SUMMIT CUSTOM HOMES LLC

Please do not go with summit Homes, it's really 50/50 on your experience, you might get a home with no issue but really your summit home is going to be filled with BS that you will deal with. Tried to attached more photos but I can't. The ones on here should paint a little picture of what a summit home is all about.

Summit Homes is not anyone I would recommend to purchase from. Especially in a new community. They have sneaky business practices and my community is dealing with that now as they are building additional phases. Everyone's HOA dues are going up >50% due to the negligence of SH turning over the deed of the new common grounds to the HOA unknowingly. We are all now paying for it. I've seen them ruin a friends yard as well when they began building right next door due to poor excavation resulting in excessive run-off and erosion. They had to pay out of pocket to install drains as SH was too cheap and didn't want do anything about it. Didn't see that there was a problem! They are also terrible when it comes to warranties and do not honor them as you would expect a trustworthy builder to do. Overall, they are slimy developers and I would never purchase one of their overpriced homes. Choose another builder as there is nothing special about their homes. Don't let them fool you.

It went poorly. We had a personal builder switch more than midway, because our build was so far behind. Turned out that many of the choices we'd made and communications with our first personal builder went undocumented, and we were uninformed of many things, so we had to scramble to make selections and re-share everything we'd already decided on. That was the least of it though. Our build was delayed, rushed, and if I hadn't been eagle eyeing everything, we would have ended up with so many more issues when we finally closed over a month past due. My family has been in the building business for generations, so while I may have a slightly higher expectation than most people, I feel that everyone deserves honestly and quality when they are putting their faith and spending their hard earned money with a builder to create a home for them. We experienced lots of poor finishes. Scratches on the wood flooring, small paint splatters on the flooring. Cracking and missing grout and caulk. Scratched and chipped tile in the master bath. Wrong grout color in one of the bathrooms. Poor finishes in general. Missing shutters on the outside, shoddy stone work on the exterior, and a cracked pantry door—"fixed" with just a layer of paint (the wrong color) to hide the crack. We were told that all these things that weren't take care of prior to move in would be all handled. It's been a year, and we still have outstanding issues. In that time, we've experienced frozen pipes (in Missouri? Come ON), which revealed some unsealed spaces in the attic. We still don't know if this issue is resolved. Our main level flooring is horrible quality. We chose from among their approved selections, asking if it was a durable choices. We were assured that it was. It's not. The flooring scratched with the least little thing, and the varnish is starting to come up. We were told by the owner of the flooring provider, Northcraft, that the small scratches were just the top layer of wax, and once we got the floor wet and washed it, those scratches would go away. Ridiculous. We found out that after we built, they no longer use this flooring due to all the complaints about it, but we're stuck with it? Terrible. They put in a floor that only looks good if you never plan to walk on it or clean it, but refuse to stand behind it. They touched up the scratches they made on the flooring with a marker. They also suggested that we use a rejuvenation product on our flooring...when it was less than a month old. Really? That kind of product is for older wood flooring, to restore it after years of use. Other issues: patterned carpet installed crookedly on the stairs. Flooring tile in Master bathroom chipped on some edges. They had to replace those tiles, and when they did that, they neglected to use the correct grout color, and instead used white for the patchwork, while everything else was grey. They had to come out again to repair the repair, which involved staining the grout in the entire room, and letting that "cure" for 21 days. They had to re-caulk the bathtub because of settling. When they were doing that, they gouged the bathtub, and instead of telling us, were just going to leave it. So we had to have that repair repaired also. That's the second time the master bathtub had to be repaired. When they cleaned the home prior to closing, someone used something abrasive on the entire bathtub, scratching it all over the entire thing. They had not protected the tub during sheet rocking and tiling, so there had been a ton of grout and other construction debris falling onto the tub and sticking to it. Again, WE noticed the issue..they were not going to say anything about it, and just let us accept an entirely ruined bathtub. Our landscaping was another bad experience. When they installed the plants, it was, admittedly, the end of the summer, so likely options were slim as far as fresh plants go. But they literally installed dead plants. To their credit, they did come replace them in the spring. But here's the thing: those plants will die too. Why? Because the landscapers don't remove the construction garbage out of the landscaping spaces before putting down a tiny layer of dirt and then mulch. It looks good...for a day. Our plants aren't even planted IN the ground...rather they are sitting on top of it, in the small amount of soil, and the roots have no where to go. We discovered this when we went to add a few small plants in the landscaping area. If you dig just below the mulch and very thin topsoil, it's all pieces of concrete, rocks and other construction debris. Again, it's shoddy workmanship and a lack of commitment to quality. Instead of doing the right thing, they just make it look good for the moment. They are counting on you being excited to close and move in, so that you will overlook these things that become issues for the homeowner to resolve down the line. After you close, they offer a 90 day walk through and an 11th month walk through. Our 90 day was scheduled at about 6 months. When that happened, we could see many, many cracks and separations in the molding at the ceiling, around the windows, doors, fireplace. It was pretty obvious and prevalent throughout. When the handyman came to fix it, he suggested waiting until our 11th month walk through, as the house was likely to continue to settle, and touching up the trim work more than once could look bad. His intentions were good, so we agreed to delay it. Now at the 11th month mark, it's summer, it's humid, and the cracks and separations do not show nearly as much. Not even close. But they won't hold off on any touch ups beyond the one year mark, so because we took their handyman's advice, we don't get the full touch up work that is needed. Summit doesn't employ the trades people that do all the different work, and as a result, they have very little control over it. I've heard them put the shoddy work onto the trades, saying "They didn't send the A-team, did they?" when you complain about something. But in the end, none of the customers that build with Summit are contracting with these tradespeople, our contract is with Summit. So it seems only right that they should be the ones standing behind the work that is done on their behalf. We have no confidence whatsoever that the structural parts and systems are done well. Reading other reviews makes me feel like we should have an inspector come in to check things out before we live here for too much longer and find out the hard way that things were not done correctly. Summit shows nice homes. They have great floor plans, and there are many things we like about our home. But our experience felt very much like you are promised the world on the front end to get the sale, and they do not deliver what they promise. Not a big deal if you are spending a small amount of money, but when it's a home you want to live in for years, and not worry about, it's a really big deal that the builder doesn't deliver what they promise.

