Where We Build and Renovate
Lincoln is home base. From there we build custom homes, shops, and garages on top of renovating the homes people already own. We serve all across Lincoln and the surrounding areas of southeast Nebraska.
Lincoln and the Surrounding Areas
We're based in Lincoln, and most of our work happens here. But a good share of it doesn't — it's on an acreage west of town, in one of the small towns that's turned into a real bedroom community, or out in a county-seat town where somebody's finally doing the addition they've been talking about for ten years.
If it's within reasonable driving distance of Lincoln, we'll come look at it. That covers all of Lancaster County, the towns ringing it, the Omaha metro, and a wide stretch of southeast Nebraska from Columbus down to the Kansas line.
If you're building new, that's Driven Custom Homes. If you're renovating what you already own, that's Redline Renovations. Same crew, same standard, same territory.
On the renovation side, Lincoln's older neighborhoods are their own specialty. Near South, the Boulevards, Woods Park, University Place, Havelock, College View, Bethany, Belmont — these were separate towns or streetcar additions before they were Lincoln neighborhoods, and the housing stock reflects it. Then there's the postwar ring: Park Manor and Eastridge are mid-century districts now on the National Register, full of ranches and split-levels with good bones and forty-year-old kitchens.
There's a practical reason to hire someone who knows the difference. Lincoln's Neighborhood Design Standards apply to residential lots inside the city's 1949 boundary, and they govern things people don't expect — roof pitch, porch requirements, garage placement, driveway width, how tall an addition can be relative to the rest of the block. They kick in on new construction and on additions that increase floor area by a hundred percent or more. A contractor who's never run into them finds out at plan review. We'd rather find out at the kitchen table.
In Lincoln we handle: custom home building · shop and garage builds · kitchen remodels · bathroom remodels · whole-home renovations · additions · basement finishes · exterior renovations · roofing · commercial office build-outs
Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is where we do most of our work, and it's a city building in two directions at once.
On the new-construction side, the growth is south and east. The City of Lincoln's own residential land inventory puts roughly seventy percent of the city's remaining residential capacity in the South and East growth subareas — Yankee Hill, the Highway 2 corridor, Wilderness Hills, Stevens Creek and the ground east of 84th. That's where the lots are, and it's where most of our custom builds happen. We also build in the northwest and southwest growth areas, and on infill lots anywhere inside the city.
Worth knowing if you're shopping for a lot: Lincoln permitted about two thousand housing units a year over the last three years, but only around a quarter of those were single-family detached homes. The custom-home lane in this city is narrower than the headline numbers suggest, and finished lots move fast. If you've found one you like, that's usually a reason to move, not to wait.
Lancaster County
Outside the city limits, Lancaster County splits into two kinds of work: the towns, which are growing fast and have municipal water and sewer, and the acreage ground in between, which is a different build entirely.
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Waverly has grown roughly thirty percent in each of the last two decades — from about 2,500 residents in 2000 to over 4,200 at the 2020 census. Its comprehensive plan calls for around 420 new housing units by 2033, and there's platted ground to put them on: Anderson North Park on the north side has the most room to expand, and Waverly Ridge Estates at 148th and Highway 6 opened lots most recently.
Waverly has municipal water and sewer and its own one-mile planning jurisdiction, so a build here goes through the City of Waverly rather than the county. Waverly School District 145 covers the town along with Alvo, Eagle, Prairie Home and Walton.
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Hickman has been called Nebraska's fastest-growing city, and the numbers back it: 1,657 residents in 2010, 2,607 in 2020, and still climbing. What makes it genuinely buildable is less glamorous — the city has spent real money doubling both its water treatment and wastewater treatment capacity, and it works to keep sixty to eighty building lots available at any given time. A lot of small towns want growth. Hickman paid for the pipes first.
Hickman is in the Norris School District 160, which is one of the most-searched reasons people build south of Lincoln in the first place.
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Bennet grew about fifty percent between 2010 and 2020, from 719 to 1,082, and its comprehensive plan directs new residential growth north and west of town. It runs its own water and sanitary sewer. Worth knowing: Bennet sits in Lancaster County but its elementary is part of Palmyra District OR-1, headquartered over in Otoe County — a detail that surprises people mid-search.
Bennet also has genuinely old infrastructure in parts of town, which means a fair amount of our work here is renovation and system upgrades rather than new construction.
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Firth is the southernmost community in Lancaster County and, as it happens, the administrative home of Norris School District 160. Roca sits between Firth and Lincoln — 201 people, and a limestone quarry history going back to 1861 that put Roca stone into buildings all over Lincoln.
For a lot of families, this stretch is one search: build a home in the Norris district. Norris runs all four buildings on a single 160-acre campus about twelve miles south of Lincoln and serves Roca, Hickman, Firth, Cortland, Panama, Princeton, Holland, Cheney and Rokeby. If that's the district you're after, this is the ground to look at — and most of it is acreage.
