Dee Dee told us that she was a "dual" agent, meaning she works for both the buyers and the seller. We were the buyers and the builder, Paul Stepniak, was the seller. Unfortunately, we found out that she really works for the seller alone. After all, he is the one who pays her salary. We would recommend that anyone buying a house does not use a real estate agent that is a dual agent. If you want someone who is watching out for you, then get your own real estate agent.
One of our first questions to Dee Dee was whether any of the houses in the development got water and her answer was "no". Five months after we put a substantial deposit on our house, we found about 18 inches of water in our basement. The explanation from Dee Dee was that our final grading was not done and our gutters and drains were not installed yet. She told us that once these things were complete that we would not get any water in our basement. We put our trust in Dee Dee and we believed her answer. Two months after we purchased the house we got almost 3 feet of water in our basement. We lost our brand-new furnace, our brand-new hot water heater and all of our personal items that we had stored in our basement. Now, Dee Dee and our builder did not want to know anything about our
water problems. Our phone calls and emails went unanswered. A year and a half later, nothing has been done about our water problems and we had to resort to suing the builder. The law suit is still in process.
Even though there were only 4 models to choose from in our development, Dee Dee knew very little about any of them. When we wanted to put a rug-runner carpet on the foyer stairs, Dee Dee did not know how many stairs were on the stairway. When we wanted to change the living room from carpet to hard-wood, Dee Dee did not know the dimensions of the living room. Since everything in the house was "a la carte", Dee Dee would throw in a few "freebies". Later, we found out that every homeowner got the same freebies, so nothing special was being done for us.
Once our one-year anniversary was approaching, we had several "punch-list" items that needed to be addressed. Again, our phone calls and emails to Dee Dee went unanswered. All of a sudden, this was no longer her job to take care of "punch-list" items.
We saw a huge difference in the way Dee Dee treated us before we purchased the house and after we purchased the house. Before the purchase we got some results, however after the purchase, Dee Dee did not want to hear from us anymore.
Right from the start, we feel that Dee Dee lied to us about water problems in the development. We did find out on our own that several other homeowners in the development did have water problems in their houses. We also feel that Dee Dee did not know the things that realtors are supposed to know. Maybe she was playing dumb like a fox so that the builder (the seller) always benefits and not the buyer.
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