Where we work
Home Remodeling Service Areas Across Santa Clara County and the Bay Area
A licensed general building contractor covering Santa Clara County and the towns just over the county line. Pick your city below, or call (408) 208-0551.
- Licensed & Bonded, CSLB #1142220
- TREX PRO & TimberTech PRO Certified
- Free In-Home Consultation
- Rated 5.0 on Google
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Avis Builders and Design is a service area business based in San Jose. There is no showroom. The crew travels to the property, walks it, takes the measurements on site, and files the permit with whichever building department has jurisdiction over that address. Eight cities have their own page below. Eleven more are covered without one yet.
Coverage on this page is described by town, because that is how the work actually runs. Avis Builders and Design carries no showroom and no display floor. Somebody drives to the house, walks the rooms, and gets into the crawl space or the attic where the question calls for it. The measurements come off the structure that is really there rather than the one drawn on a set of old plans. That first visit is free anywhere on this page.
Which town you are in matters for two reasons, and distance is neither of them. The first is the counter. Every incorporated city here runs its own building department, with its own submittal checklist, its own plan check queue and its own local amendments sitting on top of the state code. The second is the housing. A pre-war bungalow near an old downtown and a mid-1960s tract house in the next city over fail in completely different ways once the finishes come off, and a remodel budget goes wherever those failures are.
Avis Builders and Design Corp is a licensed California general building contractor, CSLB #1142220, classification B General Building. The scope is the same in every town listed here: kitchens, bathrooms and whole house remodels, room additions and accessory dwelling units, decks and outdoor structures, windows and doors, flooring, interior painting, exterior siding and paint, and landscaping. The 3D design and planning work sits in front of all of it.
The cities with their own page
Each card below opens a page written for that city: the department that reviews the plans, the housing stock the crew plans around, and the parts of a remodel that town tends to argue about. The cards are set as type rather than as photographs, and that is deliberate. A photograph cannot honestly be labeled as one town rather than another. A few of the newer files do carry a phone's coordinates, but that records where a picture was taken, not whose job it was or which town to sell it as. Putting a neighboring town's picture on a card is not something we are willing to do.
How the service area breaks down
The South Bay core
Eleven of the towns on this page sit in Santa Clara County: San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Campbell, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Saratoga and Mountain View, plus Milpitas, Palo Alto and Los Altos. The valley floor was built out fast in the decades after the war. A large share of the inventory is single story tract housing on a shallow slab or on post and pier, with aluminum sliders and very little in the wall cavities.
The service panel on a house like that was sized for one oven and no air conditioning. Put an induction range, a heat pump and a car charger on it and the electrical upgrade becomes the first line of the estimate instead of an afterthought. Toward the foothills in Los Gatos, Saratoga and the western edge of Cupertino, the ground starts to move. Slope brings a soils report, a stepped or drilled foundation, and spoil haul-off that a flat lot never pays for.
Some neighborhoods in this county also carry design rules or overlay zoning sitting on top of the base zoning, which is why the first thing we check is what applies to your specific parcel rather than to your city as a whole.
Up the Peninsula
Menlo Park and Redwood City sit in San Mateo County. Crossing that line changes the paperwork more than it changes the trip: a different county, a different building department, its own submittal requirements and its own amendments layered on the state code. We confirm which counter has jurisdiction over the parcel before anything gets drawn. An address with a city name on the mail is not always inside that city's limits, and unincorporated land is reviewed by the county rather than by the nearest city hall. Getting that wrong costs a full plan check cycle, and it is the cheapest mistake on the list to avoid.
Over the county line
Fremont is in Alameda County, past the Santa Clara County line at the southern end of the East Bay. It gets the same scope and the same free in-home visit as anywhere else on this page. Scheduling is the honest difference. A crew working in Fremont is out of the county for the day, so deliveries, inspections and trade visits get sequenced around that rather than planned as though somebody can swing back mid-afternoon. We say so during planning, not in week two.