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Denton is the closest true rural village to Lincoln — twelve miles from downtown, 189 people, surrounded by agricultural ground. It's a small municipal system with real constraints: floodplain limits growth to the south and east, so the village directs it west and northwest, and soil conditions mean septic systems need generous lot area.
Most Denton-area work is acreage building, shops, and renovation of existing homes rather than subdivision construction.
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This is Lincoln's acreage belt, and the lakes are why. Malcolm sits between Branched Oak and Pawnee — the two largest of the Salt Valley Lakes — and Raymond's growth traces directly to Branched Oak Dam going in back in 1970. People build out here for the ground and the water, on a few acres rather than a platted lot.
Practically, that means well and septic, county zoning outside the village limits, and a different set of considerations than a city lot: siting, drives, utility runs, drainage. Malcolm has its own school district; Raymond and Davey are in Raymond Central, which spans about 169 square miles across Lancaster and Saunders counties.
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Walton · Panama · Sprague · Hallam · Princeton · Cheney · Emerald · Agnew
The Towns Around Lincoln We Serve
Farther Out
We take projects across southeast Nebraska, generally within about an hour and a half of Lincoln. That includes:
Omaha Metro
Omaha, Papillion, La Vista, Bellevue, Gretna, Elkhorn, Springfield, Plattsmouth, Louisville, Council Bluffs
North & Northwest Nebraska
Fremont, Blair, Columbus, Schuyler, David City, Ceresco, Valparaiso
West Nebraska
York, Utica, Aurora, Geneva, Hastings, Grand Island
If your project is somewhere not on this list, ask anyway. We'd rather tell you honestly whether we can serve you well than let a map decide it.
South & Southeast Nebraska
Fairbury, Hebron, Tecumseh, Auburn, Weeping Water, Elmwood, Nehawka
Everywhere We Go.
What We Do.
Every service runs across the full territory. Nothing on this list is Lincoln-only.
Renovating — Redline Renovations
Kitchen renovations
Bathroom renovations
Whole-home renovations
Additions
Basement finishes
Exterior renovations
Roofing
Commercial office build-outs
Building New — Driven Custom Homes
Custom home building
Acreage and rural homes
Shop and garage builds
Why Knowing the Territory Matters
Building around Lincoln means dealing with four or five different sets of rules depending on which side of an invisible line your lot falls on. A few examples of what we're navigating on your behalf:
Lincoln's three-mile reach. As Nebraska's only city of the primary class, Lincoln's zoning jurisdiction extends three miles past the city limits. Plenty of people buy a lot they think is "in the county" and find out otherwise. Other towns around us — Waverly, Hickman, Bennet, Eagle — have a one-mile jurisdiction of their own. Everything left over falls to the county board.
The three-acre septic line. Nebraska requires subdivision review before construction anywhere onsite wastewater is proposed on lots under three acres. That single rule is the reason most rural acreages around here are platted at three-plus acres, and it's the first thing we check on a rural lot.
Who issues the permit. It isn't always the town whose name is on the sign. Greenwood permits through Cass County in Plattsmouth. Eagle permits itself. Lincoln issues electrical, mechanical and plumbing permits only to licensed contractors — or to a homeowner working on their own primary residence, and only there.
Neighborhood Design Standards. Inside Lincoln's 1949 boundary, additions over a certain size trigger requirements on roof pitch, porches, garage placement, and driveway width. Discovering that at plan review costs weeks.
None of this is why you hire a builder. But it's a lot of what a builder does before the first shovel.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No travel surcharge on projects in our normal territory. Some rural sites carry real costs a city lot doesn't — longer utility runs, site access, well and septic — and we spell those out in the estimate rather than folding them into a mystery line item. On the farther jobs we'll tell you upfront if distance changes anything.
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Lincoln and the surrounding areas, generally out to about an hour and a half — Omaha, Fremont, Columbus, York, Grand Island, Beatrice, Nebraska City and everywhere between. We take projects past that when the fit is right. Ask.
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Yes, and it's a good share of what we do. Malcolm, Raymond, Denton, Roca, the Norris district and the ground around Pleasant Dale are all acreage country. Building on a few acres is a different project than building on a platted lot — well and septic, longer utility runs, site work, county rather than city review — and it's worth talking through before you buy the ground, not after.
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Yes. Shops and detached garages are often easier to permit on county ground than inside city limits, and we build them to the same standard as the houses.
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Yes. Redline Renovations serves the same area — kitchens, bathrooms, whole-home remodels, additions, basements, exteriors and roofing.
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Do you do commercial work outside Lincoln?
Not Sure If You're In Our Area?
Tell us where the project is. We'll tell you straight — whether we serve it, what building there involves, and what the next step looks like.