09/08/2026
Thirty-two years of building in place.
In 1994, Southern California was climbing out of a residential real estate slump. Rates were inching up, banks were still wary of construction loans, and most builders were looking outward, toward open land at the edge of the region. That was the year Jim Barisic founded Brandywine Homes — with a part-time bookkeeper and one small subdivision on the banks of Santiago Creek.
The premise was contrarian and simple: the housing this region needed most belonged inside the communities that were already here. Outdated strip malls, surplus parking lots, and empty warehouses could become neighborhoods, close to jobs, schools, and extended family. Few builders wanted that work. Infill sites are small, complicated, politically demanding, and they require design solutions that do not come out of a plan book.
Three decades later, that premise has produced nearly 60 small- and mid-sized infill communities in more than a dozen Southern California cities — from Westminster, Stanton, and Garden Grove to Long Beach, Whittier, Baldwin Park, Pico Rivera, and Carson. In Baldwin Park, the work included restoring a historic Red Car building as part of the community. Much of it has been done in partnership with cities, turning underutilized and often blighted parcels into neighborhoods that generate tax revenue and stabilize the blocks around them.
We have built through the savings and loan aftermath, the 2008 collapse, a pandemic, and the rate environment of the past several years. During the Great Recession, when a great deal of the industry stopped, Brandywine kept building and remained profitable — largely because we never left a lending partner holding the bag. In this business, relationships are the real balance sheet.
That continuity is not accidental. Jim's sons each came into the business over the years and lead it today, which means the judgment earned in every one of those cycles never walked out the door. It got handed down.
California's housing shortage will not be solved at the edges of the region. It will be solved in the places where people already want to live, one difficult site at a time. That is the work we chose in 1994, and it is the work we are expanding into now, with a growing pipeline and a team built to execute it.
Building together for the next generation. Same idea it always was.
