Emerald Homes (Missouri City, Spring, Katy: houses, neighborhoods, construction)

[Aliana926]

Have anyone heard of Emerald Homes or have built with them? They are part of D.R. Horton...

Thanks!

[Rip808]

Their houses look beautiful but I have never had any direct experience with them. In the end, its going to be the same subcontractors building your house with the same materials…you just have to be on top of the construction supervisor and make sure that you hire an independent third party to do inspections on your house as it is being built. Is there a specific community that you had in mind?

[Aliana926]

We are looking at The Manors in Missouri City. We love the huge one story floor plans, but worried abut the D.R. Hortons bad reviews/reputation. I was thinking of knocking one of the current resident there and asking them of their experience with Emerald Homes, but I'm a bit worried about disturbing them.

[Houston parent]

It is simply a leftover brand name from when DR Horton purchased them about ten years ago. There's nothing left of the real Emerald (which was a very solid builder before the brain trust at DR Horton threw out the floor plans and ran off all the Emerald people). Its a DR Horton home with a different name.

[Aliana926]

Based on what I'm reading, people were happy with Emerald Homes before it was bought out by DR Horton. Now, I'm not able to find any information/reviews about the Emerald Homes present day.

[Rip808]

Keep in mind your only going to usually find people who have negative experiences. They are a production builder like everyone else. If it really bugs you, just drive around on a Friday afternoon and see if you can see someone outside and approach them and ask them how their experience has been.

[trbstang]

Yes, they are just recycling the name. We bought our Emerald home back in 98, and it has been great. I actually did the same thing you are talking about before we bought, and drove through the neighborhood on the weekends and talked to a couple of the residents that had already moved in that were working in their yards. Met the current Katy ISD superintendent when he lived in our neighborhood and we talked about the house and the build process and why we chose the neighborhood and builder. It helped reinforce my thoughts on the builder.

I'm sure they are building a good house, but since it is not the same group, it would be good to check around on it. The homes look really nice from the ads and stuff I've seen. Much nicer than mine, but about 3 times the price too! Good luck on it.

[Aliana926]

Thank you for everyone's input! We have been out there twice already and the next time, we're going to see if we can catch anyone outside...it's going to be hard since there's it's a very new development and there's only a few residents there.

[a_guerrajr]

you can also check out McKenzie Park out in Spring, they have Emerald there and also will have another one down the road from there in the coming months.

[trbstang]

We visited EVERY Emerald homes development when we were looking, specifically to find our particular home as a model since they didn't have one available to see and to look at the inventory homes to get ideas on things to change. We added many options that we saw in other neighborhoods that we had no idea of, to ours. That was one thing they were good about, letting us customize the house. I think they are also allowing much more customization than most builders in the new company also.