Cincinnati Nesties
Baby S. is on its way!
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
XP: Home builder recs/do not use ?
Hi Ladies,
I know I lurk most of the time... but I have a question:
For those of you who have, or know someone who has, built a home:
Which builders would you recommend, and why?
Which builders would you warn someone about, and why?
DH and I are looking into building vs. buying... but we are trying to get some prelim research first. Any help is appreciated!
Baby S. is on its way!
Re: XP: Home builder recs/do not use ?
DO NOT USE RYAN!
They were awful. Absolutely nothing good to say about that company. They were terrible!
We too used Ryan and didn't have the best experience with them. We built in Liberty Twp, and they purchased a the final lots in our neighborhood and didn't exactly hide the fact that they wanted out of the neighborhood quick. Everyone has had TONS of problems. To name a few, our basement (and several others) had mold before we even moved in, uneven floor in the kitchen and morning room, our roof has been worked on twice and it's still uneven, and the lawn service company hit my house and my neighbors house with their rock grinding machine. My neighbor actually had a 3ft round hole in the side her garage, we were lucky enough to just have a few peices of siding that needed to be replaced. The list goes on and on.
To be fair, some of the problems we've had I don't think would have been any different than if we had gone with another builder but some problems were completely preventable. Ryan unfortunately was just trying to make a quick buck on our neighborhood and hired some really shady workers.
While I would build with Ryan again since they have fixed almost everything (although some things we really had to force them to fix) I would NEVER work with the construction manager and sales manager that we used. They were dishonest on several things throughout the process.
Here's my words of advice, watch them like a hawk! Get every single thing in writing, visit the site regularly and report everything that you see. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.
As far as quality goes, he said Fischer is the worst he's seen. Cut a lot of corners so they can brag about having affordable homes.
He gave high reviews to Drees, and said they had some of the best quality among the larger builder groups that he worked with.
Hope that helps!
I would agree that the quality of Fisher, especially in recent years (the last 5), is not the greatest.
DH and I built a condo with Fisher. We had tons of issues at closing in terms of gettting specific things fixed. We loved our sales manager, and the punch out guy was great, but the problem was he was trying to close 7 condos in 2 weeks time. Moral of the story: watch them like a hawk, especially towards the end!
We sold the condo less than 2 years after we bought it. I ran into my neighbor last spring, and she was telling me about some of the problems they've had since we moved. I came home telling DH I was glad we moved! (eg, they replaced carpet because of flooding issues in a basement condo unit, had lots of drainage issues, etc... I attribute that to the fact that our floor was noticably unlevel- basement, not upper levels, etc...). Needless to say, I can definitely say they cut a lot of corners and the quality may not be what you want.
We considered a new home built by Maronda, but a ton of issues came to light during the inspection so we backed out.
We bought an existing home that was four years old, built by Zaring, and the inspector said the quality was much better than Maronda. I've heard Zaring isn't as good as it used to be (before it was bought by Drees), but so far, so good!
Remember to consider the additional costs of building a new home, such as window treatments, deck/patio, etc. Those costs can add up quickly! We also found that most things needed to be upgraded to get to a reasonable level of quality or appearance.