The 2026 EEBA Building Excellence Awards brought together the high-performance home building industry to recognize the builders, suppliers, and professionals pushing the industry forward. Presented during the EEBA High Performance Home Builder Summit in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the awards celebrated innovation in healthier homes, resiliency, electrification, decarbonization, and high-performance housing.
This year’s nominees demonstrated a shared commitment to building homes that are more efficient, durable, healthy, and resilient while helping raise the standard for residential construction. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and finalists!
DENH Awards: Advancing High-Performance Housing
The Department of Energy's Efficient New Homes (DENH) awards recognize builders advancing high-performance home construction across a range of project types, from custom homes to production-scale and attached housing.
DENH Spec Award
Winner: LEGEND HOMES LLC – Woburn
The DENH Spec Award recognizes builders setting a higher standard for high-performance homes through innovative design, thoughtful building practices, and a commitment to quality and efficiency.
The winning Woburn project was originally designed with co-housing in mind, with multiple families envisioned as potential owners or renters. The first floor accommodates aging in place, with features designed for people with mobility impairments, while the second floor offers four additional bedrooms and two full bathrooms.
Finalists:
DENH Attached & Affordable Award
Winner: Crosskey Architects – 80 South
This award recognizes innovative attached and multifamily projects that demonstrate how thoughtful design and high-performance building practices can create comfortable, durable, efficient, and attainable housing.
Finalists:
DENH Custom for Buyer Award
Winner: Charis Homes – Amherst Glen
The DENH Custom for Buyer Award recognizes exceptional innovation, craftsmanship, and dedication in creating high-performance custom homes tailored to homeowners’ needs and vision.
Finalists:
DENH Production Award
Winner: Beazer Homes – Atlanta Greenhouse 104
The DENH Production Award celebrates builders bringing innovation to production-scale homebuilding, developing solutions that deliver healthy, efficient, comfortable, and durable homes at scale.
Finalists:
EEBA Builder Leader Awards: Raising the Bar for Better Homes
The EEBA Builder Leader Awards recognize builders and industry partners advancing the future of high-performance homebuilding. This year's awards highlighted projects and organizations working to create healthier living environments, strengthen home resiliency, advance electrification, and reduce carbon emissions.
Excellence in Resiliency
Winner: Empire Homes – The Healthier Resiliency Discovery Home
The Excellence in Resiliency Award recognizes homes designed to withstand and recover from challenges such as extreme heat, storms, flooding, wildfire, drought, and other severe weather events.
Finalists:
Excellence in Healthier Homes
The Excellence in Healthier Homes Award recognizes builders who prioritize the connection between home design and occupant health and well-being. Strategies may include improving indoor air quality, using low-VOC materials, incorporating air filtration, and reducing exposure to potentially hazardous materials.
Winner: Empire Homes – The Healthier Resiliency Discovery Home
Finalists:
Excellence in Electrification
Winner: Charis Homes – Amherst Glen
Sponsored by Xcel Energy, the Excellence in Electrification Award highlights homes demonstrating the climate, health, comfort, and economic benefits of electrification. The award recognizes all-electric building strategies and the technologies helping make them possible.
Finalists:
Excellence in Decarbonization
Winner: DUST Development – The Northview Farmhouse
This award recognizes builders taking a thoughtful, measurable approach to reducing operational and embodied carbon. Strategies can include evaluating materials, construction processes, energy use, and other factors that contribute to a home's overall carbon impact.
Finalists:
Recognizing Industry Milestones
In addition to the project awards, EEBA recognized two significant industry achievements.
Most Homes Built This Year: Lennar
Primarily through its San Antonio division, Lennar built an impressive 5,867 homes this year, earning recognition for its production volume.
10,000 Homes Built: Beazer Homes
Beazer Homes was recognized for reaching the milestone of 10,000 homes built. This achievement represents thousands of families benefiting from the comfort, efficiency, and quality of their homes.
Recognizing Excellence Across the Industry
Top Supplier Award
Winner: DuPont
The Top Supplier Award recognizes excellence in supply chain partnerships and products, celebrating the suppliers whose innovation, collaboration, and commitment to quality help move the high-performance building industry forward.
This year, EEBA proudly recognized DuPont for its continued contributions to the industry and its longstanding partnership with EEBA. For approximately 25 years, DuPont has been an incredible supporter and sponsor of the organization, demonstrating a lasting commitment to advancing high-performance homebuilding.
We’re grateful for DuPont’s continued partnership and support, which help strengthen our industry and advance the innovations needed to build better-performing homes. Congratulations to the entire DuPont team on this well-deserved recognition, and thank you for nearly 25 years of partnership with EEBA!
Congratulations to All Our 2026 Finalists and Winners!
EEBA congratulates every organization recognized in this year's Building Excellence Awards. From innovative custom homes to scalable production housing and new approaches to healthier, more resilient buildings, these projects demonstrate the work underway to advance high-performance homebuilding.
A special thank-you to Xcel Energy for sponsoring the Excellence in Electrification Award, as well as all our sponsors, partners, and supporters who helped make the awards possible. We also thank everyone who submitted a project or nominated a deserving organization.
The work continues beyond the awards ceremony. By sharing ideas, celebrating innovation, and learning from one another, we can continue raising the standard for the homes and communities we build.
Learn more about EEBA and the High Performance Home Builder Summit at eeba.org, and join us for the next Summit in Aurora, Colorado, on September 14–15, 2027!