Many trucks in Orlando say the same two words. Custom homes. Luxury builder, some of them add. It’s on the trailers, the yard signs, and the magnet stuck to the truck at the light. Anybody with a logo can call themselves that. Meanwhile, you’re about to write a big check and hand it to one of these people, mostly on a handshake and a folder of photos that might not even be their work.

That’s a lot of trust to hand over on the strength of a sign.

Picking truly capable high-end luxury home builders in Orlando from among the crowd is far more difficult than it ought to be, separating them from those who only produce polished marketing materials. When you start sifting through the list one by one, there are precious few criteria that can help you distinguish between these builders. One of the very few that exists is a credential most homeowners have never heard of: MCBC, the Master Custom Builder Council.

Florida-issued contractor licenses are, in reality, completely unhelpful. Obtaining this license is not at all difficult. Pass two or three exams, prove you have spent some time on construction sites, purchase all the required insurance. Meet these requirements, and the state will issue you a license that allows you to build homes, and also lets you put any grand-sounding title you want on your business sign. This is nothing more than an entry threshold, and an extremely low one at that. The only thing a license proves is that the holder is legally qualified to earn a living building homes. As for whether their craftsmanship is up to par, or whether they will still be

working in this industry by next year, you have to figure all of that out on your own; the state will not offer you the slightest bit of help.

What the council is

The Master Custom Builder Council has been around since 1988. It’s a Central Florida group, small on purpose, usually about twenty-three builders at a time. There’s no application form, no dues button on a website. You get invited, and then the council scrutinizes your work to see whether you hold up.

The requirements are the interesting part. State license, sure, but that’s the bare minimum. Past that, a builder needs three years minimum putting up custom homes in Seminole, Orange, Lake, or Osceola county. Five past clients get handed over as references, and the council calls them to verify. Two current members have to sponsor the applicant, which means their own reputations ride on the newcomer. A signed code of ethics. And a credit check, because the quickest route to a half-built house is a builder who runs out of money before you do.

The committee overseeing this process only accepts legitimate custom home builders. Builders must draft a completely new set of blueprints from start to finish that is exclusive to each project, with no shortcuts allowed. Construction teams that only build generic home exterior design yet dare to print the word “custom” on their storefront to deceive customers, cannot gain entry to this committee.

All these strict requirements mean that if a builder has obtained the committee’s access qualification, most of the background checks you would otherwise need to conduct have already been completed on your behalf. This level of in-depth vetting would be impossible for you to carry out on your own. You could not just call up five past clients of an unfamiliar builder out of the blue just to dig up unfiltered honest feedback, could you? You would have no way to access their credit history, let alone arrange for two well-respected peers in the industry to privately give you their honest take on whether that builder is worth hiring. All of these labor-intensive, difficult tasks were fully completed by the committee long before you ever heard the builder’s name for the first time.

The vetting isn’t a one-time thing, either. Members keep taking classes, because the building code doesn’t sit still and what passed in 2010 gets a house flagged today. And they watch each other. Stiff a subcontractor or cut a corner, and you’ve failed the two members who vouched for you, which keeps people honest in a way no county inspector ever will.

One of the twenty-three

Hardwick General Contracting is on this list. In 2020, the judging panel named Greg Hardwick the Builder of the Year. You have to think carefully about who was voting for this award: they were not random laypeople, but all of Greg’s industry peers and competitors. This group is made up of seasoned veterans in the field. If Greg had ever cut corners or taken cheap, lazy shortcuts in his work, they would have spotted the flaws earlier than any client that hires a builder to work on their home. Even though these rivals, who normally compete for business with him, could pick apart his work with full clarity, they still cast their votes to award him this honor. To earn the sincere recognition of one’s peers is the most weighty of all forms of affirmation one can receive.

This was not a single recognition that would never be followed by other honors. Hardwick also won the Grand Award for Remodel, the highest honor in the home renovation category, at the Parade of Homes Orlando event.

Before you sign anything

Do your own digging anyway. Pull the license on the state licensing site and check that it’s current and clean. Ask the builder flat out whether they’re MCBC, and if the answer is yes, the roster is right there at custombuilt.com to confirm it. Then call the references yourself. It’s your money and the next two years of your life, so a little suspicion is time well spent. The seal does most of the heavy lifting, and the rest is on you.

If you’re weighing luxury home builders around Orlando and you want to cut through the noise, start with the ones the Master Custom Builder Council saw fit to invite. Hardwick General Contracting is one of them. Family firm, an engineer at the head of it, twenty years or so around Central Florida, and a Builder of the Year nod from the council’s own membership. There’s more at hardwickgc.com, and the references page is where their past clients do the talking.