Anonymous wrote:Worst experience ever
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hi All,
We are looking to buy a home in a new community built by Evergreene. Has anyone bought an Evergreene home? What has the experience been like? Any insights on them as a builder would be really helpful. Are there any gotchas? What should we be looking out for during contract negotiation? (We have never bought a home from a builder.) Should we opt for having the basement finished with the builder or look to do it later in life? (Price is a big concern as it will likely come out to 1.5 million which is the top end of our budget.)
We are looking at their Chapman model.
Looking at their website, I would assume you are looking at Brooks Place in Sleepy Hollow? To me 1.5 seems high for that location with small lots. You could do a new build in McLean or Falls Church (22046 or 22043) for about that same price and have a much better lots, better commute, and better schools.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Hi All,
We are looking to buy a home in a new community built by Evergreene. Has anyone bought an Evergreene home? What has the experience been like? Any insights on them as a builder would be really helpful. Are there any gotchas? What should we be looking out for during contract negotiation? (We have never bought a home from a builder.) Should we opt for having the basement finished with the builder or look to do it later in life? (Price is a big concern as it will likely come out to 1.5 million which is the top end of our budget.)
We are looking at their Chapman model.
Looking at their website, I would assume you are looking at Brooks Place in Sleepy Hollow? To me 1.5 seems high for that location with small lots. You could do a new build in McLean or Falls Church (22046 or 22043) for about that same price and have a much better lots, better commute, and better schools.
I'm in this area and the new houses are $1.7 M now.
Anonymous wrote:We are days away from completing our home purchase from Evergreene Homes. This has not been a pleasant process.
Here are some of my issues:
Lack of Communication
Failure to follow the approved plans
Multiple redo's for construction errors
Changes to the selected options by the builder with no communication of the substitutions
Difficult to work with and not customer oriented
Poor Quality exterior doors and windows and low end builder grade throughout the home
After 16 months of this aggravation, I would never do this again. There was a certain excitement that we looked forward to a new home but that joy has been taken away by the Evergreene construction management. I'm certain other builder's may have similar issues but it is the poor management and communication issues for which I would not recommend Evergreene Homes, LLC in Chantilly, VA. Sadly, as nice as the home does look from the outside, the builder has ruined this experience and I think we will look to move to another home sooner rather than later.
As I had seen in another review, I would stay as far away from Evergreene as possible.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:They mostly use Rex Wrap, and sometimes have it branded with their name. Some observations observations
1) if you are going to lose sleep over whether they are using something other than Tyvek and want to micromanage your build that much then they probably aren't the builder for you. If you are looking at them in the first place, you probably can't afford the builder you want as this type of person.
2) Don't expect them to do structural customization well. They bang out a lot of houses and uses teams that know their plans. If you start trying to make it a fully custom, see the end of point 1 above.
3) If you really are picky, they will do what you want. The further outside the bounds of what they normally do, the more it will cost. Want Tyvek? Negotiate it with them before you sign anything. They will give you a price and you can decide if its fair. Nail down as much as you can before you sign, that is when you have leverage. Negotiate discounts on future options chosen after signing. Once you sign, nobody is going to be tremendously flexible and bend over backwards for you.
4) Evergreene like all builders are experiencing supply chain delays currently. Anyone that expects their house to be delivered perfectly on time, especially in the current environment hasn't built a house before
THIS is a EG employee for sure!
But in all seriousness all family member built a semi-custom with them last year (single lot/design/build). No issues. They have been very happy!
Anonymous wrote:I greatly appreciate your comments and they could not have been said any better. The onsite project manager was no where to be found ( I think he was taking a few days off) when the foundation was poured. The framing crew that came in several days after the foundation was poured to install the floor joists and panelized wall quickly knew they had a problem with the foundation. We had a detached garage and the plans called for a 12 foot ceiling from the top of the slab to the ceiling. The subcontractors were left unsupervised and the garage ended up being 14 feet from the top of the slab to the ceiling. I observed one day as I was visiting the job site that the concrete folks were cutting openings in the wrong locations. Those cuts had to be patched three times. Luckily we were getting a stone veneer water table that would cover up the mess. The only supervisory review I have seen is the marking and correction of warped studs. There really was no reason to rush the framing and concrete work as it took 17 weeks to get the windows. There has been only minimal supervision of the subcontractor work.
Anonymous wrote:I can appreciate the humor. I believe all the steel columns are installed per the plans. The county inspection may have forced them to add the additional column as it wasn't on the original plans. What really looks cheap are the wooden shims that were used to level the sill plate to the foundation along with the concrete parsing of the outside wall to get the wall a little closer to flush with the framing above. It is sad that there is no level of craftsmanship. Too much reliance is given to foam, caulk and concrete patch to hide the mistakes. They made some framing mistakes in the garage and the project manager told me, hey, what do you expect it is just a garage. I guess I should take the same adage with the house. It is just a house, who cares how it is built. These homes are selling for $1.4 mil+. Inflation has taken over and you don't get the same quality for the dollar.