Meritage homes - quaility? (for sale, custom home, landscaping)

[nekochan999]

I keep seeing meritage homes for sale on the web and they all look gorgeous (we need a house that can fit a 10 foot antique pool table and a grand piano). Does anyone know how good (or bad) they are?

[chopchop0]

Not sure, but be careful with maronda

[Broker Dave]

Meritage does a good job with their product, what advice does your Realtor give on the subject and have they spent the time looking the home over with you?

If you don't have an agent select one who is full time and understands the latest new construction techniques. Although builders must adhere to local and state building codes they will vary from builder to builder and community to community as to how they do it.

Hope this helps,

[annerk]

Meritage is a production builder, no better or worse than most of them.

[Cigarboo]

I've looked at their homes. The ones I saw look pretty nice, but they are a bit cookie cutter type. The couple of neighborhoods I saw seemed small on the land, as they like to cram as many homes into a piece of land as possible, but that's no different than most builders these days. For a large builder, I think their homes look pretty nice for the money. They seem to be mostly 2 story homes which I'm not a fan of, in Florida. But that's how they can give you a lot of square footage for less money. They seem to be selling well.

[nekochan999]

Thanks. I'm just looking from NY now - have to wait until we sell the house before I can actually start looking for real. But without a basement, we're kind of worried how we're going to fit all our large STUFF into a house down there - 10 foot pool table, foosball table, Drum set, Grand piano, theatre organ, another piano..... plus all the normal furniture (beds, dining room set etc). THe houses built by meritage seem to have enough room, but I'm concerned about the build quality. And I'd be very happy with less land to maintain, as long as I'm far away enough so my son's drumming doesn't bother the neighbors.

[annerk]

You won't be that far away with anything Meritage builds. Expect maybe 20 feet between you and the neighbors.

[AONE]

Meritage has some better green techniques that can save $$ than most. I have been working on a project that involves high efficiency and noticed their efforts. My issue is, are they where you want to be?

There are a some great areas with good builders but with new construction it is important to inspect carefully. When I have done inspections with my buyers on their custom homes I have always found significant issues that needed to be addressed, don't assume new means, built right.

It is always best to have someone looking out for your interests. the builders look after theirs and don't think otherwise. A buyers agent is a good idea. Often we get offers others don't get which can translate into a better deal for you.

[annerk]

I can tell you from having built a house from a distance that you MUST make regular inspections. My home took 18 months to build, so once a month was fine. But for a production home that is finished in three months or less, you'll want to inspect at least every other week. Take a LOT of photos during the inspection. We found numerous items that needed to be corrected once looking at the photos back at home. Things like light switches and outlets in the wrong place and a forgotten plumbing upgrade that when we compared the photo to the plans we noticed the issue but didn't see it on site.

Don't be afraid to speak up and if your builder screws something up, make them correct it. They put a very expensive upgrade into our house that we didn't request and tried to charge us for it, we refused to pay and told them they could remove it. It would have cost them more to remove it and remediate the damage done during removal so they left it. They forgot to plumb for the gas dryer we had paid for, and I made them do it and then they had to re-sheet rock. I was not going to bend on this.

Our final punch list and work off started with about 35 items that ranged from a tree that was in the wrong place in the landscaping (I ultimately allowed them to leave it where it was, it really wasn't a big deal but gave me leverage with things that I did consider a big deal) to a minor problem with the front door latch resolved with WD-40. If we hadn't been on top of things through the entire building process, I'm sure that list would have been over 200 items--some fairly major.

[m0nty55]

annerk is 100% accurate! I went to my house every day and something is usually out of order or wrong. But if you keep everything documented and contact the people immediately it will get resolved.