Sandlot Estates / Meet the team
The people behind Sandlot Estates
A builder who grew up in Lynden, owners who have been investing in Whatcom County since 1989, and a real estate team that picks up the phone. This is who you're working with, from the first conversation to the keys.
Meet the builder
Built by a Lynden native
Alex Wynstra, founder, AJW Builders
Alex Wynstra grew up in the City of Lynden, twenty minutes from the homes he builds today, watching his family run some of the town's best-known businesses: DeWard & Bode, Lynden Sheet Metal, the Dutch Bakery, Dutch Village Mall, Dutch Mother Restaurant, and the Sumas Mountain Village Restaurant. After Lynden Christian High School and a business degree from Calvin College, where he met his wife Kristin, he learned production homebuilding at Eastbrook Homes in Michigan, a company building more than 500 homes a year, under the industry veteran Brad Mooney.
The Wynstras came home to Whatcom County in 2004. In 2010 Alex co-founded Everkept with partners Tim Wiersma and Bud Ammons, delivering 50 senior-living apartments at Bryce Park in Lynden and 127 homes at the Reserve for Caitac USA. In 2015 he founded AJW Builders to build Larrabee Springs, Washington's largest green-built community, and he leads it today.
AJW hires local contractors and sources local materials wherever it can, so the money spent building your home stays in the county. Alex and Kristin have five children and two grandchildren. Whatcom County is home.
About the owners
Thirty-five years of building in Whatcom County
Caitac USA Corp. and Larrabee Springs Inc.
The founder of Caitac Corporation first saw Mt. Baker on a trip from Japan and decided this was where he wanted to put down roots. Caitac USA has been active in Bellingham and Whatcom County since 1989, and in 1990 the City of Bellingham named its founders honorary citizens.
Over three decades the company has built and operated a manufacturing facility in Cordata that employed as many as 125 area residents, the North Bellingham Golf Course on the historic Wilder Ranch, Holiday Inn Express Bellingham, Newport Apartments, and City Gym. In 2008 it established Larrabee Springs Inc., which has since developed more than 375 new homes, among the smartest and most efficient in Bellingham, with a solar system on every home since 2016.
Caitac USA and Larrabee Springs have been members of the Building Industry Association of Washington and Whatcom County since 2015. Sandlot Estates is their newest community, and the same standards come with it.
Meet the realtors
Your team on the ground
Ben Kinney Team, Keller Williams Western Realty
Jillene Snell has been in real estate since 2001. A Realtor and Team Operator with the Ben Kinney Team, she is also a coach and hiring manager, and she has spent two decades helping buyers, sellers, and investors make good decisions, and helping other agents build businesses of their own.
On Sandlot Estates she is your first call: which lot fits, how the plans compare, what the release will look like, financing introductions through Envoy Mortgage, and a walk of the site itself. She answers the same day.
Financing for Sandlot Estates is available through Envoy Mortgage, the team's lending partner, so pre-approval and rate conversations can start the same week you join the list.