Custom Home Builder in Athens, GA, and Historic Home Remodeler

Southern Pines Builds is a family design-build firm and a custom home builder in Athens, GA. Owner Mitch Trees is on site from the first design conversation to the final walkthrough. We hold Georgia residential contractor license RLCO004901.

Athens is really two building markets, and we work both honestly. In town, the high-value work is large-scale remodels, additions, and historic restorations of antebellum and early-1900s homes. On the Oconee County edge, the work is new custom homes built on your lot.

We are not a volume builder and not a low-bid crew. Mitch runs the job himself, treats your home like his own, and prices it straight with no surprise change orders. Done right, once, for good.

Athens-Clarke County has 16 local historic districts and dozens of local landmarks. If your home sits inside one, any exterior change, including additions, porches, and fences, needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before work starts. We manage that review, which runs monthly with applications due the first Wednesday and the Historic Preservation Commission meeting on the third.

Most in-town homes here are old, so the real skill is modernizing the invisible systems, updating wiring, plumbing, HVAC, and insulation without stripping the historic character, and marrying new additions cleanly into the original structure. Athens also sits on red clay that heaves foundations and drains poorly, so we test soil and grade for drainage on every project.

Since the 1990 city-county consolidation, permitting runs through one authority. An in-district renovation usually needs both a Certificate of Appropriateness and a building permit, while a new build on the Oconee edge needs only standard permitting and zoning.

For Athens homeowners, our core work is large-scale remodels, home additions, and historic renovations. We also build new custom homes on your lot toward Oconee County and the outer edges of Clarke.

Our remodeling work covers whole-house renovations, kitchen and bath, finished basements, decks, and additions that read as original to the house. As a design-build firm, we keep design and construction under one roof, so one team owns the drawings, the budget, and the schedule.

See every community we cover on our service area page.

Mitch is on the job, not behind a desk. When you hire Southern Pines, you get the owner from the first sketch to the final walkthrough, not a site handed off to an unknown crew.

We build on sound building science. Foundations, framing, moisture control, and how an old house and a new addition come together are decisions we make on purpose, not by habit.

Our pricing is honest and our contracts are clear. You get a real number up front and no surprise change orders halfway through. We carry Georgia residential contractor license RLCO004901.