Custom Lake Homes on Lake Keowee

Reini Homes builds custom homes on Lake Keowee — in Peninsula Point, Backwater Landing, and across the Seneca and Salem side of the lake. We're a family-owned builder, licensed in South Carolina for 30 years, and every build is a joint effort between Benjamin Reini's experience and his sons' next-generation approach — so the people you meet at the start are the people building your house.

If you own a Keowee lot, or you're about to, this page is what we'd tell you on the phone.

A lake lot on Keowee has a few more moving parts than a lot in Greenville. None of them are hard if you've done them before. All of them are expensive if you haven't.

Grading, sitework and foundations are where the build is won. Most Keowee lots slope toward the water, so the house steps down the hill and a good deal of the engineering happens below grade — retaining, foundation design, and directing runoff around the house instead of under it. Done right at the start, it's the reason a lake house stays dry and solid for decades.

The shoreline has its own approval process. Lake Keowee's shoreline is managed by Duke Energy, so docks, seawalls and anything near the water's edge go through their review. It's a well-defined process, and we build it into the schedule from day one rather than treating it as a surprise.

HOA review is thorough. The Keowee communities care about how the lake looks, and their architectural review reflects that — plans, materials, colors, site plan. We prepare a complete package so it passes the first time.

The lots are tight. Steep and narrow means concrete trucks, lumber deliveries and the crane get planned before the first one shows up. Access is part of the plan, not an afterthought.

Most of our Keowee clients are building a retirement home or a family lake house, and most are coming from somewhere else — Florida, California, the Midwest. They've chosen Keowee for the water and the mountains, and they're usually managing the build from a distance for at least part of it.

We're set up for that. Out-of-state clients get regular video updates from the site, so you see the progress yourself — the foundation going in, the framing, the stone — instead of reading about it in an email. And when you do fly in, the people you meet on site are the same ones you've been talking to all along.

The question we hear most often once a house is framed: which finishes actually work on the lake? Owners come in with ideas from their current house or a magazine, and some of those ideas don't love humidity, sun off the water, wet feet and a dock full of kids. We've guided every Keowee client through that — flooring that handles wet traffic, exterior materials that hold up to lake exposure, interiors that read as a lake house instead of a suburban house that happens to be near water. It's the kind of advice that only comes from having built here.

Peninsula Point — a 7,000-square-foot custom lake house. Designed by the owners' architect in California and built here by us. Stone throughout, arched openings, barrel-vaulted ceilings, five fireplaces, and long views down the lake from nearly every main room. A children's playroom with a built-in stage and a rock-climbing wall. A private dock. It's a house that was drawn with intent, and our job is to build it the way it was drawn — arches and barrel ceilings reward a crew that knows what it's doing, and that much stone takes real planning on a slope. The house is currently in the drywall phase now.

Backwater Landing — two lake-view homes. Two traditional cabin-style homes, about 3,000 square feet each, on steep lots with lake views in a neighborhood that provides lake access. Each run two levels plus a finished walkout basement that opens toward the water. On lots like these, the foundation and drainage work is where the craftsmanship starts — long before anything you'd photograph.

We're meticulous, we're personally involved, and we've been doing this for more than 30 years. Every Reini build is a joint effort: Benjamin's three decades of experience and the fresh eyes of his sons, Dexter and Ty, who bring current methods, current materials, and the energy to run a job hard. You get the judgment of a builder who's seen everything and the drive of the next generation who intends to be building here for the next thirty years. Your build doesn't get handed off to a superintendent you've never met. It stays with the family whose name is on the truck.

We'll walk it with you — slope, shoreline, access, HOA — and tell you what it will take before you commit to anything.

(864) 915-2918 · Benjaminreini@gmail.com · Book a free consultation