Heartwood Homes of Rochester Inc

Jake is the whole package! Architect, builder, designer, businessman, coordinator, and listener. He built our gorgeous home over 20 years ago and it has indeed withstood The test of time in regard to style, value, and durability. I’ve worked with many brothers during my 30 years in real estate. I can’t think of it being any better than Jay and Heartwood Homes. Two thumbs up.

We met with over 20 builders before picking a contractor to build our home. Heartwood Homes blew everyone else out of the water. From start to finish, Jay Burke was an absolute professional and helped us through every step. He not only helped with lot selection and purchasing, he facilitated all work in the house, did several of the projects himself (hand made staircase, hardwood floors, lot grading, etc), and designed our home from scratch based on our wishes and expectations. He's been doing this for 40+ years in SE Minnesota. His attention to appropriate use of space, quality, and craftsmanship are amazing. He also let me take on individual jobs myself, such as tile work, electrical wiring, entire basement floor, and all AV and internet wiring. Not only that, he gave me advice along the way to make sure I did it correctly the first time. He has been an invaluable resource since the house was built 7 years ago, and even contracted building a big deck and finishing the basement a few years later. He's continued to give me advice over the years as I've taken on projects, which I've greatly appreciated. Heartwood Homes is not an entry level builder. His home designs are unique and tailored to the wishes of the customer. Each of his homes are designed just for the customer. Therefore, no one else will ever have your same home. He doesn't build spec homes. You will get what you pay for because your home will be of higher quality than every other house in the neighborhood. We were willing to pay more for better quality and Jay was incredible with helping us decide which upgrades were most valuable to use. Despite this, we still paid less for our home that other contractors would have charged use. Jay knows all the contractors in the area and only gets the best people to work on the house. Jay also paid himself for an energy audit to show us how efficient our house was, confirming the expectations and promises he made to us during the build. Our home is 80% more efficient than the average home and we clearly see that in our low energy bills. We pay less to heat and cool this 4,000 sf home that we paid to heat and cool the 1,200 sf rental townhouse we were in before. We have been extremely happy and grateful that Heartwood Homes created and build this house. We could not have imagined having a comparable or better experience with anyone else. The quality of our home is amazing and it was exciting to be included so much in the building process. I would highly recommend Heartwood Homes to create and build a custom home in SE Minnesota. He met and exceeded all our expectations and we are extremely happy.

Jay is a true builder of homes from the very start to the complete end to put out a good finished product for the home owner. Would not hesitate to hire him again if we ever had another house built, or for anyone looking for a home builder, he would be on top of the list for a good recommendation. If your looking for a person that will give you detail in every aspect of the correct way of doing the right things, he is the person you will want for a builder!

Jay Burke of Heartwood Homes is a true professional with the flair of an artist. I presented him with a vision of a Frank Loyd Wright designed home that I wanted built on a 20 acre plot of land. The entire building process turned out to be exactly how I envisioned it. With Jay not only supervising the daily activities but also doing most if not all of the finishing work. The house turned out to exceed my expectations. Budgets were kept and deadlines were met. Jay has a way of making the home building experience fun and exciting. I am not sure if I will ever be in a position to build another dream home but if I did Jay and Heartwood Homes would be my only choice. I would recommend Jay and Heartwood Homes to anyone and everyone who is looking for a positive and professional home building experience!

Jay built our house in 2013. He was in contact on almost a daily basis either on site or via phone to make sure things were as we expected. He was very knowledgeable on all aspects of our project. He even helped out with things that were outside a typical home builder's responsibilities (provided us a place to stay between our old house selling and completion of our new house, let the kids pick apples on his property, groomed a sledding hill for our son's cubscout outing, etc) in addition to going the extra mile on our house (it has been 4 years since our house was completed and he still helps out with our yard and such that wasn't part of our original contract...our neighbors also built with him and it has been 12 years since they completed and again, he still helps them out free of charge with house and yard related tasks). When you hire Jay, you hire someone who is the definition for integrity and dedication to his work. Jay puts his best foot forward every day and even if something doesn't go quite right, even if outside his control, he makes sure it is right even well after the completion of work. I can't think of any business that goes to the lengths that he does to make sure his customers are satisfied. I had never met him before we hired him to build our house. We talked to several other families that he had built for and nobody had anything bad to say about him. We talked to several contractors, subcontractors, and other people in general before hiring him. The worst that anyone had to say about him was that he is old school and not to expect CADD designs and some subs don't like his angles because it makes their job a bit harder but everyone agreed you will get a good end result. Even everyone we have run into after, if you mention Jay Burke and they have heard of him, they will give him nothing but praise. After working with him, I would have to agree.

Jay was absolutely fantastic to work with from start to finish. There were so many reasons that we enjoyed working with him. I would never be able to list all of them, but here are some: - Easy to get in touch with, and easy to communicate with - Created a custom floor plan for us, and tweaked it until it suited us perfectly - Worked with our design style, made some good suggestions, but let us choose - Let us choose some crazy materials that he'd never worked with, and then did the homework necessary to figure out how to use and practiced with it before he put it in our home - Figured out how to deliver what we wanted on our budget - Extremely knowledgeable, and was great at explaining to us in layman's terms - Fantastic craftsman - Built us an awesomely energy efficient home - Went the extra mile with small things we never expected - He is GREAT with kids There are many more reasons that I'm forgetting, but the bottom line is that we would hire Jay again in a heartbeat, if it weren't for the fact that he built us a home that we never want to leave.

We built our home with Heartwood Homes and enjoyed working with Jay Burke. Jay is very knowledgeable, conscientious, and hands-on throughout the entire building process. He takes great pride in his work. Our experience from start to finish was a smooth one, from design to move-in day. We would definitely build with Jay again.

Over promises, under delivers. Does not listen...wants to do things his way. Very difficult to work with. Does not come to the job site to monitor things. Do not hire him.

This company's owner does not listen to the customer. In fact, on dozens of occasions he did things we specifically told him not to do. Our house has mold growing on every window after living in it less than 8 months and our garage has to have the walls torn out and replaced because of the mold growth. I could go on and on because this is only one example of the many, many problems caused by this builder. Do not hire.