HOBB Community

I am having a problem with Ryland. I lived in my newly constructed home for 1 year and 5 months. I have complained to Ryland about landscaping due to water problems I have had since move in. Also electricity continually trips in house and low water pressure. Ryland refuses to correct the issues.
I filed a complaint with BBB but no results. Would my next step be filing suit? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

What state are you in?
Go ahead and file with the BBB regardless of where you live, but different states have different procedures. In Texas homeowners are forced to go to TRCC that protects builders.

Register of contracters most states have them. All builders fear them.   Good Luck

Actually, Ritchie, only about half the states license builders, and though contractors might have once feared these agencies, I don't believe they do anymore.  Most of these agencies are run by, or heavily influenced by, the builders now. In some states all that is licensed is the electrician, plumber, HVAC.  The agencies are largely toothless.  But peole should file complaints at these agencies and be persistent, if they hope to get any help.  They might get some help, and they sure won't if they don't file.

Sandy,

My husband and I bought a brand new Ryland home near Austin, Texas 39 months ago.  We have waged several battles with them including draining and grading issues.  Ryland finally put in french drains that work very well.  We are still, however, fighting with them to fix electrical and air conditioning problems.  We also have electrical outlets that constantly trip.  The worst problem is the air conditioning.  Our electric bill is pretty consistently almost twice that of our neighbors with similar floor plans and square footage. 

Ryland conceded to an inspection of the whole air system from the company of their choice which ran an air flow analysis and agreed with what my husband has been telling them for 3 years.  The air ducts need to be ripped out and reinstalled properly, the main unit is too small for the house and the upstairs unit is too large for the one bonus room.  Furgther, the air flow is restricted as much as 45% in some rooms and 25% in much of the others.  The company wrote up a proposal including ripping out and reinstalling all air ducts and installing the proper sized units.  A company manager told us that Ryland did not want to pay the money so they asked for an estsimate on a "bandaid" job.  Basically, they just wanted to clean and straighten the ducts.  We were not allowed to have a copy of either estimate.

My husband let his concerns be known to Ryland's Waranty Manager who asked him to "wait and see if these repairs helped" and to watch and see if the next 2 electric bills were less that the ones we had recently received.  The manager further stated that if these repairs did not work then Ryland would remedy the situation.

That was around 3 months ago.  As you can probably guess, the repairs did not work.  Our electric bill went from $360 to $550 the next month and the last bill was $533.  The same company that did the repairs came out and put in a pound and a half of freeon (?) into the unit suggesting a slow leak.  My husband called the Ryand Warranty Manager to tell him that the repairs did not work, but had in fact made our electric bills higher, and demand that the problem be fixed properly.  He was informed that Ryland had washed their hands of the situation and refused to do any further repairs.  Their reason was that we had had other companies working on the air problem which has negated the warranty.  This was a lie, but here we are. 

Do we not have any other recource other than taking a chance with the TRCC, filing a law suit, or spending our own money to fix the problem?  So much for living the american dream.

Tina and Jim Cook
Pflugerville, Texas

Hello I found this site and have a question about Ryland Homes. We were in the Austin Area looking for homebuilders, we did go through several modles and are considering having a Ryland Home built. How are they has builders and standing behind what they say?  Also they said you have to go with Brinks for the alam.  Is this something we should be alarmed about?

Have you gone to featured builders on this website? Click on Ryland and look at the information available.
Also click on Home Buyer Resources and go to homeowner's websites.

The following is hearsay from locals, though somewhat verified by research. This point is not really helpful to address your Ryland issues. I was told that Ryland Homes and Ryan Homes were started by two brothers separately, both sons of the original family builder William Ryan Homes. They recently added Rymarc Homes to the spread, which sounds perhaps like another related family member, possibly just released from prison for conspiracy to defraud in his first failed builder business model.

They are all independent business entities, expect two that are under NVR inc. Perhaps their main family legacy was to  pass along their "screw the customer" methods from generation to generation. The founder, William Ryan Homes seems to build to a higher standards then it's underlings, so maybe not fair to lump them together in spite of relations. One can only conjecture. But as a fellow Ryan Homes victim, all I can say here is welcome to the family.