What we plan around here
Most of the surprises on a remodel here live behind the finishes, and they repeat from house to house. Galvanized supply line that has pinholed, or scaled down inside to something close to a straw. Cast iron waste with the same problem. Ungrounded two-wire circuits, and in the oldest houses the remains of knob and tube that somebody spliced into rather than removed. Ducting in a crawl space that came apart years ago and has been heating the dirt ever since.
None of that is visible on a walkthrough with the drywall up, which is why we open exploratory areas during the estimate wherever an owner will let us. An item written into the scope costs less than the same item arriving as a change order in week three. Structure is the other repeat. In houses built before the war, the interior wall somebody wants removed is frequently carrying the roof, because there is no ridge beam and the ceiling joists are doing that job.
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Opening it up means a flush beam sized by an engineer, point loads carried down through the floor framing, and new footings poured under the posts. Houses of that era often sit on a cripple wall with no shear panel, no hold-downs, and sometimes no anchor bolts tying the mudsill down at all. This is earthquake country, and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is recent enough that most owners here need no convincing on the point.
Once the interior finishes are already off, bolting the mudsill and bracing the cripple walls is inexpensive. Doing it later as a standalone job is not. Then there is the code the drawings have to satisfy. Permit applications submitted on or after 1 January 2026 fall under the 2025 triennial edition of the California Building Standards Code, which the Building Standards Commission published on 1 July 2025. Drawings prepared against the previous cycle are not automatically wrong, but they need checking before they go in, and the energy provisions are usually where the difference shows up.
In practice that pushes a project toward heat pump equipment, better glazing and a harder look at the service panel, which is the same conversation the induction range and the car charger had already started.
Permits, and who has jurisdiction
Every city in the coverage area runs its own building counter, and the requirements are not identical from one to the next. Avis Builders and Design files the permit and books the inspections with whichever department has jurisdiction over the address, so a homeowner deals with the city through us rather than directly. Most structural, electrical and plumbing work needs a permit under the local code, and that filing is planned into the job during design rather than discovered halfway through demolition.
Three of the counters in this area are recorded by name on the city pages: the Town of Los Gatos Building Division, the City of Santa Clara Permit Center and the City of Sunnyvale Permit Center. The rest are confirmed per address at the start of a job instead of assumed, which is the same reason a parcel that turns out to be unincorporated goes to the county rather than to the city on the mailing address.
Choosing between contractors
If you are choosing between contractors, the questions worth asking are about what is behind the wall. Ask for an itemized written scope instead of a single lump number. Find out what they expect to hit in a house of your age, what happens when the panel turns out to be full, and where they believe the sewer lateral runs. A contractor who has worked houses of that age answers without hedging. Where the answer comes back vague, the finding usually turns up mid-job and gets billed to you.
Two things help before the first visit. Dig out whatever paperwork came with the house, permit history included, because previous unpermitted work is one of the few things that can genuinely stall a project at plan check and it is far better to know about it in advance. Then decide what the project is for before deciding what it should look like. A kitchen opened up around the way a household actually eats gets designed differently from one opened up because open plan is what listing photos reward, and the structural work underneath those two versions is not the same job.
Accessory dwelling units deserve a separate note. The state rules governing them have moved repeatedly in recent years and city ordinances have had to follow, so the rule that matters is the one in force for your address on the day the application goes in. Before any drawing starts we check three things on the specific lot: what the setbacks allow, whether the existing electrical service can carry a second dwelling without a service upgrade, and the route and condition of the sewer lateral. Those three answers shape an ADU design more than any preference about layout does.
What you get, in every town on this list
Free in-home consultation
We come out to the property anywhere on this page, walk it and measure, at no charge and with nothing owed afterward.
A licensed general building contractor
Avis Builders and Design Corp holds CSLB #1142220, classification B General Building. That is the license status a permit application needs on file.
Permits filed and inspections booked
We file with the building department that has jurisdiction over the address and manage the inspections, so the homeowner is not the one calling the counter.
A warranty on our labor
The labor on what we build carries a warranty.
Third-party financing
Financing is available through third-party lenders.
Senior and veteran discounts
Discounts are available for senior citizens and veterans.
Our Process
Getting started, wherever you are
The same stages run in every town we cover.
