TEMPEST HOMES

First, the good. We really liked the house, and the choices we had to customize what we wanted. Several months in, and we are still happy with our choice. The house seems pretty well built and has some great features standard with the build, like an extra deep garage and lots of storage and cabinetry throughout the home. We had a (mostly) good experience working with the sales representative, Chuck, and liked him with the exception of the issue outlined below. I would consider a Tempest home again, but only with my eyes wide open to some of the pitfalls of building with them (delays, lack of communication, and poor warranty program). They're probably on par with any other builder in their price point in Lafayette, IN. Now, the problems. We signed a contract with Tempest Homes in mid-February, 2017. They told us it was about 3 months to completion from the date we signed the contract. There was not very good communication during the building process. The salesman, Chuck, told us that he was our point of contact. We expressed to him that we needed the home done on time, or at the very least we needed to be notified right away if there were delays, as we were moving from out of town and had a very concrete date when we needed to move in. He said no problem, and throughout the build told us everything was going well, on time, and no worries with a mid-May move in. We checked in every 1 to 2 weeks and heard the same message. Around the end of April, I contacted him to ask specifically when we would be closing. He told me then that he wasn't supposed to get involved in closing dates and I needed to contact a woman named Jennifer in the Tempest main office to find out when the house would be done. This was news to me, as I had never been given another point of contact. I called Jennifer right away and was told that we weren't scheduled to be done in May at all. I told her our situation and that we had no place to stay, and she ended up agreeing to a mid-June closing, which she said would be a rush to finish. So, we ended up in a bind with temporary housing and had to move multiple times. Not fun, and very expensive. Meanwhile, 2 homes that signed their contracts after us were completed before ours. Inexplicably, since I know of no specific delays that occurred during the construction of our home, nor did we put in any change orders of significance, and none after construction began. Our walk through was also a problem. No one showed up at the assigned time, even though I called the day ahead to make sure it was a go. The appointment was at 1 PM, and when I called at 1:15, the entire office was out to lunch and we couldn't find anyone who knew what was going on. Finally, after waiting an hour and making multiple phone calls to everyone under the sun, an employee of Tempest showed up at 2 PM to do the walkthrough. No apology was given for wasting our time. He was borderline courteous at best. We had to rush through because it was already so late and had to be back to work/babysitter and definitely missed a lot of stuff. The landscaping plan is just OK. The yard wasn't completed until almost a month after move-in. My mortgage company was hounding me because they had in contract with Tempest that the lawn needed to be done by a certain date, with the money in escrow until it was completed. That date passed without Tempest completing the yard, and I was getting calls from them every day about how I needed Tempest to get out and put in the yard right away. When it was finally put in, the sod turned out well, but the seed in the back and side yards was a mess. Nothing grew except weeds. The straw they threw down was an extremely thin cover (they needed at least twice the amount they used) and it all blew away within 24 hours. We had to have the yard re-seeded on our own dime. The tree and bushes they planted in our front yard were blighted. We found this out within a week of being planted, so I know it didn't happen after the fact. The 1 year warranty was a big seller for us, but plan to hound the warranty department to get anything done. It took a massive amount of work and follow up on my part to get subcontractors scheduled and out to do the warranty work needed after our 30 day walk through. The warranty manager, Shane, was difficult to work with on the appliance repairs needed. He asked Beesons, who installed the appliances, to do the work. Beesons wasn't meeting our needs, and I contacted Tempest to try to get them to help mediate this issue with Beesons. Shane was unwilling to do so and suggested I should just hire someone to do the repairs myself if I didn't like Beesons. Not at all what I wanted, or expected, to hear. Overall, Tempest builds a good house, but they could definitely benefit from some better communication skills and a little more customer appreciation.