EASTWARD COMPANIES

Eastward Companies has been building on the lower Cape a long time — BBB records it as established in 1970, with 30 employees and William Marsh as president, and the company's own site says it has been one of the leading firms on the Cape for 50 years, working Brewster, Chatham, Harwich, Orleans and Dennis. What is harder to square is how differently people describe the experience of hiring them. The warm accounts are old. Writing in 2014, an office client said John Marsh's crew finished an eleven-week renovation two weeks early and solved problems from the old building without downtime. A Chatham condo owner the same year described meeting Bill and John Marsh, and called the project manager a competent communicator who kept it on schedule and on budget. Another 2014 reviewer had used the firm on several projects, and neighbors followed. The complaints are more recent and they are specific. A homeowner writing in 2021 said corners were constantly cut, the finished homes looked cookie-cutter, and the project manager assigned to them had never built a house; they had chosen Eastward as the lowest bid and said the final price matched the two higher bids anyway. A 2015 account on BuildZoom ended in the client terminating the contract, citing poor management and workmanship. A 2014 Houzz reviewer who had used the company before with good results described a year of empty promises on a custom renovation before terminating; the company replied publicly that the project was flawed from the start and that faults lay on both sides. A one-star review from September 2025 is not from a customer at all — it is a neighbor objecting to a lot being cleared of trees for a new build. On licensing, the picture needs checking directly. BBB and Houzz both list construction supervisor licence CS-017367 for the company, and BuildZoom's page — filed under the name Eastward Homes Inc at the same Chatham address and phone — lists a separate home builder licence that BuildZoom says expired in 2024, flagging no active licence on file. None of that is a registry verification. A long-established Cape builder whose written record splits sharply by era. If you are considering them, ask which project manager you would get, ask for references from the last two years, and confirm the licence status yourself before signing.