Home Buying Experience (Arlington, Grand Prairie, Mansfield: new home, construction, inspectors)

[Anderson42]

I am looking at recolating into the Arlington, Grand Prairie or Mansfield Area. Interested in purchasing a new home but with the tons of builders in the area it is hard to determine which one does quality work. I was interested in the Perry Homes or D.R. Horton but have read some bad publicity about the Horton homes. Would like to get some good advice as to what builders I should stay away from.

[loves2read]

think almost any home built in past 5 years by a large tract builder (and some smaller independent ones as well) would fall into that catagory--when the boom started to get hot, quality became moot for most builders of any size---crews had less experience, materials became a little more shoddy, quality was sacrified to making a profit quickly---

of course that is a generic comment and probably paints too wide a swath, but there are so many things that can go wrong when building a home and there is not very strict oversight on most building sites--some of those mistakes are not that important and some of them are...

Look for builders that offer Energy Star homes and ask them when they started with that type of construction program...

you can do a google search and get some sites for people who post about bad home buying/owning/construction experiences...

call Better Business Bureau and the city code inspection and ask about problems with builder...city might not be that helpful and their inspectors are on site usually long enough to blow their noses so they are not really that knowledgeable most of the time--they miss problems because the boom made their work triple and they got spread thin...

make sure you get a really good home inspector--more like a structural engineer than just a certified inspector--before you purchase...