In search of a particular Clayton Homes display model, my wife and I found a sales lot which had it using the Clayton web site. Soon after I went up the steps to this specific dealership using my cane and advancing upward with my right leg only (I contend with Reiter's Syndrome, a rare arthritic condition), our saleswoman was earnestly telling us about Clayton being the "Manufacturer of the Year, " how great the Clayton company President was, and then she said to our astonishment how Clayton Homes is a fantastic company in part because - "we even hire the handicapped and junk like that." "Junk" was her exact word; I felt a warm spot in my heart for her and Clayton right there - even before she told me the part about the bet with her manager that we couldn't be the couple from York, because we drove up in a Mustang and that little "hick village" just couldn't have any Mustangs. Oh yes, the Lamborghini of the redneck world. "Sue" had the same inner attitude toward customers as most of the salespeople we worked with, she just lacked the polish. She never stopped smiling, though...
The attitude wasn't as hard to take as the misinformation, however. While we were shopping, we were often given false assurances. For instance, many Clayton salespeople promised every "Greenbriar" model was high-end, and thus came from the factory with the "Duke Power" energy standard. Actually, standard in that model was R-11 (roof), R-11 (walls), R-21 (floor) far shy of the Duke standard (which calls for R-28 in the roof). We were mislead about stud spacing, about insulation and window ratings, about the thickness of the OSB wrap in essence, at one point or another, salespeople frequently and knowingly fabricated information about virtually every aspect of the homes they were pitching in response to our questions.
Back in I was speaking with Kevin Clayton himself, President of Clayton Homes, Inc., complaining about how his dealerships had misrepresented their products. My wife and I had written him a letter, and Mr. Clayton personally called us to say he was "very embarrassed" about what happened to us while we were shopping for a home. He told us it was a "shame" that the salespeople were the way they were, but that was the state of the "industry as a whole." (The consummate salesman, however, he turned this around into a pitch by saying they were going to make it up to us with a "special" interest rate he wrangled just for us if we would give Clayton Homes another try. The "special rate" turned out to be 9.9%, the exact same deal everyone who walked in off the street was getting at that time. It was also 3% higher than the current bank rate for the same loan.) Mr. Clayton also offered us what he promised would be a very attractive price (and it was), but then the company made up for it by attempting to charge us almost twenty thousand dollars just to "set up" the new home. (We declined his not so generous offer.) In essence, it was business as usual, and none of them are about to change their ways.
This brief introduction brings to the forefront the same theme that will be amplified below: a pervasive lack of integrity exists in this industry. You can draw your own conclusions, but I would like to comment to this extent: so many things went wrong in our home (purchased from the Manufactured Housing Institute's "Manufacturer of the Year" for the past four years in a row) that there is no possibility they were all chance occurrences. Furthermore, in doing research for this book I have heard from and read accounts of many other manufactured home owners from nearly every brand home and virtually every region of the country who have their own horror stories. This problem is truly industry wide. Even though we tried to be as careful as possible the first time around, we had to force Clayton Homes, Inc., to deliver us another home. Even then, the problems continued the dealer and the manufacturer made many of the same mistakes on the substitute home that they did on the first one (and some new ones!).
Let's continue with dishonesty during negotiating the terms of the sale. To make this important point, this example requires extensive elaboration. This was a particular issue of dissonance in the case of the home we purchased and the contract we signed. My wife Amy and I both noticed one specific passage which concerned us. We in turn faxed it to someone else to review it and they had the same concern. The passage regarded arbitration:
"ARBITRATION: All disputes, claims or controversies arising from or relating to this contract, or the subject hereof, or the parties, including the enforceability or applicability of this arbitration agreement or provision and any acts, omissions, representations and discussions leading up to this agreement, hereto, including this agreement to arbitrate, shall be resolved by mandatory binding arbitration by one arbitrator selected by Seller with Buyer's consent. This agreement is made pursuant to a transaction in interstate commerce and shall be governed by the Federal Arbitration Act at 9 U.S.C. Section 1. Judgment upon the award rendered may be entered in any court having jurisdiction. The parties agree and understand that they choose arbitration instead of litigation to resolve disputes. The parties understand that they have a right to litigate disputes in court, but that they prefer to resolve their disputes through arbitration, except as provided herein. The parties voluntarily and knowingly waive any right they have to a jury trial. The parties agree and understand that all disputes arising under case law, statutory law and all other laws including, but not limited to, all contract, tort and property disputes will be subject to binding arbitration in accord with this contract. The parties agree that the arbitrator shall have all powers provided by law, the contract and the agreement of the parties. These powers shall include all legal and equitable remedies including, but not limited to, money damages, declaratory relief and injunctive relief. Notwithstanding anything hereunto the contrary, Seller retains an option to use judicial (filing a lawsuit) or non-judicial relief to enforce a security agreement relating to the Manufactured Home secured in a transaction underlying this arbitration agreement, to enforce the monetary obligation secured by the Manufactured Home or to foreclose on the Manufactured Home. The institution and maintenance of a lawsuit to foreclose upon any collateral, to obtain a monetary judgment or to enforce the security agreement shall not constitute a waiver of the right of any party to compel arbitration regarding any other dispute or remedy subject to arbitration in this contract, including the filing of a counterclaim in a suit brought by Seller pursuant to this provision."
