Any body building with Ashley Homes- Custom builder (Jacksonville: lawyer, new house)

[spaceguy]

Ashley Homes is a custom builder based of Jacksonville. They are building few houses in Oaklaef , Oakridge landing near Durbin crossing and 2 or 3 other places. We want to build a house with them. Anybody have any opinion on this local small builder. What are the things we need to check with local builder. Any suggestions or advises.

[SaintCabbage]

I offered to work out with them, but they said no! Any one else want to body build and been turned down?!

[EricBoyd]

Originally Posted by SaintCabbage

I offered to work out with them, but they said no! Any one else want to body build and been turned down?!

OK, I lol-ed.

[jbean1234]

Charles (Chuck) Hiers who is listed as a Managing Member of Ashley Homes was formerly with DS Ware/Monarch Homes. I built a home with DS Ware while he served as the superintendent and (I believe) had part ownership of the company. While I am very satisfied with our house, I found Chuck to be unresponsive to concerns, patronizing and of questionable integrity. Perhaps others have a better opinion of him.

[ShakenStirred]

Originally Posted by jbean1234

Charles (Chuck) Hiers who is listed as a Managing Member of Ashley Homes was formerly with DS Ware/Monarch Homes. I built a home with DS Ware while he served as the superintendent and (I believe) had part ownership of the company. While I am very satisfied with our house, I found Chuck to be unresponsive to concerns, patronizing and of questionable integrity. Perhaps others have a better opinion of him.

He was indeed with Monarch, then moved to Engle, and then to Transeastern Homes right before they went bankrupt.

Ashley Homes is named after his daughter. I knew him personally during a time period in life, and yes, patronizing is a good word to use. That being said, I cannot say anything bad about his homebuilding skills as he has been doing it all his life.

As for things to look for when building a new house, please see some of my other posts regarding Weatherization Systems and the like. They have a wealth of information that you should read before building.

SS

[ShakenStirred]

Originally Posted by spaceguy

Ashley Homes is a custom builder based of Jacksonville. They are building few houses in Oaklaef , Oakridge landing near Durbin crossing and 2 or 3 other places. We want to build a house with them. Anybody have any opinion on this local small builder. What are the things we need to check with local builder. Any suggestions or advises.

Here, this should help you with some initial things to look for. Do not be afraid to ask questions or make demands for what you want. You ARE the customer after all. Builders tend to have a "this is how I do it" mentality, but a true custom builder should be more than happy to explore your requests and make changes. That's the definition of "custom."

//www.city-data.com/forum/jacks...ity-early.html

SS

[Ruger20]

Also, take the time to read the contract carefully and cross out what you don't agree to. I did this with our last home and the builders all had the "this is our standard contract, take it or leave it" mentality. So we walked from 2 different builders.

They want you to sign their contract because it is written to favor them. I found one that actually said the builder had the righ tto sell your home to someone else up to 30 days before closing. So someone could come in and like all the design choices you made and the location, offer an extra 10K to the builder, and they could sell it out from under you. Beware of these type of clauses.

It's the single largest investment of your life, so take the extra time, even hire a lawyer to review the contract.

[spaceguy]

thanks all for for good feed back.

[West Carter]

Originally Posted by jbean1234

Charles (Chuck) Hiers who is listed as a Managing Member of Ashley Homes was formerly with DS Ware/Monarch Homes. I built a home with DS Ware while he served as the superintendent and (I believe) had part ownership of the company. While I am very satisfied with our house, I found Chuck to be unresponsive to concerns, patronizing and of questionable integrity. Perhaps others have a better opinion of him.

Ashley homes: the work that this builder, Ashley Homes produces is very questionable if you decide to go with this builder look at the work and quality closely before making a decision. This comment is not meant to be personal, just focusing the QUALITY of the work that I have seen.

[ARodinJax]

Just do your research on any builder. There are distinct differences in the quality and further, in the neighborhoods.