Ardrey Chase - New Pulte Homes (Charlotte: for sale, HOA fees, home builder)

[adn9876]

We are moving to Charlotte soon and thinking of buying a new Pulte home in Ardrey Chase subdivision near Ballantyne. Does anybody else have experience with Pulte Homes in Charlotte? How is the quality of their homes? Has anybody recently bought a house in Ardrey Chase?

[yantosh22]

OK, remember that you asked. People who ask these questions usually don't really care for anything other than confirmation on a decision they have already made. Seen it plenty of times here. Never the less, there is an answer.

Pulte is a mass production cookie cutter vendor. You will be getting sq/footage instead of quality. If you don't mind a place that will lose market value as soon as you close on it and which will require a lot of expensive replacements a decade from now, then go ahead. You will never be able to sell it for what you are going to pay for it. Is the house on a slab and if not is it because it is on a marginal lot?

I recommend buying in an established neighborhood. Find a place closer in that has been around for at least 15 years. You still might take a bath on equity, but at least it won't be a complete gutting. There will be a lot of disagreements with this opinion but remember, misery loves company.

[msm_teacher]

As someone who actually owns a Pulte home (and is very happy with it) I would still advise to be careful. Any home builder is only as good as the subs and supervisor on site. We had excellent before and after sale service. At our recent two year walk through, they were still fixing minor things that our previous builders never would fix, much less check out two years later. BUT, they have made a lot of staff cutbacks since we purchased and some of the people we could really count on were let go or transfered.

We paid for an independant structural engineer to check the house before we made an offer. The market was (and still is) slow enough to afford the time to really check any home prior to signing a contract.

[happehart]

If you search this forum for Pulte and Ardery Chase you will find other threads discussing similar questions. Pulte is a national builder and has the high end homes and the avg homes. They tend to be good in general (I live in one of there communities). As Yantosh said, you will need to replace and update things in the house after being in it for 10 years, if that's OK with you, go for it. There is nothing like new home smell. There are a lot of homes in Charlotte for sale specially in South Charlotte and Ballantyne where the area saw a lot of growth. When I moved here two years ago I rented for a short while to learn the area. I liked Ballantyne (I live in the area) and decided to buy here. Good luck with your move and purchase.

[hhclt44]

I live in Audrey Chase and our home was built by Centex before they merged with Pulte. We'd spent a few years looking at homes before purchasing and weighed the pros and cons of new construction (tract builder dominated) and resales (the majority of these are also tract builder homes and many of the builders no longer exist). The difficulty is that the Ballantyne/Blakeney area is all relatively new and tract builders developed most of the land. Now, if you can afford the Ballantyne Country Club or Piper Glen, then you can find a custom, non-tract builder home.

We hired an independent home inspector who came highly recommended for not pulling any punches with sharing his thoughts around construction quality. He went through our home with a fine tooth comb for two hours and commented he was pleasantly surprised with the quality for a tract builder home.

We've been in the home going on three years with very few issues - the builder offered a two year fit and finish drywall warranty. The problem was there very only a few nail-pops and a couple small cracks in two bedroom corners that we could find - and I searched for them using flood lights!

There are approx. 20 homes under contract that are being built, and the final 30-40 lots were just released. The area is convenient to excellent schools and shopping - almost within walking distance. The neighborhood is very diverse. The HOA fees are on the high-end relative to other neighborhoods with similar amenites, yet we'll only have approx. 160 homes when completed. The pool activity has increased significantly this summer and the pool has staffed attendents during pool hours.

We toured hundreds of homes and multiple builders before purchasing from Centex. We're very pleased after three years and I fully expect to make money on our home - I can currently list it for 20-30K more than what we paid for it. This is not the case for a number of homeowners who bought at the "top" of the market, we bought at the bottom.

Send me a DM if you have any other questions about the neighborhood.

[CharlotteBound88]

Question for whoever cares to weigh in: Would a high-end builder like Saussy Burbank still be considered a "tract builder"?

[hhclt44]

Saussy Burbank is more of a regional builder. I've been in a number of their homes, including the ones they are currently building in Ardrey Crest. Usually they provide a few additional features that make their homes feel a little more "custom" and stick built compared to the major national builders. I've liked Saussy homes, though the price point has been a bit higher per sq.ft. than I wanted to pay for the size of home I wanted.

A local builder I like, though isn't building homes in our preferred area is Bonterra Builders. They are local and build across a number of price points: high 100's to 800+. They are building a community just across the NC, in SC, named Barber Rock. Again, not a "custom" builder, though when I talked to them a few years ago, seemed a bit more open to making changes to floor plans (not sure if still the case). Also, MI Homes was very open to making changes (for a cost - though, seemed very reasonable). They are building in Ardrey Crest, though lot sizes are very small.

Good luck!