Weddingbee boards

Well Hive, I come to you a broken woman.  We've been in the process of building a home for the past five months, and it has been one problem after another after another with this builder.  Hubs and I are at the end of our rope.  The builder's apathy to the problems we have is driving us nuts.  Theoretically we are supposed to close in less than two weeks, but we just don't see how it is possible.  Here's a run down of the situation:

2 story home - 2275 sq ft - $165k; Specialty loan program through the government that requires no down payment to help stimulate growth in rural areas.  Approved strictly for this house; cannot transfer loan to different property and the loan program has officially ended.  Loved the idea of a brand new home that we wouldn't have to renovate.  It is in our hometown so location is great.

We started the building process in January; mid - February work on the house grinds to a halt.  It took two weeks to get a response from the construction manager as to what the hold up was.  This is the first time they were building this floorplan (it is brand new) so they have discovered that the furnace does not fit in the attic like it was supposed to.  2 more weeks go by with no solution.  Finally have a sit down with them about lack of communication and how unhappy we are because they were wanting to change various aspects of the house which we found unacceptable.  The meeting went badly...I left in tears.  The next day they come up with a magic solution that won't completely change the floor plan and keeps it in the attic.  We were relieved, but were still very upset with how they handled the entire situation.

Dry wall finally goes up the second week of April, but we continue to have a laundry list of things that aren't quite right: holes in the siding; broken electrical box; a large amount of standing water along the foundation of the back porch; etc.  Some of these things were addressed right away, others were pushed aside as something trivial by the construction manager and are still not fixed.

Yesterday we went out to take a look and they had put in the countertops.  I decided I did not want a backsplash, so I was shocked to see that the laminate countertop did not end with a previously agreed upon 3 inch lip around the wall - it went up the entire wall space between the upper and lower cabinets.  I officially have walls of countertop material in my kitchen and it is hideous.  This, along with the mis-matched cabinets we found in the master bathroom, caused us to go to the sales office.  Instead of trying to make us happy, the salesperson simply told us no, all of the houses have that backsplash so too bad we can't change it.  We can make the cabinets match for an extra fee.  We left angry. 

So, hive, what do I do?  Do I just suck it up and deal with a less-than-fantastic house with horrible people I will have to deal with should we need to fix anything with our warranty, or do we sacrifice this deal and wait another 2 or 3 years to save up enough for a realistic down payment?  Turning down this house also means waiting to get a dog and to have kids, which really depresses me.  If we do not close we only lose $900, which we've already paid.  We won't have any extra fees.  I'm not in love with this house by any stretch, but I'm in love with the idea of finally being settled in our home town and starting the family that is starting to become a more frequent topic of conversation. 

I'm surprised that everyone is siding with going forward - all of our friends and family (even the granite guy at Lowe's) have told us to run away!  We are working directly with the builder, so we do not have a realtor to be an advocate.  I didn't realize you could have a realtor help with this kind of home purchase until after we were in contract.  We've already had one run in with a manager regarding the furnace, and he was the one who made me cry because of how unhelpful and rude he was.  At this point the countertop/backsplash issue is a big pile of what appears to be miscommunication, as the design center told us we would have the three inch lip instead of the backsplash, but the salesperson and builder are saying they never do that.  I don't have anything to really back me up except for what the design center said, and I don't think it has much weight. 

The water is what concerns everyone the most.  We have asked about it repeatedly, and the only response we got was that it had rained that weekend.  Um, it rained, but not five full puddles worth (as in, I could put my foot down and the water would be above my ankle easily).  The rest of the yard was bone dry.  They've leveled off the yard and filled in the areas where water had been with more sand, but the ground is still soggy around those areas. 

I think we are going to do the walk through next week, but I don't have a positive outlook at all.  I was clinging to the cosmetics of the house to make up for the fact that it wasn't exactly what I wanted in the first place, so now that the cosmetic aspect is a turn off I don't know that I want the house.  I am ashamed to show people the house because it is not something I'm proud of at all.  I understand you can't get everything you want in your first home, but we planned on staying in this home for at least 15+ years, and I had already compromised on alot.  How far should I really go?

Just to give everyone context, these are two pictures of the backsplash followed by a picture of what we thought it would look like - the lip with the bare wall.

@KLP - I've been the one mostly dealing with the company.  DH has always gone to meetings and that sort of thing, but he keeps his feelings about everything very close to the vest and has a tendency to not allow people to know what he is thinking.  I've tried to get him to be more vocal, but he keeps wanting to "see what they do".  I know he's as angry as I am, I just wish he'd express it a bit more! 

