Drees Homes

Drees Homes is one of the oldest continuously family-owned homebuilders in the country. The company was founded in 1928 by Theodore Drees, a German immigrant who built his first home in Wilder, Kentucky — a house that still stands today. Now spanning multiple generations of the Drees family and led from its longtime headquarters in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, the company has grown from a single Northern Kentucky homebuilder into one of the largest privately held builders in the United States, consistently ranked among the top private builders nationally by Builder Magazine.

Drees operates across roughly a dozen major metropolitan markets, including Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Raleigh, Washington D.C., Jacksonville, Dallas, Austin, Houston — and Nashville. The company entered the Middle Tennessee market in 2000 through its acquisition of the Nashville operations of Zaring National Corp., and has been building in the greater Nashville area ever since, with communities concentrated across Williamson and the surrounding suburban counties.

What sets Drees apart is its signature Custom + Construct℠ approach — a two-phase process that pairs genuine custom design with the efficiency and predictability of a production builder. In the Custom phase, buyers work with the design team to tailor a floor plan to their lifestyle, with the ability to move and reconfigure spaces rather than just pick finishes. In the Construct phase, Drees builds the home and hands over the keys on a defined timeline. The result is a level of personalization closer to a custom builder, delivered with the structure and schedule of a national production builder.

Product style leans toward elevated, architecturally distinctive homes — higher-end materials, refined detailing, and varied exterior elevations rather than repetitive facades. In Middle Tennessee, Drees builds in established communities and also offers a Build On Your Lot program for buyers who already own land, giving them access to the same plans and customization on their own site. Locally, Drees built the Rowland model at Durham Farms, the Freehold Communities master-planned neighborhood in Hendersonville.

A point of distinction buyers often note is pricing transparency: Drees commits the price of the home and its selections in writing, with pre-priced options, so buyers know the cost of their choices up front rather than discovering them later in the process. Paired with a dedicated design center and expert design consultants, this gives the experience a more guided, predictable feel than many production builders offer.