In short, the customer is waiving substantial legal rights in signing the contract, giving up "judicial relief" for binding arbitration. The company is giving itself a safety blanket, avoiding any chance of costly litigation/lawsuits no matter what actions they might take or omit to take in the sale and set up of the home. Furthermore, the buyer is agreeing to settle any disputes by an arbitrator of the seller's choice. At the same time, note that the seller (in this case Clayton Homes, Inc.) carefully reserves the right to sue the customer. It's pretty obvious which of the two parties involved crafted this document. We complained to the dealership's General Manager when he glossed over this point in going over the contract with us; we made it known we didn't like the provision. Apparently, someone else had complained before because he had a ready-made spiel: "This is America. Everybody has the right to sue!" He went on to explain that this provision was mainly to keep the customer's cost down in the event there was a problem, so they wouldn't need to hire attorneys. He added that if we weren't happy with the results of arbitration, we were free to take the manufacturer or the dealership where we purchased the home to court and sue them. He insisted this was the case even when we asked him to explain what "binding" arbitration meant.in other words, the general manager looked us straight in the eye and unequivocally lied to us regarding this legal document. When it came time to record our understanding and agreement, we kept trying to get his "clarification" of the arbitration language on tape (ie. That we did in fact have the right to take them to court if they were dishonest or negligent), but he didn't want to record that part.
Are points like this a big deal? Does the company really intentionally mislead you that is, are they genuinely aware of the legal realities? Maybe you feel that possibly the employees don't understand the meaning of the language themselves. When we later had problems with our home, however, and threatened to seek out legal remedies when company representatives had abused our trust repeatedly, the Clayton Homes Regional Manager literally laughed at me and told me point blank: "You signed a legal contract. You can't sue us."
I've no more space to delve into this further other than to add a quote by one of our founding fathers, James Madison, "In suits at common law, between man and man, the trial by jury, as one of the best securities to the rights of the people, ought to remain inviolate." That pretty well puts the matter into perspective — these large companies are taking our most fundamental rights away, and our government is letting them.
Other aspects of the negotiations were troublesome as well. The transaction is set up to "encourage" you to use their services. Our dealership refused to take a letter of acceptance from a bank, which in effect forced us to use Vanderbilt Mortgage (a subsidiary of Clayton Homes) to finance our home or spend thousands of extra dollars. Then, to get the best rate, we had to take out not only insurance with the HomeFirst Agency (another Clayton subsidiary), but buy a Home Buyer Protection Policy through them as well. That's right, if we didn't use the insurance products they suggested to us, we would be punished with a substantially higher mortgage rate which would have again cost us thousands of dollars. We felt like we were being blackmailed. Of course we would be paying interest on the costs of all this insurance as well more money which would wind up in Clayton's coffers.
At first the Clayton Homes' insurance quote (HomeFirst/Voyager) looked pretty competitive. When we actually received the policy and read the fine print, however, we found out it was terrible! The bank (in this case Clayton Homes) was well protected, but the home buyer was not. For example, where most companies will normally group personal effects into jewelry, silverware, electronics, CD collections, firearms, computers/software, and so on into categories which each has a cap such as $500 (and optionally let you pay more to increase this amount), our HomeFirst policy put a $250 cap on each individual category and a $500 total limit on all of them. If someone came in and stole every personal item in the home listed above, the policy would pay $500 minus the $250 deductible, or just $250! If someone came in and just stole a $2,000 wedding ring, your $500 college ring, and whatever other jewelry they could find, because of the caps and the deductible the insured would be entitled to nothing.
