Anyone build a Ryan or Heartland Home?

amr

We are considering building with Ryan or Hearland in the North Hills.  Anyone have any good or bad experience to share.

TIA

balbacm

Hi, we are currently building with Ryan in the North Hills.  Fingers crossed, we've had a pretty good experience so far.  We are closing in June. 

I know a bunch of people who've built with Ryan, HLand, S&A, etc.  I've heard complaints about everything: price, quality, inflexibility, subcontractors, floor plan, cookie cutter, etc.  When you build with a mass builder, you know that going in.  Everyone complains but everyone I know also loves their house.

We have a lot of customizations and non stadard requests which made me nervous.  But, we have an awesome project manager and I also think that makes a lot of difference.  

Good Luck!!  It is a fun/overwhelming process/stressful experience.

danilynn17

My husband and I built a Heartland in South Fayette last year.  Overall we were very pleased.  Our main issue with the process was that they weren't up front about what exactly the standard flooring was and how much it would cost to upgrade it.  With Heartland, you don't even pick out your flooring until towards the end, so we were very much not pleased with the additional cost.  The quality of workmanship has been quite good.  My brother is in the business in another city and was pretty happy with the quality of materials and workmanship.  He was up when the house was still being framed and was able to check that out as well.

Overall we've been pretty pleased, though.  We've had a few minor issues (as will happen in any new construction) and Heartland has fixed them quickly.  Also be forewarned that getting your yard going is a pain in the butt and will take a good amount of work on your part.  All of the builders skimp on the yard.  There is so much crap in our yard -  my husband just pulled out a 3 foot long tree stump!

northhillsbride

Which Heartland plan are you looking at? My DH works for the contractor who excavates their lots and pours the foundations - all in th . He can answer ?s you may have if you want me to ask him! goirish2000 @ hotmail

danilynn17

A suggestion I would have would be to drive through the neighborhoods you're looking in and stop and talk to people - we did that, even though it was January/February of last year when we were looking.  We asked people what they liked/disliked about the neighborhood.  We also asked people if they could do something differently, what would they do and also if there was anything they wish they would've known.  We got some great info this way.

Also, in driving around our plan we saw that there were so many playsets and so many people had kids, and that was important to us.

Our plan has 61 lots, and when we moved in there were about about 6 more lots either being sold or under construction.  This was really nice, because the plan is going to be totally finished now in about 2 or 3 months.  That means no construction vehicles, no dust blowing around, no construction noise, etc.  I highly recommend trying to get in a plan that is almost done or trying to pick a lot in a part of the plan that is almost done if at all possible.

Hartley

this won't help you at all, but i went to school with the family that owns Heartland homes. the one boy was in my class and his siblings were in grades below and above me so i knew a bunch of them. nice family. at one point Ryan homes was also owned by the same family (the other part of the family), but i don't know if that's still the case.

HLDJMS711

We have a Heartland.  We have been in our house for just about 2 years now. No big complaints except for the yard.  They haul out the topsoil and sell it and leave you with crap. Not to mention the garbage they leave behind - pop cans, huge pieces of wood, rocks, you name it.  So, growing grass has not been fun.  Not sure why the pp didn't have a good experience with flooring, but we did get to see the standard options for the flooring before we even signed the contract.  We were also given the name and number for the flooring company very early on and called them for quotes before we went to look at the flooring there and make our final decisions.  We also changed our minds last minute and upgraded more than we were originally going to and they were very accomodating.  We also considered Ryan before building.  We liked the Heartland plan/lots better.  We also liked that Heartland uses more high end finishes as standard, and we would have had to upgrade with Ryan.  The same family does still own both companies, but Heartland is considered more of a "custom" builder.  They've also been the #1 builder in Pittsburgh for the past couple years.  I wouldn't hesitate to build with Heartland again.

adlinaandrew

Hello everyone,
We are going to move to pittsburgh by this fall. I have question about heartland/Ryan homes. We were considering to buy house from heartland /Rayn/NVR  homes but after reading all negative feedback,we just cancelled our contract. I want to know from any one had horrible  experience recently. we are in big dilemma. After spending more than half million $, i don't want to regret my decision. Any feedback good/bad is appreciated. Please help