Great Gulf is the first to win both top homebuilder honours at annual BILD Awards

Once, twice, three times a home buyer — from the same builder.

“It was a no-brainer,” said Jony Bahsous, who made his first purchase from Great Gulf Homes in 2016. “Their service has been great, their houses are well-built and their trades are good.”

The Brampton resident even motivated his mother to buy the Great Gulf home beside him — twice — and his sister to buy one a few months ago.

“We must be doing something right,” concludes Niall Collins, president of Great Gulf Residential.

Indeed. Great Gulf has just been named the GTA’s Home Builder of the Year in both lowrise and mid/highrise categories by the Building Industry and Land Development Association. It’s the first time the same home builder has won both since the top honour was separated into two categories — highrise and lowrise — in 2016.

The two top honours were among the winners in 44 categories announced in a virtual celebration of the 40th annual awards this past September.

The home builder category recognizes the best in such areas as design, construction and customer care, according to Dave Wilkes, president and CEO of BILD: “It’s a much-coveted award that speaks to overall commitment to quality, community and people.”

Great Gulf began in 1975 with the construction of 30 houses in Cambridge that sold for $33,000 each. The Great Gulf Group of Companies has since designed and built more than 80,000 residences across North America (35,000 in Ontario).

Bahsous was a satisfied customer from the moment he entered a sales office to buy a $500,000 townhouse in the developer’s Westfield community in 2016.

“I expected courtesy and service, and I got that at Great Gulf,” he recalled. Two years later, he bought the bigger, semi-detached home where he lives with his wife. In 2022, they’ll move into a larger semi, bought pre-construction, for $884,000.

Calling himself more critical due to his profession as a real estate agent, Bahsous made weekly visits to the site when his current four-bedroom, 1,840-sq.-ft. house was going up near Mississauga and Financial Rds.

“Dreaming of my house, I was so excited,” he said, pronouncing the finished product “incredible,” from the customized layout to top-notch workmanship. Great Gulf’s tradespeople “were right there” to touch up paint or fix floor scratches after move-in, he added.

That attentiveness is on page one of Angie Morra’s playbook. As vice-president of client services, she oversees a team of 25 “amazing” front-line staffers who work with home buyers and trades.

“Hey, how did it go today, are there any issues?” is a common query to new owners, said Morra.

If a customer isn’t happy, whether it’s the colour of their kitchen counter or the counter itself, “I will replace it if that’s what it takes,” she said.

Their philosophy is to “take it up a notch above Tarion (Warranty) standards,” she added. “We’ll go the extra mile.”

Morra has been with the company since 1979. She jokes that she learned about the industry from the ground up during archeological digs for her university anthropology studies.

“(It) helped me understand the excavation process of building new homes,” Morra said. “When I look back on it, being part of something from scratch … it was always a wonderful challenge.”

For top executive Niall Collins, delivering a well-designed, high-quality product is key to Great Gulf’s success. To that end, projects are designed in-house by their own team, and main components — including walls and flooring systems — are manufactured in their 200,000-sq.-ft. factory near Pearson International airport, he said.

With automation and 3-D technology, they can ensure on-time delivery, consistency and precision detailing, said Collins who added he’s just one member of a “team of really extraordinary people … who pull together in every aspect.”

An Irish-born married father of three boys, aged 10, 11 and 13, he says travelling and living in different places have given him a good understanding of how people live.

Housing options and features have changed “enormously” over the years, said Collins. And the coronavirus is contributing to those changes as demands grow for home offices, bigger balconies, superior air quality, healthier lighting and better heating/cooling systems.

Collins said he is seeing an exodus of downtown condo-dwellers to Great Gulf communities in Milton, Whitby, Oakville and beyond, where they can work remotely in bigger homes with a backyard for their children. And the firm, he explained, spends “a lot of time making sure the project is right for the market and the buyer,” considering everything from bicycle storage to number of bathrooms and size of backyards.

“Selling a house is only the start of the relationship and journey,” Collins noted. Just ask Jony Bahsous.