Did you hear the one about the contractor? Who hasn’t? Home builders are frequent subjects of jokes and comic strips that ridicule them for being late, dishonest, incompetent or all of the above.
But jokes aside, most home seekers go through the process of building and buying and end up happy. The day they turn the keys on a new house is one they will long look back on with a mixture of pride and satisfaction.
Not that they are eager to turn their lives and wallets upside down to do it again soon, but they do have positive memories of the months they spent with their builders.
We asked recent buyers to tell us about the pleasant surprises they encountered along the way to the completion of their new homes.
Although the lines blur, most builders and buyers recognize that a “custom” house means starting from scratch, while a “semi-custom” or “production” house means choosing from a builder’s set of floor plans.
What Nezy Oliver and her husband, Archie, got from their builder, they say, is a custom house at a semi-custom price.
Their new, two-story home in Antioch, built by KLM Builders, was such a change from the builder’s offerings at that subdivision, that the builder had to go back to the village to get an approval to build it.
“We added a first-floor bedroom and bathroom for my mother,” says Nezy Oliver.
“We totally changed the master bathroom, made one bedroom into a second-floor laundry room, added a master sitting room and a loft and expanded the kitchen, garage and deck. We even had them put in a double front door.”
They lost track of how many changes that were made, says Nezy Oliver. “But, they never said, `We can’t do that.'”
Erica Swerdlow, who hired NorthStar Homes to build her custom home in Northbrook, says, “Our builder told us upfront–there will be problems.”
In hindsight, she says that helped Swerdlow and her husband, Brian, to set realistic expectations.
“The builder told us, `You’ll have a few breakdowns, but we’ll get through them.’ He was right,” she says.
“I freaked out once and he stayed calm. After the great room was framed, I had second thoughts about not having cathedral ceilings. But he said [the lower ceilings] would work and they did.
“The builder can’t control everything — he can’t control the economy or other things that affect the industry. Stuff happens,” she says.
Swerdlow says the couple established ground rules and the builder followed them. So did the subcontractors on the job. They cleaned up the site frequently and refrained from smoking in the uncompleted house.
In the end, they became friends.
“On moving day, we were sitting there having a beer with the builder,” says Swerdlow. “A friend dropped by and said, `You’re having a beer together? You’re not supposed to like your builder after it’s over.'”
Judy Strahler, who picked out a house along with her husband, Mike, says,”Buying a new home doesn’t have to be stressful.”
She should know. The couple has moved, along with their family, eight times in 24 years.
“We like to move,” she admits.
Their next move, in September, will be to a new house in Bolingbrook by Lakewood Homes.
After so many moves, Judy Strahler says she knows exactly what she wants in a home.
When they saw Lakewood’s Lafayette model, that was it — exactly.
“It would have cost us thousands to get that decorating advice,” says Judy Strahler. “So we just ordered the same appliances, carpet, everything.”
Instead of a complicated, stressful ordeal, their home purchase, she says, was “easy and simple.”
Things were not quite that simple, though, for Ed Huellstrounk. While he was shopping for a builder to build his new house, his old house burned down.
“So, I went to Wyndam [Deerpoint]’s Arbor Ridge and told them I was in a hurry,” says Huellstrounk. “They took their people from a model and put them to work on my house.
“I signed the contract in April and was in the house by August — a month earlier than they said they could do it.”
The biggest surprise, adds Huellstrounk, was that it didn’t cost him extra.
For many young couples, plans call for starting a family after they build their first home. Problem is, babies don’t care about coordinating their arrivals with building schedules.
Lisa Berkley and her husband, Paul, were wading through the paperwork, on their way to buying a new house in Centex Homes’ Walnut Trails in Shorewood.
“If we signed by a certain date, we would get a free basement and a lower price on a premium lot,” says Lisa.
Their baby, Allison, arrived that very week.
“I had a C-section and was stuck in the hospital for four days,” says Lisa. “If we waited until I got home, we would have missed the deal.
“So the Centex salesperson brought the papers to the hospital. She even brought a baby gift.”
The salesperson’s errand saved the couple about $15,000, says Lisa Berkley.
Damen Trebilcock and his fiance, Colette Chambers, hurried their move for another reason — they had to take possession of their new townhome in Dubin Residential’s Emerson Point in Chicago within 60 days or perhaps lose a locked-in, low mortgage rate promised by their lender.
“We quickly picked out the colors, flooring, tile, then asked them to hurry,” says Damen. “They made it — we got in on the 59th day.”
The only downside of their first-time home-buying experience, says Damen: “Next time we build, our expectations will be high.”
Darlene Decker says that even if it’s not on the list of the builder’s options, that doesn’t mean you can’t have it in your house.
