Which Home Builders Build the Most in Toledo, Ohio? Ranked by Permits
Short answer: K. Hovnanian Homes and Buckeye Real Estate Group, and it is not the answer the MLS gives you. Across 532 residential building permits worth $220.7 million pulled in Lucas and Wood counties between January 2025 and March 2026, K. Hovnanian pulled 61 and Buckeye pulled 59. McCarthy Builders is third at 38, Doug Howard Building fourth at 34, Homes by Josh Doyle fifth at 33. Those five are about 42 percent of everything permitted in the two counties.
I pull these reports every month because the picture from listings never matched what I was seeing driving around, and it turns out listings are a bad way to answer the question. I have sat across from buyers who picked a builder off yard-sign recognition and had no idea the company putting up half their subdivision was never in the MLS at all.
Who pulled the most permits?
| Builder | Permits, 15 months | Median permit value | Where they build |
|---|---|---|---|
| K. Hovnanian Homes | 61 | $441,000 | Bowling Green, Sylvania |
| Buckeye Real Estate Group | 59 | $220,000 | Perrysburg, Sylvania |
| McCarthy Builders | 38 | $165,000 | Middleton Twp, Perrysburg |
| Doug Howard Building | 34 | $197,500 | Waterville, Sylvania |
| Homes by Josh Doyle | 33 | $500,000 | Monclova, Maumee |
| Gulfstream Development | 20 | $593,148 | Sylvania, Monclova |
| Woodland Custom Home Builders | 16 | $290,000 | Sylvania, Monclova |
| Schumacher Homes | 15 | $660,047 | Washington Twp, Perrysburg |
| Saba Signature Homes | 14 | $625,000 | Perrysburg |
| North River Building Company | 13 | $198,000 | Monclova |
| J & A Building Ventures | 11 | $295,000 | Bowling Green |
| MR Developers | 11 | $115,000 | Perrysburg |
| Ridge Stone Builders | 11 | $168,000 | Lucas County |
| Allen Edwin Homes | 11 | $350,000 | Monclova, Walbridge |
| Northcreek Custom Homes | 10 | $597,500 | Perrysburg |
A note on that middle column before you draw conclusions from it. Permit value is the builder's declared construction cost and it excludes land. It is not a sale price. A $220,000 permit from Buckeye becomes a house that sells for a good deal more once the lot, overhead and profit are in. Use the column to compare builders against each other, not to price a house.
Also worth flagging: 18 permits were pulled by homeowners building for themselves, at a median value of $421,527. That is a real segment of this market with no builder and, usually, no agent.
Which builder owns which town?
This is the most useful thing in the data and the part I did not expect. Builders here are territorial. They are not competing head to head across the region so much as each holding ground.
- Waterville is Doug Howard's. 11 of the town's permits, more than anyone else, in a town that pulled 27 total.
- Maumee is James Moline's. All six of their permits are in Maumee.
- Monclova is North River's, with 9 of their 13, alongside Homes by Josh Doyle and Gulfstream at the higher end.
- Perrysburg is split between MR Developers (10 of their 11), Saba Signature (8 of 14), Buckeye (21) and Northcreek.
- Middleton Township is McCarthy's, with 21 of their 38 permits there.
- Bowling Green is K. Hovnanian's, with about half the town's permits.
- Sylvania is the one truly contested market, with K. Hovnanian, Buckeye, Gulfstream, Woodland, Doug Howard and West Rock all active.
The practical version: if you have picked a town, you have mostly picked your builder, and the reverse is true too. When somebody tells me they want new construction in Waterville, that is a Doug Howard conversation whether they knew it or not.
How many builders are there really?
93 pulled at least one permit. But 49 of those 93 pulled exactly one in fifteen months.
That is the shape of this market. A short list of production builders putting up subdivisions, a middle tier of ten to twenty regional builders doing steady volume, and then a long tail of custom builders doing one house at a time for one client. The working number of builders you would actually shop is closer to twenty.
By median permit value, the 93 split roughly into thirds: 41 builders at or above $500,000, 29 between $300,000 and $500,000, and 23 under $300,000. The cheap end is not lesser work, it is mostly smaller footprints and attached product. The expensive end is where the one-permit custom builders cluster.
How much of this is local builders?
Less than people assume, and the split matters if you care who you are handing a deposit to.
Five of the twenty busiest names here are headquartered outside northwest Ohio: K. Hovnanian (a national builder), Schumacher Homes (Akron), Wayne Homes (Uniontown), America's Home Place (Georgia) and Allen Edwin Homes (Michigan). Together they pulled 109 of the 532 permits, so roughly one in five houses going up in these two counties is being built by a company based somewhere else.
That is not a criticism. Production builders are good at production, their pricing is often better, and three of those five build on land you already own, which is a service almost no local builder offers at that scale.
