SCHUMACHER HOMES SC

The management and staff are very competent, personable and convincing. They have a talented designer (Lisa Wallis) who will make building your home such fun. The current manager is savvy and smart, and my builder was well educated, caring and committed to his work. I'm convinced they approach every home project with excellent intentions. That acknowledged, some departments have proven incompetent as to follow up and initiative skills. The CAD department is not even in South Carolina, thus delays here were frequent for us. One of the production people, in my case, was not only incompetent, but outright hostile and sabotaging! But, I think that person has been fired. I feel management and staff truely WANT to do a good job of things, but over-booking, hiring minimal/unskilled sub-contractors and insufficient production personnel make for disappointed customers, of which I was one. With apologies to the good folks at Schumacher, I feel they are both understaffed and over-scheduled!! It's been my experience that their builders are overwhelmed and unable to sufficiently control their sub-contractors work quality, schedules, equipment and/or personnel. Though I was GUARANTEED (by former management) to be in my home within 4 months, it took a full year to actually get moved in. With home completion dates running over a YEAR be aware, that this can cost you, as it did us, sickening amounts of money LOSS. Also, we endured the endless delays from poor PRIOR management, new staff training, inclement weather, over-scheduling etc, all the while taking comfort in Schumacher's much vaunted 10 year warranty promise. However, my truth on this is, GETTING ANYTHING FIXED IN ANY KIND OF REASONABLE TIME may not happen. This is not only Schumacher's problem, but is indemic to the industry. It's just SO complex to get all the sub-contractors coordinated and on the job. I cannot recommend the vinyl floor option, either. While it looks wonderful as a sample, my vinyl floor has slashes of 5" in almost every corner, and there are even rocks under the flooring which show through--it seems sweeping the floor before laying the vinyl was not even comprehended! While I have had good luck in getting the floor people to agree to come and fix things, there is no way long slashes can be made invisible. MOST of the flooring people are TOTALLY ignorant as to how to lay a floor let alone FIX the mess they've made. In my case, only ONE man had the necessary skills, and it took many tries to get him actually on the job. When he came, he did a good job, but as the house has settled, hundreds more bubbles have appeared! Meanwhile people have come to visit and noticed the poorly done floor work. How embarrassing! While I am sympathetic with the complexities and nuances of running this type of business, I just have to say: Good people, good effort, BUT...sigh...building a new house is ROUGH. You can't blame everything on the builders either...they have to cope with ALOT of issues. That said, they have a very caring individual in the department that deals with guarantees, Larry Goode. He has made fair and steady efforts to make all things right with our house. MOST issues have been fixed, and I am confident that eventually, all will be completed. We are at the one year after move in date now, and only a few issues remain. All I counsel is BE PREPARED for delays, don't use the vinyl flooring, and don't give up on them. I think they will build a "better than average" house for you.

It started just fine. We had our house plan and they took one of theirs to make it look as close to ours as possible. We are extremely happy with how our house looks. That's where the happiness ends. They began building in October 2012 and we moved in March 2013. Grading was a huge issue, which they never agreed was their fault, even though they did the grading and eventual repairs. We had and still have standing water in our crawl space. Water washes from one side of our home and collects in the crawl space because of the way it was graded. (Multiple experts have told us this, even though we considered them experts since they build homes). We have had the majority of our hardwood flooring replaced because of moisture warping the flooring and workers nailing through a sewer line. Yes, sewer line! We were displaced in our home for over 9 weeks the second time. That's how long it took them to make repairs. Ridiculous! Our floors are now spacing and there are several different colors of filler throughout the house. Our shower leaks and someone has come out 5 times and we still have nothing done. Our dry wall looks like there's a person trying to get out on the other side. They used flat paint throughout the entire house, we had no idea. There again, they are the experts and it was never mentioned thats what would be used. There isn't enought space or time to even write out the continuous problems we had with Schumacher in the building process. We are on the 2nd warranty manager because the first one only lasted a few months because he had enough. The managment team overall was rude and somehow came out with promotions. Although, one of the worst no longer works there. Management has no idea how to deal with customers that are having trouble with the process or even challenge the quality of product/services. Our warranty list is 3 pages long for the record. We document and keep everything, so when the time comes, we will be well prepared. Buyer beware! This is not a credible company and we will never build a house again just because of this experience. Unless you know about building homes and have time to be present on site every day, I would never use these folks. The quality is poor and we will be repairing things for the next several years, if we stay that long. Maybe they can build smaller homes, under 2000sf., we wouldn't trust the quality regardless because of our experience.