like this. One, they may have been using us as leverage to get a higher offer from another buyer they were working with at the time. Two, they may have just been using us to establish a minimum price for the project and use that as a benchmark to get a higher price from somebody else later in the construction. In either case I feel this business practice is questionable at least if not downright unethical. If the project was truly not yet for sale they should not be advertising/marketing it on their website and promotional materials or at the least told us up front when we started negotiations. From what I have been able to gather after the fact, this is notthe first time GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC has acted in this manner, so let the buyer beware. As I stated at the top, if you choose to do business with GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC make sure you are represented by an experienced real estate broker and even a real estate attorney to review any and all documents. Do not rely on verbal discussions or assurances. If you have specific questions or items you want to address, do this in person in writing with a person at GJ Gardner Homes Denver/Bulldog Renovations LLC who is authorized to make contractual decisions on behalf of the corporation. Most of all good luck with the process.

Great local builders, with a very personal service, they made sure our house was passive solar in design, even the eaves were built at dimensions to maximise the effectiveness of the summer and winter sun. G.J.Gardner Bairnsdale also custom designed our home at no extra cost and most importantly didn't blow our budget. On completion we were extremely happy to move into our new home, Great builder that I can highly recommend!