Richmond American Homes?? (Tucson, Gilbert, Surprise: sales, loan, home builders)

[azdreamin']

We looked @ a home from RAH under contruction. Absolutley love the floorplan.Then, I read some post about RAH. 98% were negative w/ the same common thread of complaints in them all. I know there are horror stories out there w/ every home builder. However-NEVER did anyone pipe up & say, "Hey-we had a great experience with them & we are happy w/ our home." So IS the ANYONE out there who has a RAH & had a good experience w/ them??

[honeymom]

I can't speak for the homes that RA is currently building, but I live in one that I bought as a resale. I am surprised to hear that they do not have a good rep now because I have always heard decent things about them, especially the ones from several years ago. Mine is 2 x 6 construction (most homes are 2 x 4 now) and the neighborhood is semi custom. I know that RA resales have higher comps than many of the other home builders in my immediate area.

Yes, there are some things that could be better done (i.e. some of the cabinets need rescrewing now). But, I see that a lot with other home builders here too. Haven't come by any major flaws yet and our house is 7 years old.

[azdreamin']

Ton HoneyMom-In what area do you live? We are from out of state & thinking of moving to Maricopa. Is your home the basic model or does it have upgrades?

[IMoveU]

I just closed a RAH for a client in Gilbert the end of January...the home inspector was very impressed with the quality of work and we did not have any requests on the BINSR. Anymore, most builders are subcontracting the actual construction but the key is, what is the quality of the homebuilders superintendents and how effective are they at overseeing the construction process.

I was in the construction industry myself for many years and believe me...if you don't inspect what you expect...you gonna come up short more often than not!! :-)

[Everakuma]

I just closed on a RA home out in Buckeye. Im impressed by the quality of the home in general. I had a home inspection done. The home inspector did not find any major problems with the home. It came with alot of standard features. Tech Shield on the roof, controlled timing irrigation system, and a built in pest controll system called "Taexx". So im impressed with everything. The prices were great. You can get a 2000 + sqft home for under $180k. So you get quality and you get a home for a good price.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

We are in the process of having one built as we speak over at Surprise Farms in the Heritage tract. As far as the floor plan and the way that the model looked we had to have it. They let us look at a finished base model as well and though their is a difference from top of the line model to the base we still were happy with the home and decided to buy. My thoughts are to make sure you or a third party inspector take part in the process if you are going to have one built from the ground up. Something else to put things into perspective, in the past 6 years many of the builders were slapping these homes together, because of the demand. Now with the slowdown they are taking their time to build the homes. Another thing to consider is that during the slap it together era companies were hiring anyone that could swing a hammer. With the slow down chances are that the best employees that offer the best quality will remain and the others have moved on. (My hope anyway.)

The only thing so far that we didn't like about RA was the design center experience. When we started this process they offered a $10,000 incentive at the design center. We told them that besides tile floors in every room except for the bedrooms that we just were not interested in much more. Our plan is to customize the home ourselves. After spending half the day going over everything in the place, and having the representative add everything that we said yes to on her list, the price had climbed over $14,000 past the $10,000 incentive. We came back after getting something to eat and went over the numbers. When we realized that we were over we went back to just the tile floor which wiped out most of the $10,000 anyway. What upset us was the fact that we told them we were only going to spend the incentive and nothing else. That trip could have ended in half hour because it was the flooring that we chose first anyway, and then the colors of the cabinets. After that we had no need to be their anymore.

Another thought is to make sure what you want before you go there and stick with it. My wife for example had to have a $480 trash bin option in the kitchen. Home Depot sells the hardware to convert a cabinet into the same for less than $100.

[mdtoaz]

We settled on our RA home on New Year's Eve. There weren't too many options available in our community here in Tucson - ours was the last lot. That was actually fine with us, because I know the upgrades can be expensive. So, we're doing upgrades ourselves.

Overall, we're very happy in our house. We haven't had any issues or problems. We had checked around with other builders. We didn't like KB's floor plans (or salesperson) and although we liked Pulte's floor plan, none of their houses in the community we looked at had yards - you had to upgrade floor plans to even have a small patio in the back.

With our house here, we were able to get a huge corner lot with an inground pool and a house with a great floor plan. So, yeah, I guess I'd say we're pretty happy with our choice.

[OctoberMoon]

Ok, here's the deal: Richmond American builds good quality homes. Every person I've met in Arizona who has a RA built home has very few problems and says their home is good quality. This is a good thing for resale and if you are buying a resale home.

If you are getting your home built from the ground up, beware. The way they handle business when selling new homes is less than stellar. We've been in contract with a home since August of last year. Ground has not yet been broken! We have been through 3 agents (two of which were either fired or voluntarily left) and a loan officer who was fired due to not doing his job....at all.

Our new sales agent has apologized up and down for what we've been through so far. He said they are "getting rid" of all the people to blame for what's been going on since we're apparently not the only ones who got caught up in it. He said we would be getting an update on what's happening every Monday whether there was news or not (funny, it's been two Mondays since he told us that and we haven't heard from him since then). My husband has contacted the regional manager AND construction superintendent and got lots of apologies from them as well, yet still, nothing new.

No one calls back. No one lets you know what's going on. We were promised this home would be finished in February. It's almost April and the foundation has not even been laid.

So again, if you're buying a resale, good choice! If you're buying new, it's hit or miss on which community you choose. Be prepared to wait a LONG time before actually having a finished home.

[honeymom]

I live in the Cave Creek area. The house was built in 2001. Although the neighborhood is semi custom, our home was built spec and has very few upgrades. Still, it felt a lot more solid than the other homes I looked at. Since it was a resale, we had an inspection and there were only 3 minor problems (the front door handle needed tightening, behind the coach lights on the outside of the house needed to be caulked and we needed some caulking above the master shower).

Can you ask RA if there are any referrals they can give you in the neighborhood you are looking at? (IE - Can they present you with some satisfied customers?). I never heard of any of my neighbors who built here having horror stories, but our neighborhood was built in 2001-2002 and things may have changed.

[mdtoaz]

Originally Posted by OctoberMoon

If you are getting your home built from the ground up, beware. The way they handle business when selling new homes is less than stellar. We've been in contract with a home since August of last year. Ground has not yet been broken!

No one calls back. No one lets you know what's going on. We were promised this home would be finished in February. It's almost April and the foundation has not even been laid.

That stinks that you're having such a bad experience. We signed our contract in August of last year and we were in our house by January. I think we hit the jackpot with our sales rep.

He was in constant contact, he always returned calls, told us way in advance of anything we'd need to do on our end. He also helped us out with a couple things like linking us to the tile manufacturer so we could buy some extra to do a little extra to our foyer.

If nothing else, you can nail them in the final survey. They are big on survey results since they had a less than great rating a couple years ago. Hope you start seeing a foundation soon!!