New Construction & Development in Holland

Welcome to Holland, Michigan — the lakeshore city where West Michigan's homebuilding is concentrated right now. Builders are adding entire communities here, and if you're shopping for new construction, this is the brief. I'll cover who's building, where, and what it costs. First, the geography. Holland sits on Lake Michigan at the mouth of Lake Macatawa, about forty minutes southwest of downtown Grand Rapids. That lakeshore position is exactly why the demand — and the construction — keeps coming. Here's the baseline. Holland is home to about thirty-four thousand five hundred people. The typical home is valued around three hundred twenty thousand dollars, listings go pending in about seventeen days, and downtown Grand Rapids is roughly a forty-minute drive. Now the construction story. Listing platforms currently track close to twenty active new-construction communities in and around Holland, with over a hundred new homes on the market at once. Allen Edwin, Eastbrook Homes, Baumann Building, and Heartland Builders are all putting up homes here. On price, the typical Holland home runs about three hundred twenty thousand dollars — just under the Kent County median of three hundred thirty-five thousand that anchors the Grand Rapids market. New construction starts around three hundred forty-six thousand, so the premium for brand-new here is modest. The headline project is Kensington West. In January of twenty twenty-six, Holland's planning commission approved Allen Edwin's plan for six hundred four units on the city's south side — single-family homes and townhomes, mostly three- and four-bedroom — scaled back from seven hundred fifty-nine units after residents said apartments weren't the need. Build-out runs in phases from twenty twenty-six into the early twenty-thirties. So here's the shortlist worth knowing. Kensington West for sheer volume and townhomes. Macatawa Legends for golf-course living. Silverwater, with more than two hundred homesites in the West Ottawa Public Schools district. Knollwood for entry-level new builds. And custom work from local builders like Baumann Building and Heartland. Macatawa Legends deserves its own mention. It's Eastbrook Homes' roughly four-hundred-acre resort-style community built around a championship golf course, with a pool and a fitness center on site. A new phase for twenty twenty-six adds courtyard homes, condominiums, and patio homes, and current townhome and condo listings run from the low four hundreds to the mid five hundreds. Here's my take. Holland is the rare lakeshore market where new construction is still attainable — new builds start in the mid three hundreds, and builders are adding real volume instead of a handful of custom lots. Now the context. Against its neighbors, Holland's typical home value sits below Zeeland, well below Hudsonville, and just above the city of Grand Rapids. That gap is a big part of why builders keep choosing Holland — there's room to deliver homes people can actually buy. The draw is bigger than the subdivisions. Downtown Holland keeps its streets and sidewalks clear all winter with the largest municipally-run snowmelt system in North America, Tulip Time fills the city every May, and the Lake Michigan shore sits minutes from most of the new communities — Silverwater is about a seven-minute drive from the beach. And the resale side explains the urgency. Existing Holland listings go pending in about seventeen days, which is tight by any measure. When resale moves that fast, new construction is where buyers find selection and a little negotiating room. One thing to remember if you go the new-build route. The sales agent in the model home works for the builder, not for you. Bring your own representation, get the contract and the allowances reviewed, and compare communities on lot, location, and resale value — not just the finishes. Holland's pipeline now runs from entry-level townhomes to Lake Macatawa frontage trading anywhere from six hundred thousand to over two and a half million. If a new build on the lakeshore sounds like your move, let's figure out which community, builder, and phase actually fit your number.