What Do You Guys Think Of The Big Home Builders?

ruskent

I was just wondering what you guys thought about the big home builders in the country? What do you guys think about the quality of the top guys and there business practices in general?

I went through a model in a Toll Brothers devlopment today. I really liked the lay out of the house. However, i felt that for 850k it should have higher quality stuff. The paint job was sloopy, the cabinets were cheap yorktown. The tile was cheap. But atleast there decorator was good for the mode.

What shocked me was the price of the options. For a coffered celian in the family room they wanted 15k!!! Nothing even real fancy. 6x6 boxes with crown on the inside, painted pine! Damn!

What do you guys think of the big dogs. Would you ever stoop to their quailty levels to do the volume like they do?

Floorwizard

Sure I would stoop. In most cases depending.
I work with one of the best builders in this area, but he doesn't build the most.
I appreciate his quality. And am proud to do business with him.

I would also appreciate doing volume with a big builder, although I do not want to be based on price alone. Although with the huge builders, you are regarded as cheap, not always pro.
It is hard to have high self esteem with a huge builder. Because they tend to not want to pay for it.
But they have no problem demanding it

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Patty

Florcraft, you are right in stating that bit about job pricing. The cheaper we quote, the higher their bottom line gets, and unfortunately quality, in the end, gets shoddy. I know of a garage door company in Chicago that is reaping a harvest right now on homes that a builder put up one lousy year ago that have garage doors/openers that don't work anymore! The reason is that the builder hired on the person with the cheapest price and the poorest quality products. Now, all the homeowners are replacing them with good stuff. It happens everywhere you look. I live in a 1960 brick ranch on one acre and rather than move, I spent $250,000 gutting the place, in the last year, because the new homes around here, at this level, are all over one million dollars. I opted to fix this one up and I am happy with the turnout!

copusbuilder

I know that many of the large homebuilders in Texas are rotating crews. You have a group of framers that can frame one or two styles of homes and you send them around the different subdivisions building that particular home.
Make any changes and they are at a total loss. Of course you have to speak spanish??

Or perhaps the crew that wired the new 4400 sq' house they built next to mine (larger builder) Twisted all the wire together and never used a staple in the whole home. No connectors at the panel. A hispanic crew that wired it (2 guys 4 days and stubbed cable in the boxes so when the main guy came he had to trace it out (1 man 2 weeks) to make up the home

Ran out of house wrap and vinyl sided without it.
Upsatirs water heater (no pan sitting on the floor with the t&p valve setting on top with no drain to the exterior??

Oh yeh,,,back to your question. I don't care for them

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i_plant_art

i have my pros and cons about builders there are the good ones and the bad... overall i think they are the ones responsible for the most of the cost of our prices being driven down. The majority of them want nothing but the lowest price for a job and then those guys go out and continue to price jobs like that which in turn drives the markets down for everone else living off our own work. Dont get me wrong there are alot of good builders out the but the majority of them i wouldnt ever want to work with.

Teetorbilt

I work for a few major builders and I wouldn't post anything con on a website.

You never know who is checking in.

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JustaFramer

Big builders are only good for one thing a job. Do what they want get it in writing and lawyer up when the plat goes bad.
I personally prefer medium to small builders; less overhead when it comes to insurance. Plus they like real quality compared to production hack work I mean tract work.

CGofMP

My wife and I are first time home owners this last couple of years. We bought a fixer upper that I thought I could have done in one year and am now revising to three.

Having said that one thing we do for fun (or is it neurotic) is to tour the models of local builders and see how things are done from the layout and look (both) to the decor (her) to the construction and stuff (me).

We have walked a lot of model homes this last two years and it makes me glad I bought my decade old fixer upper.

I'm far from anything approachiong an expert or a GC but GAWD if someone like ME can see absolutely poor workmanship ya have to wonder whats behind the sheetrock and what real experts would notice.

This varies from development to development but the ONLY house we agrreed was put together well that we have seen in the last 2 years is an all custom place going for 3 mill. THAT was a work of art.

The rest were various levels of compromise... one (a very very large builder) was flat out crap. Cheapest materials and floor coverings, poor tiling, poor painting, real shakey handrails, crappola cabinetry etc etc etc.... The prices were not much more than we paid for our fixer upper so youd think it was a good deal by price alone.

I can all but guarantee that those places will become more of a 'project' than mine in years to come.

