Younger Brothers Builders (YBB) - Walnut Creek, California

Sherry S.

In hindsight, it should have been a red flag that Cam was complaining about how picky his current clients were being. He was wrapping up a large remodel and was terribly annoyed by all of the “nitpicking” his clients were doing. Well, one year later, it was me that he found annoying and thought was nitpicking.

I added 1000 sq feet to my home in Alamo, remodeled most of my existing house and I built an ADU in my backyard.
Younger brothers builders consisted of owner Cam, admin Sam and Foreman Julian. They were the 2nd most expensive bid I received, but I wanted great quality and was willing to pay for it.

Positives: Cam noticed, and thus my architect corrected, a few items that were not included in my plans, that had they gone unnoticed, would have led to a major disappointment in the final project. Julian was a great foreman and wonderful to work with when he was on the job site. Julian has excellent customer service. The plumbers, electricians, concrete guys, roofers and framers all seemed to be great.

Negatives: I won’t list all of the cons, just the major ones. In general, the customer service was not good and there was a general “don’t bother me” attitude by Cam. Even when the HVAC guys forgot to reconnect the heater over Thanksgiving week. Cam wouldn’t come reconnect it until Monday morning. He lived 15 minutes away.

The calendar / schedule rarely reflected what was actually happening.

The finish - Sheetrock, paint, stucco are so important because that’s what you end up looking at.

The Level 4 drywall had many blebs and most frustrating- many nail heads were showing through the drywall, which Cam said was normal (it’s definitely not something a client should be left with) and he’d only fix for additional cost.

Paint - I’ll just summarize by saying it was very sloppy. The junctions between tile and paint were not clear, there was overspray on many windows and skylights, there was paint / overspray on my new floors and along the baseboard, there was tape sticking out from underneath the baseboards. Overall, just poor quality.

Stucco - my house was old and the stucco had many crack lines and was generally dingy looking, so I decided that I wanted to re-stucco the entire house rather than just the addition. I was given options on colors, but I said I just wanted something close to what I had already in texture and color. I didn’t even realize when the stucco was finished. I thought it was a base layer because it was so smooth. It started cracking and chunks were falling off the corners and bottom edges almost immediately. I was so upset. The reason I decided to stucco the entire house was to make it uniform and to fill in the cracks that I had in my existing stucco. The weather was very mild at the time, and Cam told that there was nothing they could do… It was just the soil in Alamo. He agreed to have the stucco guy come back once (and was clear it would be only once) for touch up, but he was clearly annoyed with my request and Cam at this point was acting like every request I had was annoying him. He had moved on to other projects months before and I was now that client who was “too picky and annoying”… just like the one he complained to me about.
Well, the stucco repairs were done poorly. The color was too light and it was piled on too thick. The sub, “Paddy” said he hand mixes the color and he can’t be sure that when it dries, it will match. None of his repairs matched well and are still noticeable. It’s now a year later and there are more cracks and edges broken off of the stucco on my home than on the old stucco that I was replacing. Cam’s solution was that, at my own expense, I should hire a painter and put a coat of elastomeric paint on.

Michael W.

We were very happy with the remodel/renovation work that Cam and his team did on our home. Cam had several great ideas to improve the living space and resolve various issues we had with the original layout. He remained sensitive to the budget and timeline, and set realistic expectations right up front. Cam's communication was always clear and thorough, and the team were always prompt and professional.

Savanna M.

Cam Younger and his team at YBB helped me with a remodel project in my home. We gutted a bathroom, installing all new fixtures, surround tile for the shower with a hung sliding glass shower door. The careful considerations Cam took with me in the planning stages really went a long way with the great results of the project. His team is professional, timely, caring and in my experience skilled at what they do. I also had a gas fireplace installed, which involved a lot of back and forth with the city inspector to make sure it was up to code. The whole project went according to plan, and the final results are beautiful! Thanks Cam!

Joanne D.

We own a 2000 sf condo in Danville- love the location but the closed-in floor plan made the place dark. We wanted to open it up and do whatever we could to bring in more natural light. It's an interior unit so adding windows wasn't really an option. In addition to making the place feel more spacious and open, we wanted to enlarge the downstairs bathroom and connect it to the downstairs bedroom. We wanted this bathroom to be ADA accessible. We also wanted to significantly change the Master Bathroom- enlarge the closet area, have a separate toilet space and a larger shower.

