KAY CARLYLE-BLANCHARD

Kay was awful. I looked into filing a complaint with the NC state realtors association but they made the whole process too painful, obviously they weren't interested in hearing about bad service. We liked Kay the first few days, she was nice and seemed patient at the time. When we decided on a specific neighborhood she showed us all kinds of houses. The problem came when we decided on a house we wanted to purchase - it was one that was in the early stages of construction. My first complaint is that she initially told us she was a buyers rep. It wasn't until we were meeting up to enter a contract to buy the house she told us she was a transactional broker. Over the next few months we learned how bad that was. We signed the contract to buy the house and it was a nightmare from there, becoming very obvious she was interested in representing the builders interest and not ours. It got so bad I would only deal with her over e-mail so I had a written record of what was said. And I did summary letters every so often to her and the builder to make sure our agreements were clear and in writing. We were lied to on multiple things by her and the builder. Just one example - being told it was wired for a home security system, even having it on paper, and them charging us to have it installed. (And when we had Brinks come hook it up, they had to do a full install because it had been done so poorly - and Brinks didn't charge extra for that). At one point she told me we needed to stop asking about upgrading things like countertops and carpet, etc (which we never once complained about price) because the house was going to be nice enough. I was floored that SHE felt it appropriate to tell me what was good enough in my home. Maybe I'm the oddball, but we wanted to know the specifics of the home like size of the rooms and other details. It was like pulling teeth to get info from them, weeks would go by without a reply. But when they had a question they expected an answer the same day and would tell me I was delaying construction. I will never buy a new construction home because the experience was so bad. I want to be able to see what I'm getting and not rely on empty promises. Kay promised she would send pictures frequently since we were 700 miles away and couldn't just stop in. I think she sent 3 sets of terrible pictures in the nearly 5 months from contract to closing. Luckily we had friends in the area who would stop in every week or 2 and take quality pictures. After we closed on the house, it was over 2 months of calling and nagging to get a copy of the punch list, and then another 2 months to get the builder to finish most of the list. I had to send a certified letter to the Kay and builder that I was going to file in small claims court to get the work done. Some of those things we wanted to upgrade and Kay told us "were good enough" are now standard on homes and are going to hurt our resale value we when move in 2 years.