How Benson ADU Builders Was Born
In 2006, Troy Eastman was working as a general contractor in Los Angeles when a homeowner in the San Fernando Valley asked him to take a look at a garage conversion another company had started and then walked away from. The framing was out of square by nearly three inches. The electrical rough-in had been done without a permit. The homeowner had already paid for the work in full, and the company wouldn’t return his calls. Troy stood in that half-finished space, looking at exposed studs and a pile of lumber that had been left in the yard to warp in the rain, and he made a decision. Nobody should hand over that much money and end up feeling abandoned.
That was the moment Benson ADU Builders began, though we didn’t have the name yet. Troy finished the conversion correctly, pulled the missing permits, and handed the homeowner a written line-item price for every stage of the remaining work before swinging a hammer. No surprises. No phone calls that went to voicemail. Word spread through the neighborhood, and within a year he was turning down work he couldn’t personally supervise. That’s when he started looking for people who cared about the same things he did: a written price before the job starts, photo updates as the work progresses, and a live arrival time instead of a four-hour window. Today, that standard is called The Relay Standard, and every Benson ADU Builders location operates under it. The company has grown well beyond Los Angeles, with locally owned and operated teams across the country, but the promise hasn’t changed since that first garage conversion in 2006.
Troy Eastman’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Troy Eastman didn’t grow up planning to build accessory dwelling units. He grew up watching his own family try to make space where there wasn’t any. His childhood home had a single-car garage that was never used for a car. It held a workbench, a washer and dryer, and a rotating cast of relatives who needed a place to stay for a few months. He remembers the smell of sawdust from his father’s ongoing projects, the sound of a circular saw firing up on a Saturday morning, and the particular satisfaction of a door that closed squarely on a frame you built yourself. That feeling never left him. When he got into construction as a young man, it wasn’t the big projects that held his attention. It was the small ones. The additions, the garage conversions, the back-house builds that made a single property serve three generations at once.
What gets Troy out of bed in the morning now is simpler than most people assume. It’s the moment a homeowner walks into a finished ADU and realizes the space that used to store boxes and old furniture now houses a parent, or a grown child, or a tenant whose rent helps pay the mortgage. He has said more than once that if he weren’t building ADUs, he’d probably still be working with his hands doing finish carpentry. The trade got under his skin early. He liked the way a well-built wall felt under his palm, the way plumb and level were things you could prove rather than argue about. A decade of working in residential construction taught him that most homeowner frustration comes from poor communication, not poor workmanship. The technical part of building was learnable. The relational part, being honest about cost and schedule and showing up when you say you will, that was what separated tradespeople from people you’d actually recommend to your mother. That lesson shaped everything about how Benson ADU Builders operates today.
Meet Troy Eastman – The Person Behind Every Job
Troy Eastman is the Owner & Founder of Benson ADU Builders. He has spent more than two decades in residential construction, with the last twenty years focused on accessory dwelling units, garage conversions, and small-footprint residential builds. He is state-licensed and carries the insurance and bonding required for residential work in every market Benson ADU Builders serves. His background includes framing, electrical coordination, plumbing layout, and finish carpentry, but he’ll tell you the skill he’s proudest of is estimating. Pricing ADU work accurately up front, in writing, so a homeowner never gets surprised mid-project, is the foundation of everything else.
What makes Troy different from a franchise technician is that he has done every part of this work with his own hands. He has poured footings. He has hung drywall. He has installed windows and doors and sat on a jobsite at the end of the day wondering if he quoted enough hours. He isn’t a salesperson reciting a script. He’s a builder who happens to run a company now. Outside of work, Troy restores old hand tools, the kind you find at estate sales and swap meets with rust on the blades and history in the handles. He likes the discipline of bringing something worn back to usefulness. It’s not all that different from what he does with underused space. His personal commitment to every homeowner is this: if Benson ADU Builders puts it in writing, we stand behind it, and Troy’s name is on the company because he wants you to know who to ask for.
Our Promise to Homeowners
The promise is called The Relay Standard, and it has five parts. Book in a tap, no phone tag. Give a live arrival time, not a four-hour window. Send photos of the work, before and after. Put the price in writing before we start. Text a digital invoice you can pay from the link. Those aren’t slogans. They’re the operating rules every Benson ADU Builders location agrees to when they join the network.
Behind those rules sits a simpler idea: you should always know who is coming, when they’ll be there, and what it will cost. Our written quotes are line-item estimates, not ballpark numbers mumbled over the phone. And every job is covered by The Relay Visibility Guarantee, which means if we say a wall is going up on Tuesday, you’ll see photos of that wall on Tuesday. If something changes, you’ll hear about it from a live coordinator, not a chatbot, and you’ll get a revised written price before any new work begins. Honest pricing isn’t a value we hang on the wall. It’s a document we hand you before you commit a dollar.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed: Every pro working under the Benson ADU Builders name is required to hold the license their state requires for residential construction. We don’t cut corners on this, because permits and inspections protect you, not just us.
- Insured & bonded: The same requirement applies to insurance and bonding. Every location maintains the coverage required in its market. If something goes wrong, you aren’t left holding the bag.
- Founded in 2006: We’ve been doing this work since the days when most people had never heard the acronym ADU. The trade has changed a lot since then, and so have local codes, which is why our teams stay current on the specific requirements in each city we serve.
- A local network run to national standards: Each Benson ADU Builders location is independently owned and operated by a local team. That means you work with people who know your city’s permitting office and your city’s soil conditions, while the Relay Standard gives you the same written-price and photo-update experience no matter which location serves you.
Why do these credentials matter to a homeowner in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Anaheim, or anywhere else we work? Because an ADU is a structure people are going to live in. It needs proper setbacks, proper drainage, proper electrical and plumbing, and a final inspection that actually passes. A company that’s unlicensed or uninsured can quote cheaper, but they’re transferring risk directly onto you. We’d rather be upfront about the standards than win the lowest-bid game.
Rooted in the Communities We Serve
Benson ADU Builders is part of the Relay Home Co. family, and our founding city is Los Angeles, California. But we don’t pretend to be from every town. Each Benson ADU Builders location is an independent local business that has agreed to operate under The Relay Standard and The Relay Visibility Guarantee. That’s the whole arrangement, honestly stated.
The name Benson is a plain, familiar English name. A steady fit for a company that adds new space to your lot. Our locations serve homeowners across Southern California, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Anaheim, Riverside, Irvine, Santa Ana, Santa Clarita, San Bernardino, Fontana, Moreno Valley, Oxnard, and Huntington Beach. When you call (903) 568-7222, a live coordinator connects you with the local team that covers your address. You’ll get the same written pricing, the same photo updates, and the same live arrival times, whether your ADU is going up in a Riverside backyard or an Irvine hillside lot.
Written by Troy Eastman, Owner and Founder at Benson ADU Builders.