Our initial dealings were fine, but since then there is zero care. They have recently been purchased by Berkshire Hathaway and I plan to contact them to pass on our experience. Not only do they pass any blame on, they have zero interest in making things right. Thankfully the company who they use now for roofing (not the initial company who installed) were kind enough to fix the newest issue.

If you’re looking for a large builder who will put up a quick house and worry about all the mistakes later, Summit Custom Homes is your builder. They may be the biggest builder in KC, but it has come at the cost of quality. Unfortunately we heard all the horror stories of Summit after we started experiencing our troubles. There weren’t many bad reviews before we signed the contract and we even looked at some of their homes so we thought we were making a good choice. Not so much. Hopefully this will help save you the headache we’ve gone through. In the end it took 5 months past our closing date and 51 times of someone either looking at what needed to repaired or making repairs. That’s a lot of our time spent finishing a house that should have been already done. Here’s our story. We signed a contract to close at the end of May to close on June 29th. The house we found was only about 30 days from being done so we didn’t get to see what had been done during the building process. We just assumed that based on the reviews and houses we saw, we had nothing to worry about. Well we ended up having to move our closing date to Thursday July 7th because they were not going to be finished by the date they picked. We almost lost our rate because of that. Even with the extra week, the house was not complete on the day of our final walk through prior to close. We were told to trust them and that things would be finished. The big problem with this, as we found out later, is that there were many issues we didn’t see because of all the dust and trades still working on the house. They were still finishing up on the day of close. We started moving boxes the next day Friday the 9th with the big move on Saturday. When we got there to start moving boxes over, we found the house to be very dirty from the workers. Instead of working on the move, my wife and her mom spent a couple hours cleaning. That led us to our first major issue. As the floors got mopped, we saw they were covered in scratches. Some were so bad they were eventually replaced. Some of our other initial issues were: • Paint and stain missed in several spots or over sprayed • Cracked trim on master bedroom door • Broken window sash – known issue that should have been fixed prior to close • Sweating hvac pipe in basement – also on going issue prior to close • Highly visible carpet seams • Scratched up front door • Doors that didn’t close properly • Egressed ladder not bolted down • Wrong pantry door installed Our personal builder was just up the street so we had her come by and take a look at the state of the house and scratches. Her comment was “Well they didn’t send the A team did they.” She also said all the scratches should have been fixed prior to us moving in and would get it taken care of along with our other concerns. We agreed. After moving in, many more issues appeared. The fire alarm kept going off in the middle of the night. They sent the electrician over a couple of times before it got fixed. There was a loose wire nut on one of them. While the alarms were going off, I looked all around trying to figure out why it was happening. On my search I looked in the attack to not find any alarms, but broken boards in the trusses! Our second major issue. It was the middle of the night so I decided I would check it out the next day. When I got up there, I found a total of 5 boards from 3 different trusses. It was discovered later by a structural engineer there were actually 7 boards across 5 trusses that were broken. The ones I found were right by the attic opening and very obvious. Looking in the daylight I also saw light coming through the roof on one of the peaks. If I could see light coming in, water can also get in. I peaked in the 2 attic access in the garage to see what I could find there and saw large gaps where the roof decking should have met the fascia boards. I also got on the roof to see what I could find which led to seeing multiple bad shingles, exposed nail heads, rows of shingles not properly secured, and our 3 major issue all but one of our corners had the gutter apron behind the gutters ripped up exposing the boards behind. Had I not been up there because of all the other issues, this would have caused major damage after a couple years of rain and snow getting to them. Here’s a list of other issues we had to deal with after moving in. • Light fixture falling from the ceiling • Sweating pipe in garage that leaked so much it was going through the sheetrock • Kitchen countertops not sealed • Missing grout in kitchen and bathrooms • Cabinets scratched • Stain on cabinets ruined by plastic being put on while still wet. Could be seen clearly when the light hit them