We're building in the Northeast part of Houston, near Baytown / Crosby / Atascocita.  Home prices in Houston are pretty phenomenal, so I know we could probably find something else that is comparable to the size if we have to wait.  I think we could definitely do the FHA loan if we save for another six months or so, as we are right under the down payment requirement for this size home for now.  We qualified for the USDA loan program, which was designed for people like us wanting to build a home in a "rural" area, so we decided to go ahead with it instead of the FHA.  This loan also does not have the monthly mortgage insurance payment that FHA does, so it actually helped to lower our monthly payment amount.  It would definitely suck to have to lose the loan opportunity, but I don't want to keep a house just because of that. 

I talked to the construction manager yesterday afternoon, and it was ugly.  I tried to suggest a few things regarding the backsplash that could make both parties sorta happy, and he said "Well, it sounds like you should just close on the house and I can give you the name of a friend who can come in and take the backsplash down for you for a small amount of money".  I was LIVID and basically tore him a new one.  I let him know that I was thisclose to not closing on the home because we've had so many problems, I didn't trust that they built the best house they could, and I was paying a whole lot of money for him to just tell me to suck it up and deal with their mistakes.  He suddenly backtracked a bit and said he would try to get to the bottom of the miscommunication and we could work something out.  I guess we will see what happens today... 

To me the backsplash isn't a huge deal. I do agree it's ugly and I wonder why it doesn't go all the way up above the stove, but it's something that can be easily changed down the road. However, you're going to have to deal with these people for years and the underlying communication issues would make me have second thoughts. I settled for many things when buying an older house, but believe you should get what you want (within your budget) when buying new. 

I understand the backsplash is something I could change down the road, but I literally walked in and hated it immediately.  I was told there wouldn't be a backsplash and I'd have a bare wall, so it was a huge shock.  I feel like for the money I'm paying, I should get a product I like.  As I told the construction manager yesterday, if I had wanted to do immediate renovation I would have purchased a pre-existing home and made changes that way.  In my eyes, I shouldn't have to already be forking out a lot of money to make it a house I like.  If I were to have walked in to this house as a potential home buyer, I would have automatically said no.

We're still fighting about the water.  Currently, the ground is just consistently soggy since they leveled out the yard, so no standing water is visible, but it is still strangely wet with no real explanation.

Well, I buckled and called their corporate office after another round of non answers from the people I have been dealing with.  I asked to just talk to anyone who had the time about my concerns / frustrations / problems about my entire experience.  The girl patched me through to Greg, who I thought was just some random supervisor.  So I spilled my guts - my frustration over the month it took to figure out where to put the furnace to the lack of communication to when they would just brush off my concerns about the water or a hole in the siding or the mismatched cabinets.  After we talked for about ten minutes, he assured me he would look into the situation and that he was very sorry that we have had a negative experience.  I told him I deeply wanted to want this house, and that my goal is to have the home we signed up for and expected, but the way it currently stands I don't see that happening and that we'd more than likely walk away.  He told me he would talk to everyone involved, and I asked what his full name was and what his title was.  He is the president of the company !!  I definitely had no idea that is who I was talking to, and I told him that.  I thanked him profusely for just listening to me essentially vent about how upset I was over everything, and he said I was very professional about it and he wasn't offended at all.  I am hoping that we'll get some compromise now. 

Thanks for all of the concerns and input Hive!  I'll keep you posted as things progress...

Still no update from the corporate office.  The salesperson called earlier to say that if we changed out the mismatched cabinet (she called it an upgrade...I called it a mistake) it would push our closing back an entire week.  She didn't seem like anyone from corporate was breathing down her neck to make me happy, so I'm not sure if anything has been done or said.

Still no response from the corporate office.  I sent a detailed email outlining every single issue we've had since January yesterday, so I'm getting antsy for even an acknowledgement that they received the email.  Do I call to follow up or should I be patient?

Well, the corporate office finally got back to us after we had to send another email, and they aren't being terribly helpful.  They refuse to help with the backsplash, so if we want to change it we have to do it ourselves.  The ground is a little moist around the back porch still, but it isn't as bad as it was.  My husband is leaning toward closing because the project manager sweet talked him yesterday, but I keep bouncing back and forth.  To add another layer of stress, our apartment has already been leased out and someone is moving in on June 5, so we don't have the option to stay.  We have the official walk thru tomorrow morning, and we will have a new construction manager for our neighborhood, so I think we are going to see how it goes. 

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you an update.  We hired an independent inspector to come look at the house, and he did not find many issues with the house.  We were right about the water situation...they did not properly grade the backyard so there was no drainage path for the water.  The inspector said that is against code, so they have to fix it.  He did not see any damage that had occurred because of the water.  Overall he could tell we had been very involved in our building process and there weren't nearly as many problems as he normally sees.  Because of his stamp of approval, we decided to close on the house.  We close Thursday and move in this weekend.  We are going to wait and fix the backsplash and countertops in a few months (or years).  Ok, update over...I need to go pack!  Thanks for all of your support through this mess!