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Any idea about how the brighton homes builders are?? What about westin homes?? We checked lennar.the construction work,finishing are nice but they didn't have lots available for the plans we wanted.
Kindly throw some light on brighton homes & westin homes.
Also what is avg price/sq ft in lakemont area?
We searching for homes in other areas aswell.
We are 30ish couple working in galleria area & medical center respectively.no kids yet but may be in a yr.
Our budget is $275k- $350k ...this varies depending on location,new or old home,what we want in the home ..etc etc..
We are searching for homes in Katy , sugarland,richmond,missouri city...
As i told in my earlier post..we are confused.
Kindly suggest some locations where we can search for with good schools.
I heard from a friend that meritage builders are not good,they extract lot of money ,not so good plans etc..
hence I want to know more about all home builders? Reviews about them, their ratings,customer satisfaction,ete etc. I will try to search in this forum though.
Can't speak for those particular builders from experience, but we built our first home with Meritage, and loved it. It was a fantastic build experience (won't use a builder lender again though). And a great house.
One man's meat is another man's poison. Its what it really comes down too. We were house hunting past 6 months and dealt with the same issues. For almost every builder, you will find good reviews and bad reviews. In the end, just make sure you get your inspections done by a good inspector (don't skimp on it).
We were looking at Westin homes and saw a lot of bad reviews online, but i personally know coworkers and friends who bought westin homes and love it and haven't had any issues. Part of it just comes down to your luck too..imo. To me, buying a house is a gamble and sometimes the cards are in your favor and sometimes not.
We just purchased a village builder house and i've read tons of positive reviews about them (few bad ones too), know lots of friends living in VB houses too. but when we did our inspection, we found tons of issues and this is for a new construction.
To answer your other question- your demographic and situation is pretty similar to ours. We're a young 30 ish couple too, no kids but planning on having soon and our budget was exactly what yours is.
We wanted to be in Sugarland area, so that helped narrow our choices. From a school district perspective, we were told to stick with FB ISD so that's what we targeted.
In Sugarland, we wanted to get a house in Telfair since that is the ideal spot imo but the houses are way way overpriced there (location, location, location) so we ended up buying in Aliana which is in Richmond, TX (abt 15 mins away).
What is your timeline- when are you looking to buy? They are building a new master planned community in sugarland- Imperial Sugar Land. Its aimed at younger couples and will mostly have town homes and patio homes. Might be worth it to look into that. I wanted to, but we wanted to buy something now while the rates are down.
I can answer the question on best Builder. I get it all the time and my answer is the same. Because it's fact.
Some of the large Builders are not owned by any single person or family. They are corporate owned by investors. So for the purpose of explanation, I will insert a normal name to the Builder.
For the most part, no matter what Builder you buy from, you bought the same thing. Most large Builders use all the same sub contractors such as Joe Painters or John Electrical or Henry Plumbers. Smaller Builders not so much true.
Lets take Meritage Builders that you mention. Joe Meritage did not build your house. Joe Meritage never even been to your new home or not likely even ever been to your city or town. He is a pencil pusher in corporate office. The sub contractors built your home under the direction of the Builders Superintendent. And most of these sub contractors work for all the big Builders.
Jim Pulte, same story. KB Homes, same story. Toll Brothers, same story. Not one of the Toll Brothers have ever set foot on your property. Most have never even seen your name on the purchasers list. The sub contractors built your house. What do they look like? Are they skilled? Are they a bunch of minimum wage grunts under the direction of one single skilled experienced owner who sits in his air conditioned truck watching over his Sheep as they work?
Get the point?
Now what does separate the good from the bad is the warranty. For that Pulte is the best with several others a close 2nd, none of which were mentioned thus far in this thread. Customer satisfaction is based on consumer complaints by consumers who know next to nothing about quality other then what meets the untrained naked eye. In other words the consumer bases their opinions on cosmetic issues because that is all they know. They know nothing about the quality of materials or the material origin that goes into their house.
Good or bad, these minor issues add up for those keeping score. I personally trust JD Powers for all my Builder opinions and NKBA which reflects my own industry. The BBB or what Joe Schmo down the street says is useless and irrelevant information. The opinions expressed on BBB, Yelp, and Yahoo review sites are bought and paid for. Yes my friends the BBB is NOT a Government organization. It's a for profit business who charges money to businesses to join. From there complaints are offered to the business to let it post or pay extortion fees to make it disappear. Yelp works the same way. Is this legal? Hmmmmmm
My advice is go with a reputable Builder who has been around and who has survived the economic depression of the devastated housing industry. Find an area you like and a house and neighborhood you like and go for it. But beware of those communist HOAs.
Because they screwed us over right before closing with appraisals. Our house didn't appraise to what the settled cost of the house was - basically because they were saying there were no comps in our neighborhood, which knowing what I know NOW was total BS. THe builder had the house appraised twice, and both came in low. We had to scrounge up $11,000 in 2 weeks for closing to make up the difference or walk from the house. There was some funny [as in shady] stuff that happened, so will never go with another builder lender again. But that was just our experience. People do it all the time with good outcomes.