I'll briefly discuss the subject of actual physical problems we had with our home (s) now. Lest you feel I'm being overly pessimistic attitude at the outset, allow me to explain what our manufacturer's Regional Manager told us after we had encountered numerous quality problems in our new home and after we had complained repeatedly about false promises. This manager stated with a wide grin in a rare moment of candor "What do you expect us to tell you [when you're shopping for a home on a Clayton lot], we are trying to sell you something." The grinning was especially irksome because we were standing in our new kitchen next to a pool of water several feet in diameter on the floor, while more water dripped down out of the ceiling through a light fixture. This Regional Manager not only showed disdain for our plight, he seemed to revel in it. He had the money, he had won and we had lost. His smirk seemed to indicate "so what if they now know the horrible truth about how we do business? We got em."
That leak resulted from the dealership refusing to cover up vents which were knocked off during the home's delivery for weeks despite the fact we reminded them about the missing vents repeatedly. Within two weeks of the water entering our roof cavity, our ceilings began to split open in numerous places. (The dealership assured us no damage was done, however!) In the replacement home we eventually had to receive, we had five more water leaks in addition to several more leaks in the septic lines under the house because the septic's end caps weren't tightened (allowing a rather unpleasant smell to surround our new home). These leaks included a major roof leak (which let many gallons of water into our bathroom floor and the exterior wall during one hard rain storm), a leak around the shower stall, a loose fitting on the refrigerator water line, a defective faucet (which sprayed water into the wall cavities) in the guest bath, and a leak in a water line under the home caused when a staple or nail had penetrated the line at the factory. This latter leak didn't show up for over a week; I spotted it while inspecting for problems underneath the home. Many more gallons of water had accumulated in our "belly board" (in the plastic which holds the insulation under the floor), soaking our insulation and soaking the floor joists. The only clue was the sound of a slow drip under the house. I couldn't visually spot it until my knee sank into several inches of water which had amassed under the vapor barrier over the ground. The result of this negligence? Mold, mildew, and ruined insulation.
During our "walk-throughs" to check for potential problems, we found a number of bathroom cabinets that had edges which appeared to be very rough. We only were able to notice them because of our flashlights. (Walk-throughs are usually done with no electricity.) We complained about the appearance to Spanky (not his real name), the Regional Manager. On our next walk-through Spanky told us a crew came all the way to South Carolina from Tennessee and replaced the entire cabinets for us. They did look much better. However, we compared digital photographs we had taken using flashlights and the camera flash on the first walk-through to photos of the "new" cabinets. The cabinets were identical, right down to every swirl in the wood grain! The only difference was that they had added the missing trim pieces which covered the rough edges. I asked Spanky if he was positive the cabinets had been totally replaced, and he assured me with a smile he had personally supervised the change!
Most of our interior doors also developed splits within days of our moving in. Someone came all the way from Tennessee to our house with new doors in the back of their pick-up truck in a driving rainstorm. The new doors were probably ruined anyway, but the Clayton representative claimed he replaced the old doors.in fact, we had been discreetly watching him from a distance all he really did was smear putty in the cracks. A cosmetic patch for a structural deficit which was a temporary fix at best but enough to perhaps survive the length of the warranty.By no means was the outright deception over, however.
One-half of our original home was literally dropped onto the highway when the tongue fell off during transport! Needless to say, that caused some damage. If that and the leak described above didn't ruin our new home, however, the first set up crew did. The damage occurred because the crew underestimated the weight of the home, and used only two sets of rollers and ramps to slide the two halves together, when they should have used at least four sets to properly distribute the weight. When they severely bent our frame, they attempted to conceal the damage by stacking a pile of concrete blocks around the location of the bend. We found out because the company owner had his child playing at the work site, and the child mentioned something he had overhead among the workers, much to his father's consternation. When we found the damage and began to investigate, we also discovered this contractor who the dealer said was "the best in the business" wasn't even licensed by the state to set up manufactured homes!
The result of all those twisted I-beams was that the exterior walls had noticeable leans to them some by as much as 1" from top to bottom. It was so bad, I could tell it with the naked eye from both inside and outside the house, although Spanky (our Clayton Homes Regional Manager) swore he couldn't see it. He couldn't deny what my four foot level indicated, however, when it was placed against the wall (although he did suggest on multiple occasions that the brand new Craftsman level was "defective"). The walls were leaning. There was even a discernible bulge in the exterior wall near where the tongue fell off our home in transit as though the studs actually buckled there behind the OSB wrap when the home's frame literally hit the roadway. There were also similar bulges in our floor where the set up crew mangled our frame.
While discussing our home's supporting structure and set up crew follies, consider our piers and pier supports. Our dealer tried to set up our home on a foundation that hadn't even dried yet. We had to demand the workers wait until the concrete had time to dry. Our set up crew then went by the wrong plans and put many of our support piers in the wrong locations! It was only after our first set up crew damaged that home badly during set up that a second house had to be brought out, that the second set up crew (we insisted on different workers) noticed that a number of piers were in the wrong locations. So had it not been for this extra mishap, we could have missed the fact our home wasn't properly set up until after our set up warranty had expired and our floors and roof were sagging. Sadly, however, even this second set up crew made terrible blunders they even used broken concrete blocks to construct some of our home's support piers!
