Ask the people who hired Spencer & Company what they remember and the answer tends to be a person rather than a company: Matt Spencer, on the job site, most days. The Chatham firm builds and renovates houses on the Lower Cape, and it tells its own story as a handoff — Ted Spencer started it, worked at it for 43 years, retired in 2022, and passed it to his son Matt, who now runs it. Family-owned, by the company's own account, out of 71 Enterprise Drive.
The written history is short and it points one way. Google shows 4.6 stars across 11 ratings, and the six reviews on file from 2024 keep circling the same things. One December 2024 homeowner had an addition and a full kitchen remodel done while the family lived in the house, and said it landed on the promised date with the site left clean. Another, describing a major renovation that same month, wrote that when something didn't look right the crew made it right instead of taking a shortcut. A third from December 2024 described Matt at the site continually, checking the architect's details against the work. Back in July 2019, a Houzz reviewer put it plainly: it is rare, they wrote, to hire a builder whose owners are also the ones on site building the house.
Cape Cod Life covered two of the firm's projects in 2020 — one article describes an 11-month Chatham renovation led by Matt Spencer, another credits Ted and Matt Spencer and their team with rebuilding, rather than replacing, a house on Cape Cod Bay.
Three things are worth holding in mind before you call. The sample is small: 4.6 across 11 Google ratings is a handful of people, and the newest written account is from December 2024, so nothing here describes how the crew is running this year. The two five-star Houzz entries, both from 2019, carry word-for-word identical text, so read them as one voice and not two. And Houzz puts typical job cost between $250,000 and $6,000,000, which tells you what size of project this shop is built around.
Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active, held in the state registry under E.H. Spencer & Company, LLC — the original LLC behind the Spencer & Company name. Houzz separately lists a construction supervisor number, CS-014243, as that directory's own claim. BuildZoom's page for the Chatham address is bare: no reviews, and it reports that it could not verify a licence there.
If you're building a custom house or gutting one between Chatham, Harwich and Orleans, and you want the owner in work boots on your job rather than a manager rotating between six, this is the shape of firm to talk to. Ask what they have under construction this year, and ask to walk one of the two Cape Cod Life houses.