But the build process of the house was great - we had a great contractor (which is pretty much the only thing that matters when it comes to the BUILDING of the house!).
I can answer the question on best Builder. I get it all the time and my answer is the same. Because it's fact.
Some of the large Builders are not owned by any single person or family. They are corporate owned by investors. So for the purpose of explanation, I will insert a normal name to the Builder.
For the most part, no matter what Builder you buy from, you bought the same thing. Most large Builders use all the same sub contractors such as Joe Painters or John Electrical or Henry Plumbers. Smaller Builders not so much true.
Lets take Meritage Builders that you mention. Joe Meritage did not build your house. Joe Meritage never even been to your new home or not likely even ever been to your city or town. He is a pencil pusher in corporate office. The sub contractors built your home under the direction of the Builders Superintendent. And most of these sub contractors work for all the big Builders.
Jim Pulte, same story. KB Homes, same story. Toll Brothers, same story. Not one of the Toll Brothers have ever set foot on your property. Most have never even seen your name on the purchasers list. The sub contractors built your house. What do they look like? Are they skilled? Are they a bunch of minimum wage grunts under the direction of one single skilled experienced owner who sits in his air conditioned truck watching over his Sheep as they work?
Get the point?
Now what does separate the good from the bad is the warranty. For that Pulte is the best with several others a close 2nd, none of which were mentioned thus far in this thread. Customer satisfaction is based on consumer complaints by consumers who know next to nothing about quality other then what meets the untrained naked eye. In other words the consumer bases their opinions on cosmetic issues because that is all they know. They know nothing about the quality of materials or the material origin that goes into their house.
Good or bad, these minor issues add up for those keeping score. I personally trust JD Powers for all my Builder opinions and NKBA which reflects my own industry. The BBB or what Joe Schmo down the street says is useless and irrelevant information. The opinions expressed on BBB, Yelp, and Yahoo review sites are bought and paid for. Yes my friends the BBB is NOT a Government organization. It's a for profit business who charges money to businesses to join. From there complaints are offered to the business to let it post or pay extortion fees to make it disappear. Yelp works the same way. Is this legal? Hmmmmmm
My advice is go with a reputable Builder who has been around and who has survived the economic depression of the devastated housing industry. Find an area you like and a house and neighborhood you like and go for it. But beware of those communist HOAs.
And good luck.
This is a good post. The only exception I'll throw in is that a KB home isn't the same as XYZ builder. They use pre built frames that are trucked on site and then assembled in place. Think of a big jigsaw puzzle being put together, and then calling it home. I'm not sure if they do this type of building on all model lines/levels of homes, but they surely do it on the entry level homes in the 80 to 160K range.
The old saying of you get what you pay for is true. Home building is a very competitive market. If Builder A is significantly cheaper than Builder B for the same size/area/level of home, there is probably a reason for it.
As to the last comment on HOA. Man, am I glad I don't have an HOA.
This is a good post. The only exception I'll throw in is that a KB home isn't the same as XYZ builder. They use pre built frames that are trucked on site and then assembled in place. Think of a big jigsaw puzzle being put together, and then calling it home. I'm not sure if they do this type of building on all model lines/levels of homes, but they surely do it on the entry level homes in the 80 to 160K range.
The old saying of you get what you pay for is true. Home building is a very competitive market. If Builder A is significantly cheaper than Builder B for the same size/area/level of home, there is probably a reason for it.
As to the last comment on HOA. Man, am I glad I don't have an HOA.
Thanks for the compliment. While I do very much agree with you about KB Homes being of lessor quality, I'm not sure what you mean by pre-built frames. I never seen anything of that in Texas if it is pre-fab you are speaking of. This is where a typical home would be delivered in 2 or 4 modules, completely finished inside and out, then lowered onto the slab or foundation by crane and then finishers will come in and see to the utilities and doing up the seams. Even KB gets framing packages as everyone else does. A framing package is just a giant flatbed truck full of framing material and sheet goods for sheathing.
Anyway, my experience with KB is that they too pretty much use all the same big companies who employ the various contractor teams. Since KB pays less, these companies usually send out the least skilled teams to KB tracts. KB has a bit of a different practice. With a KB home you will get more square footage then any other Builder offers. But the quality in materials is of less then the best quality. One silly example is standard offerings might be laminate counter tops rather then granite, $4 made in China lighting fixtures, carpeting so thin that it's just junk, vinyl tile in the K&Bs rather then travertine, Steel entry doors rather then anything of beauty, $10 Chinese tin or plastic faucets............things like this all can get that price down. I worked on one KB tract that did not even put light bulbs in the house. That's the buyers job. We were doing warranty walks in the dark. Now what could that cost? How cheap those tight wads.
Other then the fact that KB quite often builds tracts on less then desirable areas, also lowering the cost, I feel buying a KB home is not that bad. You do get more SF for your money and you get to customize yourself. Due to these and a few other reasons, KB homes never did appreciate as much as other areas and other Builders homes. But now a days, nothing no where but a few selected places experience any home appreciation.
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