At Brush Arbor Homes in Ashburn, Virginia, working with integrity is less a matter of discipline than of pure enjoyment of life. Building luxury homes within the parameters of the Capital Beltway, the 64-mile highway encircling Washington, D.C., this company is a general contractor with heart—one that knows that treating its people with the same high regard as its customers delivers a better product, among other happy outcomes.
Approaching 20 years in business in 2026, Brush Arbor Homes is recognized as one of the top builders in Northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area. The firm provides its clients with timeless luxury, incorporating hand-crafted wood floors, bespoke handrails, and classic elements paired with the latest and greatest in modern features and fixtures. A home from Brush Arbor is “designed to remain timeless as it evolves with your family and our area’s discerning real estate market.”
Yet building glamorous villas is not all this dynamic firm does. Rooted in a culture of care for people, the proudest aspect of the company’s mandate is its BuyOne BuildOne program.
Under this program, for each high-end home Brush Arbor builds, it commits to building one home for a less fortunate person or a family in need of a roof over their heads, typically in a developing country. Each of these homes is built with a designated share of the profits from the company’s builds in the United States.
Brush Arbor Homes’ efforts do not stop with the donation of the money. The team regularly travels abroad to get physically involved in building these homes, ensuring that its high standards are upheld no matter the location. The team also contributes to the construction of community centers and clinics, improving the lives of those who might be living in economically challenged regions.
Moreover, Brush Arbor Homes has also begun to collaborate on the construction of churches used by Compassion International for helping underage victims of sex trafficking. Historically, locations include countries like South Sudan, Uganda, Guatemala, Bolivia, and others in South America, where Brush Arbor Homes’ founder and owner Jonathan Smith lived for some time.
Back on American soil, the region the company serves is already highly populated; as a result, land is scarce and comes at a premium. Brush Arbor’s solution is to find and purchase land which it then offers to clients, alongside building speculatively. In this case, finding good lots typically means rebuilding on formerly occupied land. The process can be tedious and costly, but is worth it for those in search of an address in this desirable area. “Inside the beltway, there isn’t a lot of raw land, but usually, when people retire, land becomes available. It’s very competitive,” Smith says.
This, he points out, is due to a trend of foreign builders looking to protect capital from offshore fluctuations by investing in real estate in the United States, which has impacted American construction companies by driving up the price of tear-downs.
“We build for very wealthy people,” he explains, “but the guys who are working on the houses are generally not wealthy, and so we’re passionate about treating every person with dignity and respect,” Smith says, exemplifying the company’s approach of doing business with decency and empathy.
“I’m excited to show young people especially just what helping others does for you, why God calls us to help other people. It’s not just for them; it’s for you,” Smith says. His reason for sharing this precious knowledge is simple but profound: “I feel like a lot of young people are looking for a sense of purpose and mission in their life, and that God tells us to help other people because it helps us as much as it helps them.” Living this universal truth for a lifetime, Smith would know.
Having established trusting relationships with partners abroad, Smith relies on them to connect the company with individuals in need in each respective area. Story after story is touching, but some stand out, like that of a young single mom in South Sudan with two children living in a makeshift lean-to. This vulnerable living condition led to her daughter with Down syndrome being routinely violated. Their new home featured lockable doors and windows that could protect the family from criminal entry, other intruders, and monsoon-style rains.
The process of connecting a local construction client with a foreign family is relatively straightforward. By connecting with its partners across 10 countries, Brush Arbor receives the profile of an identified family whose story the company then shares with a customer ready to start construction on their American home. As the house takes shape, progress on the BuyOne BuildOne home is shared with them—an experience that is understandably precious to the philanthropically-minded.
Not everyone everywhere is as well-intentioned as well-meaning people would like, so part of the identification process includes partners assisting families in securing title deeds to land first. This simply means that the company is then assured that no third parties can lay claim to the homes it builds for the needy. Smith has many stories to tell about these situations, which explain why he and his partners make it a habit to serve as support figures in the background in case new foreign homeowners have difficulties with jealous neighbors or family members, which has been all too common.
“One time, we had built a house for a widow and her children. Her sister and brother-in-law kicked her out of that house and were making her live in the shack next door,” Smith shares. In response, Smith went the extra mile, flying there himself and explaining to the envious relatives how things would go from then on, which solved the problem.
The Brush Arbor Homes team enjoys its foreign construction projects as much as it enjoys its work on home soil. “We had six or eight employees with family members and friends who went to Guatemala in August,” he tells us. The team built several houses and repaired existing buildings for a few of its partners. “It’s a blessing to us as a team to see that and meet a family that’s so grateful for our work.”
While Smith runs the company on Christian principles, with his focus on the universal truths reflected in the Gospel, he does not expect his team to subscribe to his faith. On the contrary, people of all backgrounds tend to stay at Brush Arbor Homes because they appreciate the culture. To maintain this overall spirit, the team gathers monthly to discuss projects at home and abroad, sharing details of identified families and meticulously planning the mission.
“Not everybody in our company believes the same way that I do, and that’s okay. They know that they have the freedom to believe whatever they wish,” Smith says. “It’s free information that we can share, and people can take it or leave it.”
As a servant leader with as much respect for his team as he has for his customers, Smith is heartfelt in his appreciation. “I like my team because they get the bigger picture. They get the fact that we don’t want to just work to make as much money as possible, but that there’s an eternal value in what we do.”
To this end, the company places family values above its bottom line. In Smith’s experience, this approach makes everyone better team players, improving in turn the quality of the company’s work in the field and delivering longevity.
Smith explains that his success was not a magical rise to the top, but rather a hard-earned path of relentless commitment to his faith and his people. Working for a big-name national construction firm upon his return from South America at the age of 27, Smith soon realized that the business-as-usual status quo did not live up to his inherent sense of ethics. Following what could be described as a divine hunch, the entrepreneur set out to build himself a construction company with integrity. “It was a pretty risky proposition. But I knew that I felt like God was saying, ‘you can do this’ and that I wanted to be able to do things like BuyOne BuildOne and not live from paycheck to paycheck,” he shares.
His hunch paid off. Today, Brush Arbor Homes is an example of down-to-earth authenticity, and of how business done right can yield positive results. Today, even his children are involved in the mission. His daughters make significant contributions, and his eldest and youngest sons have both travelled with him, as well as solo, to help build some of the houses.
Coming up on its twentieth year in business, “We’re stronger than we’ve ever been just because we have great people. And I could say something about each one of them that is specific to that person just from their character,” Jonathan Smith says. “I’m blessed to have the team that we have.”
