Custom Home Builder in Los Angeles

Inside the City of Los Angeles, the Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) reviews construction plans and approves the permit. Plans that need plan check go in online through ePlanLA. In unincorporated Los Angeles County and in the cities that contract with the County, the permit comes from the Public Works Building and Safety district office that serves the address.

If your lot sits in Beverly Hills or Malibu, the pages for those cities walk through the review there. Brentwood, Bel Air and Pacific Palisades sit inside the City of Los Angeles, with their own hillside and planning rules.

Which office your parcel answers to is the first thing I confirm. The full picture of who pulls the permit and what the inspector checks is on the permits and plan check page.

A new home that replaces an older house adds a demolition permit, the utility disconnections, and a hard look at what the old foundation and the old grading leave in the ground. State law puts demolition under the same permit rule as building. I document existing conditions before demolition, so nothing found in the ground becomes a surprise in the schedule.

Still choosing a lot? Bring me in before you close. I walk it, read its zoning, its hillside status and the street it fronts, and tell you what it will ask of a new house before you own it. Mark the build request as in escrow.

A lot that lost its house to fire is its own case, with clearance records and soils work before any design. That path is on the fire damage rebuild page.

Your architect designs the house, and your engineers design what holds it up. I join the design team early to review how the house goes together, in what order, and how the trucks reach the lot, while a change still costs a revision and nothing more. If you have no architect yet, the first conversation gives you the brief to hire one.

1. Lot reading and site walk. Zoning, hillside status, street frontage and permit history first, then a walk of the lot with you.

2. Design team. Your architect and engineers draw the house and its structure. I review it for buildability, sequence and access.

3. Approvals and plan check. Any planning approval the lot needs comes first, then plan check. I work the corrections with your architect and keep the submittal complete. I never promise approval dates, because the agency sets them.

4. Written scope and agreement. You approve both before any work starts. Each payment stage ties to a named milestone you can stand on site and verify. How payment works lays out the stages.

5. Build. Demolition where needed, then foundation, framing, roof and envelope, systems, insulation, drywall and finishes, each with its inspection. Licensed trades handle the specialty work. You get site photos as the work moves, and any condition that changes the scope reaches you in writing the day I find it.

6. Final inspection and handover. The building department signs off, we walk the house together, close the punch list, and I hand over the documents for everything we built, the one-year workmanship warranty with them.

Look up license 1113888 on the Contractors State License Board website before the first walk. Clients rate our work 5.0 stars on average across 88 client reviews (as of August 2026), and we have completed more than 400 projects. What clients say is on its own page.

Adding on instead of building new? Room additions cover that path.

A custom home is priced by its drawings, its lot and its finishes. I put a written number on a defined scope after the site walk and the plan review, never before. Tell me the budget range you plan in the build request, and I will tell you early whether the design and the budget agree.

Call (949) 558-9738 to walk the lot with me. The estimate is free and done on site.