Speaking of structural integrity, walking between the two halves of our original manufactured home, we were aghast at the condition of the lumber. Many studs had huge cracks running for several feet, extending from one edge of the board to the other. Others looked like they had been chewed at by an army of rats, or had two rounded off corners because they came from too close to the outer edge of the tree. Still others had large knotholes near the center of them. All of these defects combine to make your house weaker in terms of roof load capacity, in the ability to withstand wind, and resisting the effects of settling. We found severe splits which run completely through the boards (which renders the board virtually useless from a structural point of view), and other studs which are substantially weakened by other defects.in one picture, a knothole big enough to poke your finger into rests between two rounded off corners of a stud can this board support the weight an engineer expects it to? Could these problems have resulted from transportation stress on already inferior lumber? To me, that seems like a likely explanation. The factory couldn't give any rationalization, but everyone agreed this lumber was unacceptable when presented with the pictures. There is a workable solution for this, but very few customers will ever see this part of their home that is, they won't even know the problem exists!
Another quality problem which was either due to fraud or further negligence struck me as one of the most egregious. This was another hidden defect, and one which flew in the face of something we had repeatedly stressed the importance of to both the dealer and manufacturer: energy efficiency. My wife and I paid for R-28 insulation in our roof (the factory had paperwork to "prove" we received that, too), which would have been 9.43" of insulation. What we actually received was 3" to 4" of insulation on average, with some areas which had no insulation. The actual R-value we received was a factor of 10 or less. (It wasn't even the same type of insulation as our Consumer Insulation Information sheet listed.) The factory claimed it was a "fluke, " but the standard R-value for this manufacturer in this region is R-11. I believe in the law of parsimony: the simplest explanation is the most likely one. We received approximately what they normally put in, and there was no bizarre coincidence. Was a factory worker just not paying attention to the order form? If so, how many other homeowners get shortchanged in the same manner without ever knowing? I talked with every set up employee who was willing to discuss it, and the consensus was that this is business as usual: our situation was typical rather than the exception to the rule. You can find out about what is hidden in your home before sky high utility bills break the bank, and you can have it fixed properly if you know what to do.
We noticed on our walk-through that the fireplace did not seem to be seated properly as though it had shifted in transit. Looking in the bottom, I saw a considerable amount of ceiling insulation (in this case, cellulose, which looks like crumpled up tan/brown cardboard with bits of cut up paper in it). Laying on my back and looking up the flu, it was obvious that it had an opening several feet up where it wasn't properly connected. Sparks and flame could have entered our wall cavities or roof. We took photographs, and made sure the fireplace was properly repaired. A Clayton Homes / Luv Homes employee joked it was too bad for us we caught this problem because if we had kindled a fire we could have gotten a new home for free. Since we may have lost our lives, that was not really a chance we wanted to take.
To sum up, we were left with no less than three separate bent areas in our frame by the "best" in the business, which produced bulges in our floors and walls. We paid for R-28 insulation in our roof, which would have been 9.43" of Rockwool insulation. What we actually received was 3" to 4" of cellulose insulation on average, with some areas which had no insulation. The factory claimed it was a "fluke" (just as they did when the tongue fell off our new home during delivery. We suffered through leak after leak, and all the resulting damage. For every problem listed here, I could name a half dozen more that other consumers as well as my wife and I have faced. The general manager of the local dealership claimed all the mistakes on our home were "bad karma." Perhaps he should consider that karma is the direct result of our own past actions (or that you reap what you sow). The set up folks said they were just glad to see us in the rear view mirror.
Knowledge is power, so don't be caught short of it regarding what may be the largest single purchase of your life. Manufactured home dealers count on customer ignorance to make the majority of their sales and their profit. That's the single most important reason people turn to manufactured housing. A relatively inexpensive home in and of itself does not automatically translate into savings, however. You have to first make sure the home you purchase will be properly built and set up, and energy efficient enough so that you can afford the utility bills. Then you have to be careful the dealer doesn't take financial advantage of you, and finally you have to fight to make sure your loan is competitive. Through all of this, the burden weighs solely on the consumer. The sheer number of repossessions in this industry illustrates that no one else has been looking out for the consumer the dealers or the finance companies certainly haven't been. Especially when the manufacturer owns the finance company as well!
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