hursttx

Has anyone used VIP Home Inspections (www.best2inspect.com)? They do phased inspections for new construction, but the website leaves a bit to be desired. I should also ask if phased inspections are even worthwhile, or if a single inspection is OK for new homes?

Thanks!

Rebuilding 50% of West U?! I know that percentage has to be an exaggeration. As the original poster, why do I feel the need to defend myself from the actions of a greedy real estate baron? I freely admit that from a superficial view, Lovett Homes seems like a quality builder. Why do you think we went them in the first place? HOWEVER, the purpose of the thread is to warn others about how you will be treated once you sign. You will NOT be treated like a customer. They lure you in with the eye catching bait, but once they have you, forget about it. No customer service, no catering to your needs. Frank Liu does not care about customers; the only thing he cares about is making money.

FYI, Frank Liu and his company are involved in multiple arbitrations including my own. And please don't say that arbitrations are part of the business. Maybe for monstrous corporations like KB, Newmark, etc, but not for supposedly respectable custom builders. The possibility of litigation is part of the business, but being involved in multiple arbitrations at the same time? I don't think so. I have friends in the real estate business. Frank Liu does have a reputation. Anyway, I am a firm believer that what goes around comes around. So, to reiterate, I'm not telling you not to buy a Lovett Home because they are crappy homes, I'm telling you not to buy a new home from them unless you wanted to be treated like dirt.

PS In-Town Homes is a subsidiary of Lovett Homes and IS at least partially owned by Frank Liu.

Did you purchase your home prior to the TRCC going into effect? Did you have to create a SIRP to get into arbitration? When you signed, did you try to modify the contract so that you wouldn't have to resort to arbitration as the sole method of resolving the problems? I'm just trying to get a feel for what a home buyer can and can't do...

Also, I know that arbitration results are normally not made public. What about how many arbitration requests a company has had/is going through? That might be a good metric to measure home builders on.

Fyi, I looked on TRCC's site and there are only 2 homes registered for Lovett (I thought they all had to be?), and no SIRPs filed with the commission. I know that TRCC is a sham, I'm surprised that either their database doesn't update very regularly, or no one seems to be using it

There is an article on Perry Home, it's not on Lovett but you may want to look into some of the things that are mentioned on this article.... (It's a year-old article)

http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2005-02...ws/feature.html

Thanks for the article, I hadn't seen that one. I don't think I could stand to live in a Perry home. They look like they were taken from the 'burbs, cut in half, then airlifted into Midtown. I want a little more variety than that (one of the reasons I want out of Friendswood so badly <g>).

It's a given that no single builder is going to make perfect homes 100% of the time. What's scary is trying to determine what the defect rate for a particular builder is. Without hard numbers, how are people deciding on a new home builder? If I had the money, I could hire an architect to design and handle the construction for me. But I don't, or at least don't believe that I do.

I too am careful about whom I "badmouth", but I also know easy it is for people to get duped into buying poor quality construction. I also know about Lovett's poor quality (prefer not to say how) and that people don't have any way of knowing about things like this if people don't talk about it.

So much of the quality (or lack of it) in construction is hidden from view. It's sooooooo easy for a builder to utilize surface materials and impressive architectural designs that look dazzling and portray a perception of quality while hiding shoddy construction and dime-pinching shortcuts in places not visible to the buyer. It's really sad, because the problems are often not apparent until several years down the road.

...

Do you mind saying what type of poor quality construction Lovett does regularly? Even if you don't say _how_ you know about it, giving descriptions on what could be wrong helps others. Is it something that having a 3rd party inspector coming to the site every once in a while would prevent? I'm planning on moving into town within the next year and have looked at some of the Lovett sites. On the outside, they look great, and knowing what might have happened inside the sheetrock is pretty important (especially for the price they sell at). Besides you and two other posters, I haven't heard many negative marks against Lovett...

Along the same lines, what about HHN? I haven't been able to find anything about them besides one or two posts where people say they feel the company is decent. Nothing substantive either way.