Sandyhook
I'm still glad we bought KB Home - after 4 years
We closed on our KB Home in the Austin, TX area in 2020. I am genuinely glad we bought a new build home from KB Home. No, I do not work for them. This is not a scam; I am a real homeowner with no relationship to KB Home. This is my real experience. This is not a "sweetheart review." Let me say that not everything is "right." But most of the things that were not right, KB fixed. Still there are a few issues but they're not terrible. Most MLS homes have issues too; so let's not be so surprised if a new build home is not "perfect" either. However, I need to clarify: we did *not* just sign a contract for a specific floorplan and then "go away" until the day of closing. Far from it. From the day they broke ground until the day we closed, I came by at least twice per week and roamed through the house and outside, taking *video* of everything. To this day I have video of everything that's behind the walls of every room, along with the insides of the ceilings of both floors. I also took still pictures. I found various things that I was not happy about. I won't list them because there are *too many* but I did have pictures of most issues. I would email KB Home at least once per week, typically to complain about this or that, and I'd include still photographs so as to illustrate my point. They did not rectify every issue, but they did rectify most of them. I also had the house inspected (at my expense) *before they put up the drywall* and got a report from the inspector which I also sent to KB Home, which triggered some "fixes." I hired an inspector (who said he'd inspected over 20 KB Home's in our community) to inspect our home before closing as well. He said to me, "I can see that you've been all over KB to make sure they did this house right. This is one of the strongest builds I've seen in this community." I had not even told him that I had been hounding KB Home for months. In my opinion, KB has the best floor plans of any builder. Also, their Design Center is fantastic in that they offer *so many choices*. Also, we got to choose floor plan options, like enclosing the "game room" which is now my office, and more. These options are a *huge upside* for KB. I personally visited and checked out 20 different builders in the Austin area and walked through many of their model homes and read their literature - and in the end we chose KB for our new home. Now I want to emphasize: although I'm pleased with our home, and although I really feel we made the right choice in going with KB ... there was genuine work involved for me. And there was also plenty of stress and frustration, although I got through it. Also, when communicating with KB, I didn't just "send an email" or "leave a voice mail message" and then wait for a reply. No. I continually was "on their back," following-up on things and staying on top of every new thing. Sometimes I had to get creative so as to grab their attention - I'll leave it at that. Warning: anyone living far away who thinks they'll "remotely" build a new KB Home in Texas and then just show up for the closing ... I wouldn't recommend it. No possible way will your realtor's cell phone pictures of the building process tell the real story. For us, we were living within an hour's drive so we could do this. Taking personal responsibility for watching over the building of our home was critically important to make things work correctly. It's like being a parent; you don't let your child do whatever he/she wants to do; you need to have some degree of "supervision" over them as they grow up. Same thing with a new-build home; it positively requires your personal "monitoring." One last thing I'll say, and this is kind of tough. When I would ask the "Design Center" personnel if they could do something special - like a wanted a driveway which was wider - they told me that the "City" would not allow such. Well, I myself contacted the "City" and asked around - for days - until I could find a person who could discuss this "rule" which KB claimed. This probably happened on 5 separate occasions. Every time, the "City" person told me something different than KB told me. Whoa. On each occasion I went back to KB and quoted what was told me. Each time, KB finally agreed to do what I had originally asked. But never was I given an "apology" for their "wrong information." Hmmm ... think about that. This is another example of what I'm saying: you must be pro-active and watching out for *yourself* when building a new home. Don't take every answer from the builder as "Gospel truth." Check it out yourself. As my business friend says, "Trust but verify." I have much more to say, but it would take hours to write it out. In summary: don't just blindly trust the builder. You must verify a lot of things and hold them accountable *during* the building process -- not just "afterwards" when it's much harder to fix problems.