The buying process was a great experience. There were lots of floor plans to choose from, and they let us do whatever customization that we wanted. We dealt with David and Victoria, they were amazing! We contacted them a lot throughout the build, they responded quickly and were happy to help. They would let us in to see updates of our house frequently with short notice which we really appreciated.
The design center had many choices but we felt like we had to upgrade everything as the standard choices were not good. For a lot of the upgrades it is very expensive. I felt like they were nickel and diming us over every little choice. We had a girl who it was her first solo appointment, she was wonderful and everyone has to learn but it was a 9 hour appointment and some of the pricing got very mixed up at the end. But overall the design appointment went very well.
Our home was supposed to be completed by September 2018. We did not move until mid January 2019. So quite a delay. It was annoying but at least we were living with family in the mean time. We tried to have the possession date moved up by 1 week because it would have worked much better with our jobs and families who were helping us move (they had delayed it 4 months already and couldn't move it 1 week, we felt like we weren't asking for a lot). Also pretty much none of the seasonal items were done ( they had all summer to do that, considering the house was supposed to be ready for September). The parging on foundation, trim paint, painting the front door window portion are some of the items, the driveway was done but I had to push very hard to get it done before it got cold.
Our site supervisor was Steve. He was easy to contact when we had questions or concerns and replied quickly. There were quite a few things at our pre possession walk through that needed to be corrected. Some things were wrong from the blueprint which needed to be changed. One thing was that our walk in closet was supposed to have two rows of shelving but they had only hung one. Steve was quite difficult to deal with about fixing it, he said that since it is not on the addendum then it is not correct. When it clearly stated that on the blueprint there should be two shelves.They said that the person who made the blueprint made a mistake adding the shelf and that it should not have been there, so he had to contact someone higher up to approve this. It took days to sort out but they ended up fixing it a few days before move in. Multiple other things with the walk through I would bring up and would get the response "well its supposed to be like that". For example we had double doors to a closet in the basement and there was a huge gap in between the doors, you could see into the closet. He stated that they are french doors and they are supposed to be like that. But our double doors upstairs were perfectly fine. So long story short most of my complaints were fixed but it felt like an annoyance to bring up. Before walk in we asked them to clean up the yard multiple times as there were lots of wood with nails, sharp metal pieces and empty paint cans. We have two dogs who would be using that space to go to the bathroom so it was very important for it to be safe for them. They never did clean it up so we had to clean it up once we moved in.
For the quality of the build everything so far seems pretty good. We have only been in the home for 2 months. The cabinets and counter tops are beautiful and very good quality. The flooring was the best upgrade by far, we got vinyl plank. The dry walling for our house is horrendous, so many imperfections. They do not cover fixing paint afterwards which is unfortunate because now we have found so many problems. When they painted they got a lot of paint on the vinyl plank and tile (we are still finding spots to clean off a couple months later). We also paid a lot of money to have black iron railing installed which at the walk through was covered in paint. They were able to clean most of it off but there is still some left which we will address at our first warranty walk through.
We had Connie for our possession day walk through. She was wonderful, super friendly. She was great at explaining everything and helped us pick out the little things that we were missing. Our pocket door to our half bath was very short so you could see the back of the door, and the wall had a large gap and was very bowed. She advocated for me when Steve said that it was supposed to be that way. So I appreciated that she was there!
Overall it was a good experience and I would probably recommend them with a couple warnings.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $475,000.00