HOBB Community

Pulte is clever. When you close on your new house, you're sent a (JD Powers) survey that Pulte offers incentives to complete and mail in quickly. Pulte uses JD Powers "excellence" awards to marginalize people like me who say that Pulte's construction is shoddy.

It takes more than a few days, or a few weeks, or even a few months, to find the "skeletons in the closet" in a new house. I didn't find the "skeleton" in the attic (deficient roof truss connections) until we had been here for more than a year.  http://peretired.blogspot.com/ (http://peretired.blogspot.com/)  I discovered the other "skeletons" (our leaking roof, deficient stucco, poorly built lagoons, collapsed retaining wall, etc.) after that.

I, along with a LOT of other people, was suckered. In our defense, I and others assumed that the 4th largest house builder in the US, advertising itself as "masterbuilder", knows how to build, and knows how to treat their customers. Boy, was I WRONG!

So, the next time that you see Pulte advertising their "excellence" awards, received from the "prestigious" JD Powers, you will know "the rest of the story".

JD Power is nearly worthless as a tool to choose a builder.  Like the BBB and licensing agencies, etc, it's only useful if you find negative info there, then you know to stay away.  But finding positive (or no) info is meaningless.  So many complaints are kept under wraps that the "good info" can be worse than useless, it can be deceiving.  Another way JD Power is meaningless is that they only rate the area's biggest builders.  Most of the goood builders are NOT in this group of tract builders but are smaller companies that focus on quality.  Truly good builders are hard to find in the sea of bad to mediocre builders of any size operating out there.  If JD Power rated on quality they'd have to survey the owners of thousands of local builders in each area they do their survey in.  A gargantuan task.  But to only rate one class of builder means that if most of them are crappy tract builders, all the rating says is which of them is the least crappy.  It can't possibly tell you that some are "good" because of the many flaws in their research.  And I use the term research very loosely.  I don't think it's research at all, it's more like advertising.

This constant statistical rationalization and manipulation crap really is yankin’ my chain, wherever they do it. Building defects don't cause sudden catastrophic loss of life, as far as we know. Medical issues I've seen close to home, they can kill people and I'm sure they actually have, but who would dare connect it using an empowered authority.

Still I would like to see how well it would work if an airline lost a big passenger plane, and instead of tending to the victims and their families, they sited all their stats on flights that didn't crash to console the victims, authorities and the general public. And then dismissed the crash as statistically insignificant, which is even technically true compared to other travel related accidents, even without lying and rigging the safety ratings. Because that doesn’t fly there.

The loss level with new homes is a different type of catastrophic loss, but looking at foreclosure laws, and the losses defective houses and mortgage fraud can really cost, you can lose everything. And that goes well beyond just material things. Most of this came from greed, not freak weather, a natural disaster, or some unpredictable mechanical failure.

Medical care is hardly affordable as it is, but if the builder/loan scheme wipes you, you lose access to needed health care probably when you need it most. A million plus collective new home related consumer wipe outs isn’t just unfortunate, it is a national disaster. But they get awards while all doing that.

And where’s our bail out money as we (home buyers) fall by the thousands? Not from selfish greed of our own doing but from...you know who.

Before I closed I had big issues with the mortgage company. When I filled out the survey, the sales man and the customer rep was hovering over me telling me what to say. When I told them I couldn't give them a good rating because of the mortgage they were whining and pewling that they wouldn't get their bonuses.  What I know now, they probably threw it away.

I had to call pulte and demand they send me the one year survey.  ;) They really didn't want me to see it and/or fill it out.  I did, and I have to believe they threw that one out too. 

JD Powers takes NO complaints. I have already tried and you can read the responses, which are mostly canned on this site.  They base their awards on surveys ONLY.  I did read an article last year written by JD powers stating not to take their word solely, but to look at other avenues. yeah right.

Now the BBB. I filed a complaint in the Kansas City area with the BBB.  They told me that because the builder was headquartered in Michigan, the complaint was forwarded.  This is the reason you will find no complaints in the KS/MO area. ALL builder complaints are forwarded and when I was looking for a house it didn't cross my mind one time to check out the BBB in Michigan (go figure).

As far as my house. I received the tax property statement on my house for 2008. The value of the house is ZERO  (nothing), and the value of the land at 59K.  So at least my property tax bill will be low this year.  I still have no homeowners insurance. Well, yes I have the forced placed insurance, but it only covers the cost of the building for the lender. (AND it is six (6) times the cost of my insurance that was dropped) If there was a calamity, I would have no insurance to cover any of my personal effects, liability, or anything else.  The lender is another story, and at least from what I know they have stopped buying bundles (mortgages) from this builder and I do know for a fact because of the issues I have and the correpondence I have had with the legal department, to get a refinance in my subdivision (all mortgages in my subdivision are held by the same lender) they have to have a structural engineer report.  (I can't imagine why)

http:///www.justanotherlemon.com/CCFL/pulte.htm