KB Homes & Washington Square at Amberly: Inspectors, Contractors, Realtors & Homeowners Opinions PLEASE?! (Raleigh: home builders)

[bdavis511]

Hi all, we are considering buying a new townhome built by KB Homes in Washington Square at Amberly. My sister bough a KB Home in Battle Ridge in South Raleigh, so I know some of the good & bad aspects of KB Homes. I just wanted to get some other's opinions on them. I know one thing they're known for is having lower prices, then basically your home requires lots of $$ in "upgrades" to get it decent looking. We have a friend who does work on homes, so we're probably going to do things "bare bones" so to speak, and let him to painting, crown molding, upgrades, etc. before we move in officially. Besides that, what are some other experiences people have had with KB? Thanks everyone!

[Babytarheelz]

Even doing "bare bones," you'll still have to spend a decent amount on upgrades. That's what we did and still spent $20,000. It's little things that add up fast, that's where they get you. I'm overall happy with my KB Home, but my dad had a horrible experience with his. His foundation wasn't poured properly, leading to a slew of issues.

[mjohnson185]

Just be careful, before we bought our house a couple years back we looked at the KB community Twin Lakes. One of the model homes had squeaking boards on the second floor...not a big deal just needs more screws from the subfloor to the joists, but STILL. It's a model home, especially in this they should have paid attention to those things. It makes you wonder what other things they didn't pay attention to. We had some things done to our home and our contractor told me that one of the residents at twin lakes had a water line break after one year of home ownership...things like that should not happen so soon. My father is a housing inspector and is not happy with most of the tract home builders, but especially KB. When we were looking at KB the stranges things were upgrades and I'm not talking cosmetic things. Things like a vent in the kitchen, insulation, and a carpet pad. What! The basic carpet install didn't come with a carpet pad at all. You would at least think the standerd carpet would come with it. Something like that shouldn't be an upgrade unless you are upgrading to a super thick pad. Also, we compared the prices to their upgrades compared with Lowes. Let me tell you, KB makes some of it's money through upgrades because we found they were double the price of Lowes. Just interesting enough to make us to decide to look elsewhere. On the other note, the model homes in Twin Lakes had an average of $30,000 in upgrades compared to the base price. They should have had a bare bones base model available to look at...but then again if they did that, they would never sell a house.