D.R. Horton Homes
Beware - cannot complete home

D.R. Horton Homes (in Phoenix) has provided the worst built, worst supported home we have ever seen.

We bought our new home in August of '98, and as of this writing (02/21/00) it still is not finished. We were encouraged to move in "a few days" prior to completion in March of '99 (already 3mos after promised), though our future neighbors warned us that if we moved in, Horton would never finish the house, we couldn't believe it... It's true!

We had to pay TWICE for an appraisal that never happened, to a company that is actually PART of Horton! (we have copies of the boiler-plate appraisals used on our home).

About nine months after we moved in, Horton's Customer Service detailed the things they are willing to fix, and those things they don't feel are their responisbility (?!) (ie dampers and hook-up to ducting for which we paid extra, over the range hood; fireplace completion; over 50' of slab cracks, in some places up to 1" across; while fixing (jack-hammering) incorrectly placed curb IN driveway, caused new cracks in driveway - won't fix; carpets come up 3" short of the hearth -3" of concrete exposed all around... Etc.)

We lived on CONCRETE floors for 9 months while Horton pondered our situation, and finally at least ground the peaks off of the slipping concrete slab and put a membrane into the cracks (the whole job took less than 3 hours)-the slab is still separating; We lived with one of our EXTERIOR doors unpainted for nine months; a telephone jack that was overlooked was finally fixed, after nine months, by poking a hole through the outside wall and draping a wire through our flower bed and back into the house... instead of simply running it under a baseboard as any quality contractor would have done.

A wall had to be re-located within the house, and a fireplace mantle was to be raised about 1' on the living room fireplace "... Within a week..." of our move-in. - MONTHS passed before anyone would even address the problem, which prevented the carpet and tile flooring from going in those areas.

It would take too long for a list of all of our problems over the last year, but it is important to note that Horton doesn't really build a house, they bid out in micro projects within a project to a miriad of contractors on a house-by-house basis. Their excuse to us for the poor workmanship was that there is simply no qualified workers anymore, and we had to live with what they could find!

The framing contractor that framed our house told us that his company had only done one other Horton house, and would never do another, because of the penny-pinching short-cutting tactics forced upon them by Horton. We had upgraded to a 2X6 construction, and aparently no-one knew how to handle this simple upgrade, as the interior walls, plumbing etc. Is all off by 2"!

We know the same labor conditions exist in Tucson, but the Horton Homes in that region are providing a far better home, and are responsive to Customer Service problems. The difference is local. The Phoenix salesmen are less than truthful (at the direction of their Sales Manager), and it goes downhill from there.

Management is a local problem. The total cost of going ahead and fixing our home in the first place would have saved them and us a lot of headaches, but their penny-wise effort to 'out-wait' the homeowners complaints so that each will finally give up and fix their own homes (as happens most of the time) has delt those of us with some pride and sense of what's right, serious injury.

We now have decided to throw in the towel ourselves, and try to finish this wreck of a house, and fight these crooks in the only remaing ways available to us.

The D.R. Horton "family" of homes includes: Arappco Homes, Cambridge Homes; Contenintal Homes; Dobson Builders, Inc.; Joe Miller Homes; Mareli Construction; Milburn Homes; Regency Homes; RMP Properties; SGS Communities; Torrey Homes, and Trimark Homes.

Company: D.R. Horton Homes
Country: USA
State: Arizona
City: Tempe
Address: 4500 S. Lakeshore Dr. Suite #205
Phone: 6024914323

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