It’s the lesson she says she learned when she built her new home in Smykal Associates’ Park Place in Oswego, next to the home her daughter built.
“This is my fourth new house so I knew what I wanted — a heater in my whirlpool tub, wooden floors in my master bath, a certain type of faucet in the kitchen and white stairway balusters with a cherry rail,” says Decker.
“The builder was willing to do it my way and find the products I wanted.”
Those alterations were in addition to the upgrades she chose, including a fancy fireplace. Oh, and one more thing, she told the builder: lay the tiles on the diagonal, not straight across like in the model.
Diagonal they are.
New construction doesn’t have to mean cookie cutter, say Mary and John Strub, who built in Eagle Homes’ Heatherstone community in DeKalb.
“We were able to make our house look different than the others,” says John Strub.
They changed the house’s facade by adding extra exterior brickwork, more front-porch lighting and a stamped-asphalt driveway.
Inside, they added arched openings between the living room and dining room and recessed lighting in the kitchen. They made the fourth bedroom into a loft/family room.
“John called them every week with another request,” recalls Mary Strub. “They didn’t balk.”
According to her husband, “These days, if you wind up with a cookie-cutter house, it’s your fault, not the builder’s. You’ve just got to be creative.”
Pat Pawola says “we were green,” of her first home-buying experience with her husband, Larry.
“We didn’t know what to expect, but friends told us of all the things they wished they had done differently.”
So when they bought a condo in Weiss Development’s Village Green in Lincolnshire, they weren’t sure if they could alter the floor plans.
To their surprise, the answer was, “No problem.”
So they moved walls and added doors (on paper) to make the den into a bedroom/bathroom suite. They “changed everything” in the kitchen, says Pat Pawola.
Best of all, they transformed some empty space (that would have been walled off) adjacent to their bedroom into a home office. The builder wired it with a cable modem and telephone lines.
“It’s only 6-by-8-feet but it is everyone’s favorite room — very cozy,” says Pat Pawola.
As an attorney, Anita Ventrelli says she sees where problems occur in the service industry.
“People have to take responsibility when something goes wrong,” she says. “And problems will happen.”
So when a problem occurred during the construction of her home in Glenview, such as installing the wrong under-cabinet lights, she immediately brought it to the attention of her builder, Ferris Homes, and the problem was immediately fixed.
In addition, says Ventrelli, the builder’s staff prevented other problems by being candid about their choices.
“We thought we wanted light-colored oak floors with light-colored cabinets,” she says. “They told us we’d be happier with more of a contrast and suggested we look at them together. They were right.”
MaryBeth and James Thornton had built two new homes before, both less than pleasant experiences. So when they went a third round, building in Town & Country’s Foxford Hills in Cary, they braced themselves.
“Then they called and said, `We just poured the foundation — do you want to come see it and take a picture?'” says MaryBeth Thornton.
“I was stunned. Then they told us they had just framed it and asked if we wanted to see where the wiring was before they drywalled.”
Instead of being in the dark, says MaryBeth Thornton, she and her husband were given frequent updates on the progress of their house. They attended a behind-the-scenes tour with other buyers, where the builder explained the inner workings of their homes.
Then came the clincher: The builder called the Thorntons to tell them of a staff change at the community’s sales office.
“They didn’t have to do that,” says MaryBeth Thornton.
When Mia Fromknecht told her friends she was buying a new loft in a Chicago low-rise, they warned her to expect plenty of bumps in the road. To her surprise, she says, the experience was smooth.
“It was very organized and I wasn’t pushed,” she says of her loft-buying experience with Winthrop Properties’ One One One Morgan.
“First, they had me make the structural choices — things that couldn’t be changed later. Then they asked me my cosmetic choices.”
She did her part, she says, by meeting the builder’s deadlines.
“I got a big file folder and kept everything together,” she says.
Despite her busy schedule, she says, the experience was hassle-free.
Just as lack of communication is the recurring theme among builder horror stories, good communication is the common thread among the sagas of success.
To better your chances of a good match, the buyers recommend checking out builders before signing with one.
“Ask Realtors, ask lawyers, ask other buyers,” says Fromknecht. “Then trust your gut instinct.”
Keep in mind that it is important to let the builder do his job and realize that indecisiveness and requests for changes can create delays.
Mutual respect is key to the relationship, says Swerdlow.
“We treated [our builder] like a partner, not a vendor,” she says.
Finally, she adds, keep it all in perspective.
Yes, you’re spending a bundle and, yes, you want your house built well and on time. But, she says, “Remember, it’s just a house.”
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Sunday in Real Estate: A guide for finding the right real estate agent when it’s time to sell.
