Custom Homes Built for Generations
Whatever stage of life you’re in, a Marvin Home is crafted to be a family legacy.
When we say custom, we mean custom.
From the layout, down to every last finishing detail, we help you craft a live-in masterpiece with ‘you’ written all over it.
We moved away from production building on purpose. There is no catalog to choose from and no floorplan you have to bend your life around. We hold copyrights on more than a dozen of our own plans, and we are just as happy starting from a blank sheet of paper.
Your dream home, phase by phase
Our process is designed to ensure speed, quality, compliance, and transparency. Your dream home is completed in 4 straightforward phases.
Preliminary
Before you ever commit to anything, we will discuss the details of your lot, location, wishlist, and budget. As part of the preliminary phase, we begin drawing your layout and noting your desired features and finishes, offering insights about how to meet all of your needs with the build. We continue on with this phase until you’re thrilled with your custom home concept.
Design & Estimating
Once you decide to build with Marvin Homes, a calculated deposit is required to proceed. This covers drafting, engineering, and a comprehensive selection process for finishes. The deposit also helps us to place orders for certain items and materials earlier to prevent delays in construction due to lengthy shipping times.
Contracting & Financing
At this point, we enter into the full contractual agreement for the build, and coordinate financing for the project based on your desired method of payment. If you’re unsure about financing, we have trusted financial partners who can assist with this process.
Permitting
To ensure complete safety and legal compliance of your build, the permitting process begins immediately once the financing has been secured. Typical processing times for permits in Florida currently run about 30 days. We do our best to have everything ready to go right away to prevent delays.
Construction
We coordinate with our contracting partners to begin work on the job. You stay in the loop with weekly updates from your site supervisor. We are committed to delivering transparency and communication throughout the process of building your home.
What it's like to build with us
From the design phase through to the finishing touches, we prioritize quality and communication at every step.
Design
We sketch your layout before you commit to anything, refining until the concept is genuinely yours. Complimentary, every time.
Build
An on-site supervisor on our own staff sends you weekly updates with current photographs. You are never guessing what happened this week.
Finish
The details are where a custom home earns its name — the tilework, the millwork, the way the light lands in the morning.
In our clients’ words
It was great to build and to know along the way exactly where our home stood. More importantly, no surprises at closing. You are a man of your word and I will not hesitate to highly recommend you to future home owners.
I am writing to thank you and the wonderful, hard working group of people that built my “Dream Home.” I am very pleased with the design, construction and follow-up during the building process. Your employees were so patient with my numerous phone calls and requests. You made building a home an enjoyable, learning experience. I can’t tell you how pleased I am with the whole process. I will definitely recommend your company.
Yes, we had a few problems. Even NASA has problems. But the answer is in correcting the problems. This is where Marvin Homes stands behind their good name. They correct the problems and make thing right. We are happy we chose the right way… the Marvin Way!
Just a short note to let you know we love our new home. We have built a total of five new homes and this was by far the smoothest building process we have experienced. You and your staff were wonderful to work with.
Custom Home Building Guide 2027
Choosing a community, choosing a lot, choosing a floorplan and materials, what to expect on cost and timeline, and a straight answer on hurricanes. Coming soon.
Get the guide
Thank you!
You’ll receive the 2027 guide the day it publishes.
SW Florida Custom Home Building FAQ
The questions we are asked most often, answered plainly.
Plan on roughly three months of preliminary work — design, engineering, and finish selections — followed by eight to fourteen months of construction. Permitting runs about thirty days and happens once financing is secured. Weather and material lead times are the two things that most often move a schedule, and we flag either the moment we see it coming.
No. We have built on our clients’ land since 1972, and if you don’t have a lot yet, our in-house brokerage Durling and Associates can help you find the right one. Choosing the lot well is the single biggest decision in the whole project, so we would rather be involved early than inherit a difficult site later.
Every Marvin home is drawn from scratch, so cost follows your lot, your layout, and your finish selections rather than a price list. We talk about budget openly in your first preliminary meeting and keep estimating against it as the drawings develop — no surprises late in the process. We aim to be neither the cheapest builder in the region nor the most expensive.
Yes. We will discuss your lot, your wishlist and your budget, and begin sketching a layout before you commit to anything. We keep refining until you are genuinely happy with the concept. Only then does a deposit come into it, and that deposit covers drafting, engineering, and finish selection.
Every home is engineered to current Florida code, which means designing against uplift — the wind trying to pull the roof off the structure — along with the tie-downs, fastening schedules and impact requirements that go with it. On beachside lots there is additional environmental permitting and elevation work, which we handle as part of the build.
You will have an on-site supervisor on our own staff, and they are required to send you weekly updates with current photographs. Transparency is not a courtesy here, it is part of the job description.
Fully. We are one of the only true custom builders left in Southwest Florida — we moved away from production building deliberately. From the layout down to the last finishing detail, the home is drawn around you. We hold copyrights on more than a dozen of our own plans, and we are just as happy starting from a blank sheet.
Lee County and Collier County are home — Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Naples, Marco Island and the communities around them. We have also built in Charlotte, DeSoto and Hendry counties, so ask us about your site wherever it is.
Richard and the team stay personally involved in every project rather than handing you to a call center. We build luxury custom homes across Lee and Collier counties in Southwest Florida.
We build across Lee and Collier Counties
With our office centrally located in Fort Myers, our custom home building services are available in all SW Florida communities.
Lee County
Fort MyersFort Myers BeachCape CoralSanibel IslandCaptiva IslandBonita SpringsEsteroNorth Fort MyersPine IslandLehigh AcresMatlachaBoca Grande
Collier County
NaplesMarco IslandGolden GateImmokaleeAve MariaEverglades CityVanderbilt BeachPelican Bay
We also build in Charlotte County, DeSoto County and Hendry County.
Your preliminary design is on us.
We will draw before you commit. That is how confident we are in the process.