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Tom R

That reminds me, - - I need to send them all 'thank you' notes, - - as busy as I'll be for the coming years fixing their (quality construction??), - - I should be able to raise my rates considerably.

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mdshunk

There's two ways to build a home... as a businessman or as a craftsman. The volume bulider, Centex, MI Homes, etc are businesses; plain and simple. Craftsmen, while necessarily operating businesses, don't let the business side overwhelm the sensibilities of a craftsman. Both styles have merit, and fill a need in the market. One is not necessarily better than the other.

sage

Me too! IMHO the bigger the project, the bigger the businessmans role. Craftsman becomes a spoke in the wheel and will be replaced if he retards forward progress (not producing fast enough, etc...) regardless of the quality of his work.

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A+Carpenter

All I got to say is harvest the trees in mass quantities and build on!!!

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Mike Finley

I used to look at model homes and go on and on about how the fit and finish was so bad, it floored me how people would buy homes like that. At the time I was doing remodeling of our own fix up homes so as you can imagine, when you are doing it for yourself in something you will live in you don't have a clue about reality.

With time I grew up and began to realize that with the issues that I saw as flaws, homebuyers could careless about an out of square wall, some trim that didn't match, doors that didn't line up perfectly... people buying these homes want a home to live in, a place to watch their kids grow up, a place to have friends over for birthday parties and back yard barbeques, a garage to putter in on the weekends...

A persons perception = their reality. That's the big lesson I learned.

It's still Levit Town, just a trade off in what is important now versus then.

copusbuilder

That's what makes it so bad. The killing of the Craftsman and skilled tradesman in the name of saving a buck??

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Mike Finley

Post here the solution to it here and you'll be a millionaire over night.

Yep its the battle of the production homes and custom homes. Everything was a custom home long ago so that's what we tend to compare new homes now to. Now the vast majority of new homes are production. Two very different beasts now. Production homes are all about production, homeowners want the most bang for their buck. The homes are pure living spaces built as cheap as possible to keep them affordable. Skilled tradesman get to ply their trades in custom homes out here, which usually means you start seeing real craftsman quality in $750,000 homes, with $1,000,000 being where it really shows and the true artisans are being plied in $1,500,000 and above.

Mike Finley

I don't know if its the killing of the craftsman and skilled tradesman in the name of saving a buck as apposed to saving a buck so the craftsman and skilled tradesman has a place to go to work everyday.

A+Carpenter

Im with you both on the above statements.

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kenvest

i think we're also seeing that people just don't have an eye for quality.

i would say that alot of people buying new homes these days are buying up from what they're used to or were raised with.

it goes something like this....a really high end, nice set of quality golf clubs would be all but useless in the hands of someone who's just learning the game.

its a learning curve thing and in the long run, they'll pay for a quality home if thats what they want.

IHI

In this area I do alot of work through the orange box on the newer home that are all 2yrs and newer since many items that should be condiered standard are not. Right now homes in the $150+range are in the upper middle price range and I can tell you first hand quality is not an option, meaning fit and finish. I'm constatly amazed what builders/installers get away with on a new home and are able to sell it. Funny thing is, in the past 2 years talking with new home owners, I have literally not meet one that is happy with their home, when I'm getting paperwork signed I get to hear about every little thing and often walked around the house asking if I can fix this or that since it's not right, guess I'm glad it's a national trend and we could probably get away doing a crappy job and still getting paid. But I always seem to get the anal extreme homies that expect perfection...even if they're one a shoe string budget and buying absolute garbage for me to install. Been forced a few times to point out there's only soo much I can do with a golden turd

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jwatkins

In Des Moines the big production builder is Regency(IHI you may have heard of them) They put up such shoody homes/townhomes that its hard to see how they get them all sold and keep selling them. And with all prod. builders quality is at the bottom of the list of priorities.

I just got back from Council Bluffs/Omaha had a renovation that i've got to start this spring. Went out searching for the new developments. Ran into several. All looked pretty good .........except on dev. Had about 90 homes out of 130 scheduled for it already done. Being the curious pri____-ck that i am walked through the frame and guess what i find.....shoddy and i mean shoddy work. Instead of using 2X10 of i-joists for the floors they were using 2X8's. Spaning 16' nothless. I of course asked the framed if that crap passed and he said every house in that dev were the same. These house were priced 200K-300K. I was speechless. Talk about cutting corners

Anybody ever see anything like that. I have to go back out this week I'll have to get a pic and post it.