TEXAS HERITAGE CUSTOM HOMES

STAY FAR AWAY from this builder. Lance Whitlock is the owner. He is a very small builder and claims to be a custom home builder. He has built the same or very similar floor plan on several of the houses on our street. We bought a house from him in 08/2014 which was built in 01/2013. If you value your money and want a house that you don't have to stress about, stay far away. The problems don't surface right away, but when they do, they don't stop. We have had simply way too many issues to go into detail about everything. I'm trying to hit some of the more important ones. Please note below the slab defect we had. Lance tried to play it off like it was no big deal. He builds homes faster than he repairs defects though. The nightmare started with the buying of the property. We called Texas Heritage to find out about the house back in July, 2013. Mr Whitlock's wife called us back immediately on the house and stated that they had another buyer that had a contract on the house. She did state that however, if we put in a bid on the house, they could cancel the other contract. (This is a major no-no in realty from what I was informed.) So at that point, it appears that that is the first lie of many that Texas Heritage would present to us. We pursued the house due to the area the house was in (schools, community etc...). We placed a bid on the house and explained that we were ready to move within 3 weeks. We were told, since the house was empty, this would be no problem. Yet another lie on Texas Heritage Homes. Once they had our contract, almost all cooperation on their side to move quickly ceased. Lance would not return emails or calls. Our realtor could not get his realtor to respond either. Conveniently enough, they were supposedly on vacation for almost 3 weeks between the Whitlocks and their realtor during this closing period. The next part of the nightmare was dealing with an agreement to have a fence built as part of the contract. We negotiated to have a nice cedar fence built with double gates. Boy this was a huge mistake going through the builder. We were overcharged drastically. The fence cost over $7,000 going through the builder. It was not of any quality either. When I had a side conversation with the fence builder, he stated the builder asked him to put in a "builder grade" fence. I have since spoken with other companies and found that we were overcharged by a couple of thousand dollars easily for the type of fence we got. Lance used the fence as an excuse to his poor response on closing. He initially stated that the hold up on closing was due to getting the fence approved through the HOA. Funny thing is is that I called the president of the HOA and they hadn't even gotten a request for the fence almost a week after he blamed them. This is important due to the Lance Whitlock has a habit of blaming everyone else for the lack of his responsiveness. The fence was also not constructed very well. Gate hardware was missing, and the latch on the single gate was hung upside down. After blaming the HOA for the delay of the fence construction, he started shifting blame to us having used VA as the lender. I called him out on that due to we already had funding and the only thing left on our side was the VA inspection which was delayed to his inability to get moving on the fence. Once we moved in, there started to be minor issues with the house. I noticed that the builder didn't use caulk on any of the trim and door frames. After about 2 to 3 weeks, it looked like our house had been through an earthquake with all the cracks surfacing. Paint was subpar as well. I spent the first month to two months correcting issues the builder had done incorrectly. The appliances that the builder uses are cheap. We didn't pay much attention to that unfortunately when we were looking at the house. The real problem came when I had to reach out to the builder and start reporting some of these problems. Mr. Whitlock would respond quickly at first to small items (paint issues), but when it came to bigger issues, it would take months or longer to get any response. We found that after a repair was made, it was a poorly performed repair. When he sent someone out to work the telephone and cable wiring, they only spliced a couple of lines in the attic and left a huge ball of wiring knotted up exposed. AT&T said it's the worst wiring job they have ever seen. I had to personally repair the caulking job. The house looked like it was literally falling apart after a month of living there. We plan at some point, paying for a professional tile person to come in and fix the shower correctly. I have had to rebalance the interior doors on at least half of our house. I bought a damper at Lowes so freezing air didn't come down the vent over our stove. I had to correctly stain the areas of the cabinets that his painter did not do correctly when repairing the paint. I'm still looking at other fixes that I will need to do. ********** Please read the following closely ********************** The biggest reason to stay away from this builder is his lack of caring about the misery that he puts you through should you have a major defect. In December, 2013, we had an ice storm hit that caused chunks of ice to form on our vehicles. We noticed that after we parked in our garage, the ice melting was pouring into our house. It caused damage to every wall that joined to the garage. I contacted Lance about this in Mid December, 2013. He didn't bother sending anyone to look at the damage until mid January, 2014. He kept stating that it was not an emergency. I guess water flooding your house is never an emergency. Mold is a good thing in his eyes I suppose. He did not ever bother to come look for himself. He said they would replace the base boards in the house and "fix" the garage. Their fix initially was to caulk the sill plate around the perimeter of the walls in the garage. His own guy said this was not a proper fix. I had to fight with Lance for 8 months to get a proper solution. He was trying to go the cheapest route possible with trying everything from tiling the floor, to having someone just pour leveler over it. The garage had over 1" of negative slope. To just pour leveler would never have fixed it given the layout of the garage and the floor not being recessed from the main residence. Lance continued to blame everyone else as to why it was taking so long to resolve. The one person that he sent out told me that he made comments to just do the cheapest job possible. It was only after 5 months of him not doing anything to resolve the issue that we finally decided to pursue legal action against him. At that point, we sent him notification that he was going to be sued. He then came over to the house for about an hour to apologize. It's amazing what a person will do when they are threatened with legal action. We learned that was only to buy him more time though as it drug out several more months. We paid for our own engineer to come out so we could proceed with litigation. He asked for our engineer's report and I asked him why he hadn't sent anyone out after 7 months of his own. It was only after my wife had her law firm draft up the papers, that Lance started sending people out to assess the situation. The job took 3 weeks to fix (it was only supposed to take 1) and the finished product looks less than professional. Over 8 months, Lance only had 3 people look at the garage. 1 of them wouldn't call back or respond due to Lance trying to get him to go the cheapest route possible. Below sums up some of the issues we've had. The biggest problem you will encounter with this builder is his habitual lying and the inability for you to contact him timely when you need a major repair done. Simple repairs usually only take 2 to 3 weeks, but hang on for the bigger repairs. Also, please note, this builder has absolutely no regard for your personal time, but is quick to point out that he will not be bothered in his. What I mean is that on almost every single repair, his guys would show up unannounced. We were never notified when someone would show up. So if someone is not home full time, you may never get your defects addressed properly. 1) Telephone wiring was never wired into any room in the house. 2) No cable wiring was ran to any room in the house 3) No caulk was used on any trim 4) Shower tile is all crooked like he had one of his kids do the tile work 5) Doors are not hung correctly 6) No dampers were installed over the stove or dreyer 7) Master tub is not level 8) No access panel to tub 9) All of the shelving in the house is fixed and can't be adjusted. Cleaning bottles won't fit. 10) Reversed water lines 11) Lighting is not centered correctly in some of the rooms 12) Bad placement/layout of dishwasher to sink 13) Paint was peeling off every cabinet in the house within 2 months of moving in 14) Culvert was not graded correctly by the builder causing massive water retention of over 1 foot deep for several weeks at a time(this was an issue for mosquitos and bad odor) 15) Garage floor sloped towards interior house causing flooding 16) Dishwasher faceplate was peeling off and after builder "fixed" it, it peeled off again within 2 days 17) Sprinkler heads were 3 foot over into neighbors yard.

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