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Step : 01
Call or send the form
Tell us the town and roughly what you are trying to do. Enough to know whether the job needs an engineer, a designer, or somebody on a ladder first.
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Step : 02
Free in-home consultation
Somebody stands in the actual room. We look at the framing where we can reach it, the panel, the plumbing and the drainage, and talk through what you want against what the house will allow.
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Step : 03
Design and an itemized written scope
Drawings and a written scope you approve line by line, so the job is described before any number is attached to it. 3D design and planning is available where seeing the space first would change a decision.
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Step : 04
Permit filing and plan check
We prepare and submit the package to the department with jurisdiction, and carry it through plan check corrections rather than handing you a set of redlines to sort out.
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Step : 05
Construction under one project manager
One person carries the job and the trades run to their sequence. You get one number to call when something needs answering.
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Step : 06
Final inspection and walkthrough
The inspections get booked and signed off, then we walk the finished work with you and close out the punch list.
License, bond and insurance
Avis Builders and Design Corp holds California contractor license CSLB #1142220, classification B General Building. It was issued on 19 August 2025 and runs to 31 August 2027, and the state board records it as current and active. The contractor's bond on that record is $25,000, and workers' compensation is carried through the State Compensation Insurance Fund. The company is also listed as a TrexPro builder for composite decking. Class B is a general building classification. Everything described on this page is general building work, and where a scope calls for a specialty classification we bring in a contractor who holds it and tell you who they are.
Towns we cover that do not have a page yet
Milpitas, Palo Alto and Los Altos in Santa Clara County, Menlo Park and Redwood City in San Mateo County, and Fremont in Alameda County are all inside the coverage area, and they get the same scope and the same free in-home visit. They do not have their own page yet. We are writing them as we go, because a city page is worth reading only once somebody has done the work of checking that town's counter and that town's housing rather than reworded the page next to it.
Milpitas · Palo Alto · Menlo Park · Redwood City · Fremont · Atherton · San Carlos · San Francisco · Portola Valley · Hillsborough · Half Moon Bay
FAQs
Frequently asked questions: service areas
Which towns does Avis Builders and Design work in?
Eight cities have their own page: San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, Campbell, Cupertino, Saratoga and Mountain View. Eleven more are covered without a page yet: Milpitas and Palo Alto in Santa Clara County, Menlo Park, Redwood City, Atherton, San Carlos, Portola Valley, Hillsborough and Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County, Fremont in Alameda County, and San Francisco. Same scope in all of them.
Is there an office or showroom I can visit in San Jose?
No. Avis Builders and Design is a service area business, so the crew travels to you and there is no showroom to walk into. The consultation happens in the home the work is going into, which is also the only place the measurements are worth taking. Call (408) 208-0551 to arrange one.
Does the consultation cost anything if I am not in San Jose?
No. The in-home consultation is free anywhere in the coverage area listed on this page, and nothing is owed if you decide not to go ahead. Call (408) 208-0551 or send the form, and we come out, measure, and look at what is actually there.
Who files the building permit, and with which department?
We do, with whichever department has jurisdiction over your address. Avis Builders and Design Corp is a licensed general building contractor, CSLB #1142220, classification B General Building, which is what a permit application needs on file. Three of the counters in the coverage area are named on their city pages: the Town of Los Gatos Building Division, the City of Santa Clara Permit Center and the City of Sunnyvale Permit Center. For any other address we confirm jurisdiction before drawings start, because a parcel on unincorporated land is reviewed by the county rather than by the city named in the mailing address.
My town is not listed on this page. Do you work there?
Possibly, and the honest answer is that this page lists the towns the company publishes as its coverage area rather than every address it would consider. Call (408) 208-0551 and ask about yours. You will get a straight answer on the call instead of a maybe that wastes a visit.
What actually changes from one town to the next on the same project?
Two things. The building department, which sets the submittal requirements, the plan check queue and any local amendments on top of the state code. And the housing, since a pre-war house near an old downtown and a postwar tract house in the next neighborhood hide different problems behind the finishes. The license, the scope and the way the job is run stay the same wherever the address is.