Rahul Kumar — HCRA-licensed custom home builder, Golden Brick Homes · Broker, Royal LePage Certified Realty, Brokerage.
I’m Rahul Kumar. I hold two licences that rarely sit with the same person: I’m an HCRA-licensed custom home builder, and I’m a real estate broker with Royal LePage Certified Realty, Brokerage. Golden Brick Homes is my building practice.
That combination exists because of a problem I kept watching people run into.
Someone buys a lot, or decides to rebuild on the one they own. They hire a designer. Drawings get made. And somewhere between the second revision and the permit application, the by-law arrives — the floor area band is tighter than anyone assumed, the coverage doesn’t allow the footprint, a protected tree sits where the house was going, the front yard setback isn’t what the neighbours’ houses suggested. Now there’s a design that doesn’t fit, a budget that was built on the wrong square footage, and a decision about whether to spend nine months at the Committee of Adjustment.
Almost none of that is the designer’s fault. It happens because the questions that decide a project get asked in the wrong order.
So I work the other way round. Before anything is drawn, I establish what the lot actually permits — the zoning band it falls in, the floor area and coverage it supports, where the setbacks land, what the trees and the servicing and the title will allow. In writing, with the by-law provisions cited, so you can check it rather than take my word for it. If the answer is that the lot won’t do what you want, you find out at the beginning, for the cost of a conversation, instead of at the end.
Being licensed on both sides is what makes that possible. As a broker I can tell you what a property is worth and what else is available. As a builder I can tell you what it costs to build on it and how long it takes. Most people in this business can answer one of those questions and have to refer you out for the other — and the handoff is where the responsibility quietly disappears.
I run my projects myself. When something goes wrong on your build you speak to the person who decided it, not to a coordinator relaying a message. That’s a deliberate limit on how many projects I take at once, and it’s the reason I’d rather be the right builder for a few people than an option for everyone.
I’m not here to tell you what you want to hear. I’m here to tell you what you need to know — including, sometimes, that the project you have in mind isn’t the right one for the property you own. I’ve given that answer before and I’d rather give it early than take a job I don’t believe in.
Licensed, HCRA-licensed and Tarion-backed, working across Oakville, Burlington, Mississauga and the GTA. You can check both licences yourself — I’d encourage it.
If you’re weighing a build, a renovation, or whether a lot is worth buying at all — that first conversation costs you nothing and usually saves a good deal more.