We hired Younger Brothers Builders because he had done a huge remodel for our son and daughter-in-law and their experience had been very positive. He came highly recommended and we had seen firsthand the quality of the work YBB does. Having had previous experiences with building custom homes, the top priority was the integrity and honesty of the contractor. Again, Cam had an excellent reputation and we had complete trust in both his ability and his business practices. Our trust has been very well placed.

We've had a very positive experience working with YBB. Cam collaborated with the architect we'd hired to do the design. This went smoothly and worked very well. One key to the success of our project is that Cam communicates very well. Any e-mail / text / call is answered promptly and very efficiently. His office assistant, Samantha Thoma is absolutely outstanding. She's really on top of every detail and very helpful and pleasant. We've also had a great deal of contact with Cam's foreman, Julian Chairez, who is wonderful. He's a true craftsman, a perfectionist and a gentleman. Cam deals with sub-contractors who are first-rate. This is something to really pay attention to!! I speak from experience here. One thing that made this project so enjoyable for me is the YBB referred me to people who were great to work with-- cabinet company, tile and flooring, appliances, plumbing fixtures, lighting fixtures, home theater, etc. The fact that I was able to meet safely with all of these different companies, in the middle of the pandemic, and receive excellent service from them, contributed greatly to the success of the finished project. Everything we hoped to achieve when we embarked on this complete remodel has been done.

My husband and I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND Cam Younger and YBB. I know that many people think that building or remodeling is destined to be a very stressful experience and I understand that because that was our experience one time many years ago. But it can also be very positive. Cam is everything you could want in a contractor- he's honest, capable, a problem-solver, efficient, and a genuinely nice person. We would recommend him without reservation to any friend, family member, or acquaintance.

Shawn H.

I lost my house in the 2017 fires in Santa Rosa (Fountaingrove neighborhood) and ended up evacuating to the East Bay. I quickly started searching for a builder and while we were living out there, drove to Walnut Creek to meet Cam Younger of Younger Brothers Builders (YBB). We interviewed around 15 other contractors and went with YBB, and feel so fortunate that we made this decision. My wife and I are NOT handy at all and know nothing about construction, so there was a great deal of faith.
When we asked for references and examples of his work, rather than giving us a list of the 3 people who love him the most, he said to just drop by a current project (indicating he was confident in the quality of any of his projects). We did this and the homeowner was very happy with Cam’s work. After obtaining 3 bids on our home rebuild, Cam easily had the most thorough and lengthy estimate, which made us feel comfortable that there wouldn’t be “surprises” later on.
As you can imagine, we know a lot of other people going through a rebuild, and we watched as our home rebuild raced past other houses that started before us. Cam is very organized and likes to beat deadlines. We appreciated how he didn’t over-commit himself to projects and could focus on ours. We know he is a hard worker – he sacrificed many hours just in the drive from San Ramon to Santa Rosa. If we ran into problems, he owned up to mistakes (which is rare), was approachable and easy to talk to and acted quickly to make corrections.
We are so lucky to have Cam rebuild our home! Building a home from ground up was not as painful as other stories I heard from my friends. The quality of YBB’s work is exceptional, we have a home we are proud to show off. YBB was on budget, and we didn’t have to tap into the contingency funds. His employees are professional, knowledgeable and complied with our special requests like avoiding shoes in the house. We wouldn’t hesitate to choose him for other projects in the future.

Lily H.

Our family lost our home in FountainGrove in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. We ended up finding a contractor from Walnut Creek called Younger Brothers Builders (YBB) who is absolutely amazing. We heard all these horror stories about contractors and it honestly scared us a little. We interviewed close to 15 different contractors and ended up choosing YBB because we connected on many different levels. Cam Younger is the owner and he built our home up to our standards and the process was pretty flawless. We are so grateful for his exquisite work, patience, thoroughness and professionalism. Cam is laid back, friendly, humorous and kind-hearted. He’s honest and we always felt he was on our side, not trying to rip people off. We have not had a single bad experience with YBB. They helped us stay on budget (very transparent), we actually came in a little under budget and never hit our contingency. We had a great experience working with him and his professional team. We LOVE YBB and are so grateful for this positive experience! Thanks a million for getting us back into our home. As parents ourselves, we understand the importance of time spent with family, Cam could have looked at our location and refused the job based on the distance and time away from his family, but he chose to help us. Thank you YBB, we feel indebted to them.

Rasheed A.