ELITE QUALITY HOMES

We selected Elite Quality Homes to build a total custom home from the ground up. Our experience with Elite Quality Homes (A.K.A. Design Development Services, Inc.) is they are primarily in the business of building standard design home plans either to print or with slight modifications. In our opinion, they do not have the processes in place to be a true custom builder. Upon request, the builder did provide references and we contacted three on her list all gave her high marks for quality, but they mentioned the inordinate time required to complete theirhomes. We should have listened. The builder took an excessive amount of time (nearly four months) to process three drawing/plan changes with an outsourced drawing firm in Norman. Our decisions on design were promptly (made in under 24-hours) and quickly turned back to the builder for drawing update. There were three drawing changes that took on average 10-days to get updated and then took 3-7 days to get a new meeting to review the drawing changes with the builder. Frequently, we encountered resistance from the owner about design items we wanted in the house. It appeared she had a specific way to do things, and that was the only way the house should be built. Frequently we got the “bring your checkbook and I can build anything”. By the builders own admission, we were not building anything that out of the ordinary. Additionally, we experienced several occasions where the owner promised to do something by a specific time and failed to deliver. We had a conversation with her the first time this happened, and thought the problem was solved, however it continued. She promised to run the plans through the HOA for approval, but we later found this had not been accomplished as promised. This delay of over two weeks pushed the pricing timeline to the right even though all major changes to the drawings were done. Finally we got to the pricing point for the house, but instead of pricing a base house and then providing an options/upgrade pricing list, as we requested, she opted to price part of the options/upgrades into thebase price of the house. Our intent, as we explained to her, was to trade-off price versus value of those options/upgrades. Essentially her methodology created hidden pricing for the options/upgrades and when we requested they be broken out, she got extremely defensive. The items she did price out made no sense and she priced many of them well above a reasonable market price. I can only surmise this was done to keep us from knowing the true cost of the options/upgrades and to discourage options/upgrades she didn’t have the expertise to build or lacked the desire to build. Additionally, she insisted several items be paid and contracted/conducted outside the house construction contract. For example, an aerobic septic system was to be paid directly to a contractor she specified at a cost of $6,500. In checking the market for the same installation, we discovered normal pricing was approximately $1,000 less. The front yard sprinkler system, another item she priced outside the construction contract, was priced at $9,000. When questioned about the pricing, she once again became defensive. We later discovered other custom home builders included a front yard sprinkler system as part of their base home pricing (roughly the same price per square foot). It appears this was a profit center for Elite Quality Homes. Reasonable profit is expected, but not excessive. A third example is the land cost. In Elite’s base home price per square foot the lot is included. In our pricing, she priced the lot separate, even though our lot had more land and cost less than her base home price lots as confirmed by the Oklahoma Assessors website. This increased our custom home pricing an additional $22 per square foot, which appeared to be another profit center for Elite. We don't mind, and expect to pay, a reasonable profit. As the pressure was turned up on her to price all options/upgrades, she ultimately refused by writing an email that said she couldn’t meet our expectations as a builder. She declined to have a professional conversation concerning the pricing, which made us further suspicious she was price gouging the customer. I’m glad we never got to the contracting stage, because this could have been an ugly 8+ month build process, where we would by all appearances have over paid considerably for the end product. We quickly transitioned to owning and finalizing the drawings with the architect firm and 3-days later found a builder that truly specializes in custom homes. During that same timeframe, we signed a contract on a larger, higher, flatter lot at a lower cost per acre and applied for and received a construction loan. Although we had been working with Elite for 4-months, we hadn’t gotten very far very fast, but in a week of controlling our own destiny, we’d accomplished so much more. We also discovered many of our items considered options/upgrades with Elite Quality Homes, were in fact in the base price of our new builders homes.

We studied several contractors and liked the homes we saw from Elite. The company was just excellent. They thoroughly explained everything throughout the process and took care of any problem right away. Plus, we just love our home. A great experience.