right • Toilet paper holders falling off • Painted trim not matching surrounding trim • More doors not working properly • Carpet coming up on stairs • Wrong hinges on exterior doors • Missing weather casing on exterior door • Water coming through foundation • Egress window leaking in heavy rains We hand delivered letters to the top four in the company expressing our extreme displeasure with the quality of the house we received and all our issues. Joe Ackerman, the VP of Construction operations came over on August 3rd to discuss our letter and issues. He said to give them time, but they would get it fixed. We didn’t realize that 5 months when a house can be built from the ground up in 6-8 months. The majority of the repairs were finished by the middle of December. The sweating pipes of the HVAC will have to wait until spring when the heat and humidity return. There were a few times the repairs had to be repaired. Given the extent of issues we had, I wanted to be here for everything. I booked all the earliest times I could with the trades to get this done as quickly as possible. Taking until December was way too long. Joe let us know that if we were unhappy with the timing, we should have spoken up. We were very clear in our letter and discussion how we felt. It was there responsibility to get it done in a timely matter like they said they would. Some of the repairs were also subpar. The fix for our new wood floors was to color them in with a sharpie marker. Joe informed us that was normal and that the customer normally doesn’t get to see that. We did see and don’t believe we should pay the new floor price when we had such a scratched up floor because they didn’t protect it during the construction process. Again, it took 51 times of people being here and 5 months from the time of close to get our almost finished house. Joe will say I didn’t have to be here for all the repairs, but based on the house we got and the mistakes with the repairs themselves, yes, I had to be here for EVERYTHING! If you’re looking to build, there are many other builders who might not be as big, but will probably pay much more attention to the quality of their product. If you do go with Summit or are already under contract, get your own inspector prior to close. I never though an inspector would be needed for a new build. We found out the hard way.

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Much of the work was put off to the last minute despite having 6 weeks to complete the work. We are now two months beyond our closing date and some items still are not complete. Much of the work was unsatisfactory when done the first time and we had to have it redone or fixed. The bottom line is I would use them again but I would be much more involved checking on them constantly to make sure they aren't putting everything off until the last minute and then rushing the work as most of the work in the house was very high quality but the modifications that we had done where pretty low quality at least the first time that they did it. They have always been very professional when I have dealt with them and they seem to want to make everything right it is just slightly annoying that they can't seem to get it right the first time. Update: We have now been in the house for 6 months and we are still waiting on the builder to fix things that we submitted under the warranty three months ago. The communication after closing has been very bad, some of the people you talk to make it very obvious that your call is an annoyance to them. There seems to be considerable turnover in the warranty department and nobody follows up on anything. I am extremely disappointed in this builder and no longer would recommend them to anyone. As the months go on it becomes more obvious the low quality of work that was done on the house as more and more things break. Second Update: We have been in the house for just over a year now. This builder has continued to fail to fix things under the warranty and the things that they do fix they just put a bandaid on it and the work seems shoddy at best. We discovered that there was no insulation in the attic over a large section of the house that we complained to them all winter about it being cold. One of the contractors that they sent out even went up in the attic and never mentioned that the insulation was probably the problem. The warranty department people are extremely difficult to get a hold of and when you do they put a work order in and never follow up on it and half the time the contractors don't show up. I honestly don't believe I would trust this builder to build a dog house for me in the future let alone another home.

We were very pleased with the service and selection afforded through Summit Custom Homes. The sales representative was very knowledgeable, and punctual. We had several follow up questions after our initial meeting and she was very responsive to all of our e-mails. I feel confident that we would have gone with Summit, but we decided to buy a pre-existing home instead.

Will review Monday when I close on home