But the practical difference is real. A national or regional builder gives you a defined product, a defined process and a defined price, and very little of it bends. A local builder with eleven permits a year will usually take your phone call directly, and the person who answers is frequently the person who will be on the site. Which of those you want depends entirely on how much you intend to be involved.
The other 88 builders are local, and the long tail of them is where custom work lives. 49 pulled exactly one permit in fifteen months. That is one client, one house, one lot, which is what a custom builder's year actually looks like.
Why does the MLS get this wrong?
If you judged by listings, you would say Doug Howard Building is the dominant builder in northwest Ohio and it would not be close. Their listings run through Serenity Realty and total 156 across my export, far more than any other name.
They are fourth.
Three things break the listing count as a measure of building:
Expireds and relists double-count. Of those 156 Doug Howard listings, 43 expired and came back, and the whole set resolves to 119 unique addresses. Region-wide the same distortion runs through everything: 830 new-construction listings collapse to 679 actual addresses.
Model-home sellers never list at all. A builder who sells from a model and a site plan can put up fifty houses and generate almost no MLS activity. Buckeye Real Estate Group is the clearest case here. Second busiest builder in the two counties, and I could barely find their name in MLS remarks.
Listing volume is a marketing decision. Some builders list every spec the day it is framed. Others list nothing until it is finished, or never. That choice tells you about their sales strategy and nothing about their production.
So the builder with the most yard signs is not necessarily the builder with the most houses. I pull the permits specifically so I can tell the difference, because it changes who I call when a client wants something that is not on the market yet.
What should you do with this?
If you know the town, ask who is already building there. Territory means the builder with five houses on that street has the lots, the relationships and the release schedule. They are also the one most likely to have something coming that has not been listed.
If you know the builder, ask what is coming, not what is posted. The permits show houses starting months before anything hits the MLS. That gap is where the good lots go.
Do not judge a builder by how visible they are. Visibility is a marketing budget. Look at what they have actually completed and go walk one.
And be careful about how you first make contact. If you tour a model home alone and sign the builder's guest register, most builders will treat you as their customer from that point forward and your representation is gone. The builder has already priced an agent into the deal. The only question is whether you have one. That is not villainy, it is math, and it is why I would rather hear from you before the tour than after.
Want to know who is building where you are looking?
Send me the town and the price range and I will tell you which builders are active there right now, what they have permitted that has not been listed, and which of them are worth your Saturday. I keep this current because the MLS will not tell you.
419.540.8659.
For what new construction actually costs against resale, I ranked 14 towns across the region. If you are looking at Perrysburg specifically, the busiest corridor in the metro, start with is new construction worth it in Perrysburg. And before you sign anything, read when you actually start paying property taxes on a new build, because the tax line on the listing is not the number you will pay.
Adam Geuy, Realtor - Blacktree Realty. ABR, PSA, SRS. Greater Toledo, Ohio. 419.540.8659.
Common questions
Who is the biggest home builder in the Toledo area?
By permits pulled, K. Hovnanian Homes, with 61 residential building permits across Lucas and Wood counties between January 2025 and March 2026. Buckeye Real Estate Group is a close second at 59, then McCarthy Builders at 38, Doug Howard Building at 34 and Homes by Josh Doyle at 33. Those five account for about 42 percent of all permits pulled in the two counties.
How many home builders are there in the Toledo area?
At least 93 pulled a residential permit in Lucas or Wood County over the 15 months ending March 2026, plus 18 permits taken out by homeowners building for themselves. But 49 of those 93 pulled exactly one permit in the entire period, so the working number of builders producing at volume is closer to 20.
Which builder should I use in my town?
Builders here are strongly territorial, so the honest answer is usually whoever is already building where you want to live. Doug Howard dominates Waterville, James Moline builds in Maumee, North River concentrates in Monclova, MR Developers and Saba Signature build in Perrysburg, K. Hovnanian is heaviest in Bowling Green and Sylvania, and McCarthy is concentrated in Middleton Township.
Why does the MLS show a different builder as the biggest?
Because a listing count measures marketing, not building. Doug Howard's listings run through Serenity Realty and total 156 across my export, more than any other name in the region, but they resolve to 119 unique addresses because 43 expired and relisted. Meanwhile builders who sell out of a model home without ever listing are invisible in the MLS no matter how many houses they put up. Region-wide, 830 new-construction listings collapse to 679 actual addresses.
How much do Toledo area builders charge to build a house?
Permit values, which are the builder's declared construction cost and exclude land, ran a median of $115,000 to $793,000 depending on the builder. Of the 93 builders, 41 report a median permit value at or above $500,000, 29 fall between $300,000 and $500,000, and 23 come in under $300,000. Those are construction costs, not sale prices, so the finished home sells for meaningfully more.
Are there custom home builders in the Toledo area?
Many, and they are most of the list by count. 49 of the 93 builders pulled a single permit in 15 months, which is the signature of a custom builder doing one house at a time for one client rather than releasing inventory into a subdivision.