Richmond American Homes...good Or Bad?

[altus2006]

Originally Posted by tswanson

I closed on my new home June 1st 2008 with a list of unfinished construction items and/or defective construction items. It has been 6 months and only a handful of them have been completed and most of them are of sub par quality.

* There is a hardwood floor that is warping,
* There is a front door that is leaking air,
* There is paint touch ups that are not corrected,
* There are shelves that are not level even though I was supplied with a packet of felt spacers,
* There is a Fire Access Door that was never correctly installed, textured or painted in the master bedroom,
* There is landscape grading so steep that the gravel does not stay in place nor can you safely walk on it,
* There is a concrete patio that was not covered when they poured the concrete that was damaged by a rainstorm and never replaced,
* The rear door leaked water as a bottom plate was not installed which ruined the hardwood floor which has yet to be repaired. The leak was stopped but the door never trimmed or installed completely,
* And much more!

All of this was incomplete or defective before I closed on the house. The Superintendant has made promises as well as the Home Care representative which seem to gain momentum but never result in any results. To this day I am struggling to get Richmond American Homes to resolve these issues. Every month I contact them and get a bit of attention then things seem to fall by the wayside again. Now I am entertaining for the Holidays in a new home that is missing trim, paint, drywall texture, etc. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful to have a home, but someone needs to keep Richmond American Homes accountable.
I would not recommend Richmond American Homes unless you are willing to put up with their empty promises.

If I get any actions I will be sure to update my post!

Have you contacted the AZ Registrar of Contractors? You might get some help from them. RA has a lot of complaints filed, so I don't know how many they have to get before their license is pulled.

altus2006

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by tswanson

I closed on my new home June 1st 2008 with a list of unfinished construction items and/or defective construction items. It has been 6 months and only a handful of them have been completed and most of them are of sub par quality.

* There is a hardwood floor that is warping,
* There is a front door that is leaking air,
* There is paint touch ups that are not corrected,
* There are shelves that are not level even though I was supplied with a packet of felt spacers,
* There is a Fire Access Door that was never correctly installed, textured or painted in the master bedroom,
* There is landscape grading so steep that the gravel does not stay in place nor can you safely walk on it,
* There is a concrete patio that was not covered when they poured the concrete that was damaged by a rainstorm and never replaced,
* The rear door leaked water as a bottom plate was not installed which ruined the hardwood floor which has yet to be repaired. The leak was stopped but the door never trimmed or installed completely,
* And much more!

All of this was incomplete or defective before I closed on the house. The Superintendant has made promises as well as the Home Care representative which seem to gain momentum but never result in any results. To this day I am struggling to get Richmond American Homes to resolve these issues. Every month I contact them and get a bit of attention then things seem to fall by the wayside again. Now I am entertaining for the Holidays in a new home that is missing trim, paint, drywall texture, etc. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful to have a home, but someone needs to keep Richmond American Homes accountable.
I would not recommend Richmond American Homes unless you are willing to put up with their empty promises.

If I get any actions I will be sure to update my post!

Do you have an attorney? If so, make sure you contact them.
Best I can tell you is to read your contract.
Richmond gives you a home care request form during the final walk through, on it, it says 30 day, 5 month, 10 month & other. Have you been faxing them? My guess is yes..

Next, you know the supervisor will get back to you, then possibly walk the house, have you gotten that far? If not, write them a letter stating it's been X days/months since you sent the request, and CC your attorney.

FWIW, they are not going to fix some of the stuff according to the contract you signed because they're butt is covered. They get 1 year to make repairs due to the house settling, this includes nail pops not only in walls & ceilings but floors as well. Same for touch up paint. I have a feeling the warped floor will also fall under that.

I can tell you, you are not alone, but where I am (in NJ) it seems some of my neighbors are getting their work done, others are not. It seems the people that keep up on it, emailing & calling every week if need be are the ones that get satisfaction, the people that don't, are left to sit.

As for the landscape grading, it sounds like you need to put up some sort of retaining wall or put some plants in to hold the soil. We've been in our house 6 months & had planned to buy some top soil to regrade some of the yard. I know that when a house is built, a lot of dirt is moved. They try to fill it in as good as they can but let's face it, the ground will settle. You can ask them to regrade the yard, I know people that have been successful.

I'm thankful we don't have big problems, we do however have a lot of small annoying things that have been written up. I don't doubt that we're going to do a lot of the work ourselves, like nail pops on the walls but we are not doing ceilings. I doubt we're going to wait a year to paint.

FWIW, you also might think to paint if you're like the majority of us with flat paint on our walls. One of my neighbors did paint, it brought out a lot of imperfections on the walls, things that you normally wouldn't see due to the flat paint.

They say not to paint until they've come in and done everything, that's because some people don't keep extra paint to fix what's been repaired, so if you do paint buy extra.