Prominent Homes has built homes in areas such as Valley Ridge, Arbour Lake, Panorama Hills, Patterson Heights and Royal Oak. Their current offerings are in master-planned communities like Prairie Springs Hill in Airdrie, The Manors at Crossing West in Langdon, and East Lakeview Place in Chestermere. And then there are the show homes in Elmont and Cougar Ridge. “We’re coming up with a new subdivision in the southwest called Aspenshire and we’re hoping to open there before Christmas,” says Deep Shergill, president of Prominent Homes.

Prominent Homes builds anywhere from starter and move-up homes to custom homes in excess of a million dollars. Their Airdrie and Langdon products are in the $450,000 range with Langdon hovering within the $450,000 to $525,000 range. Some of their Airdrie products sell between $425,000 to about $550,000 and Chestermere homes by the builder are priced below $500,000. Homes in Elmont fall around $700,000, while Cougar Ridge addresses by Prominent are in the million-dollar plus range. Once available, Aspenshire homes will go for about $850,000.

Shergill has an extensive 27-year track record in the homebuilding industry, starting with multi-family homes in the 1980s. “There was a demand for builders, so I had the opportunity to build apartments with my family.” Then in 1983, Shergill moved to California and built apartments and custom homes in the Golden State for seven years. “That’s the trade I learned and that’s the trade I stayed with,” says the current president of the Calgary Region Home Builders Association (CRHBA).

Though Shergill doesn’t think there’s a trend towards building more expensive houses, “It has become a necessity that every builder has to adjust to whatever land he can get,” says Shergill, citing that the average price of homes in Calgary is now $500,000. Market demands have also changed. “Mind you, $425,000 homes all have pretty high standard specifications like high ceilings, granite countertops, and high efficiency furnaces. It’s become the standard.”

That higher standard has become the company catchphrase. “When I started Prominent Homes, the question was—how are we different? There’s only so many ways to design a house on a lot. Builders build similar products, so we try to differentiate ourselves by saying “We hold ourselves to a higher standard,” says Shergill.

Shergill points out that Prominent Homes strives to provide the best when it comes to customers’ expectations. “We always try to give our customers an answer—it may not be the answer they’re looking for, but we will be upfront and straightforward.”

Client expectations may not be easy particularly in the current situation where there is a shortage of trades and suppliers. “All of us get our services from others. I don’t do the electrical, framing, siding or roofing. All a builder does is to co-ordinate everybody’s effort to bring a finished product into the market. And we try to hold our suppliers and trades to a higher standard by telling them up front that we expect more than what they’re used to. In other words, quality, fit, and finish becomes more important.”

The other thing that sets Prominent Homes apart is how they hold themselves accountable to their customers.  “We did a campaign called ‘Oops’ which highlights that everybody makes mistakes. I’ve been in construction for 27 years; I don’t know of anybody who has built a perfect home yet. All I can say is when we make mistakes, we own up to our mistake and take care of them,” Shergill says.

Beyond holding their employees and services to that higher standard, every Prominent Home goes through rigorous quality control at every stage in the building process.

“We have a full-time quality control representative whose job is to go through the site, check and make sure all the requirements are there,” says Shergill. Quality control checks include making sure all openings are right, walls are plumbed, windows are level, door openings are square and level, arches are symmetrical. “So we go the extra mile. It helps other service issues from cropping up after the fact.”

Going that extra mile and dealing with service issues before it happens is not the only way Prominent Homes is helping in the community. “We’d like to think we’re socially involved. We have a busy charity aspect to the company in terms of time and money. We’d like to think we’re good corporate citizens.” NL