Breaking into Chapel Hill proved to Steven Dubb that his family’s Beechwood Homes
made a good decision to branch out to North Carolina after 40 years of building homes in New York.
Beechwood bought 103 acres on the south edge of the Orange County town for $7.25 million in 2021, with plans for a 250-home retirement community. “The town actually said, ‘We need more homes in Chapel Hill,’” Dubb says.
So the company countered with a 600-home proposal, presented at a Town Council meeting. With his father, Michael Dubb, the company founder and CEO, and Beechwood’s top lawyer watching the meeting online, the younger Dubb didn’t know what to expect.
“When the town board came back asking for even more density, I could hear their jaws hit the floor in New York,” he says.
Chapel Hill ended up approving the 815-home South Creek development of condominiums, townhomes and apartments. The first phase of 92 apartments in the $500 million project should open next year, a mile from the UNC Chapel Hill campus.
The process took 18 months, says Dubb. In contrast, Long Island, New York, spent seven years mulling a 700-home Beechwood project, and that was considered “lightning speed.”
“It was a different world,” he says.
Started in 1985, the company first considered a North Carolina expansion in 2020. “My dad and I were looking at each other and said we’ve got to get a foothold in a more business-friendly state,” he says.
It wasn’t until 2023 that they opened their first two projects, totaling 100 homes, in the affluent Queen City suburbs of Weddington and Marvin in Union County.
Another project underway is a 217-home Catawba County development Lakeside Points on Lake Norman in Sherrills Ford, about 35 miles northwest of Charlotte. Homes mostly range from the mid-$600,000s to $1.4 million. Some of the 46 waterfront properties are priced
at more than $2 million, with buyers attracted by a private marina, clubhouse and swimming pool.
Beechwood has built about 10,000 homes, mostly in New York, with a current pace of 150 to 300 units per year. In 2024, it had about $250 million in revenue, including $90 million from North Carolina.
Beechwood expects further growth in the Triangle and Charlotte areas. “We’re here to stay,” Dubb says. “This isn’t a one-off or a couple of projects, and then we take our ball and
go home.”
Using local contractors and listening has paid off for Beechwood. “I think a lot of nationals come into a market and say, ‘We’ve got a way of doing things, we’ve got a set of houses, you’re going to build our houses, here’s our models,’” says Dubb. “Our approach couldn’t be more opposite to that. We think people in the Charlotte area and Chapel Hill know much better what to build and how to build than we do in New York.
“We’re very conscious of what people think of New Yorkers, so we try to have a very soft touch and hopefully change some minds at least within the company,” he adds.