PERRY HOMES INC MIDAS CREEK

Working with Perry Homes was the worst buying experience of my life. I have built a home with another builder before we built with Perry, so I know that there are always some bumps along the way in the home building process. Building a home is a big undertaking that requires both the buyer and builder to work together as amicably as possible, to resolve any issues that are sure to come up with a spirit of compromise and mutual goodwill. This is the attitude that I had when we started the building process with Perry Homes. At first everything went well. We decided on a nice lot in South Jordan, and even though the price of the home went up $5000 (in a week) before we put down our deposit we were happy with the price and the neighborhood. The pre-building meeting where you pick out all the colors and house options to be written into a contract went great. The cost of upgrades was steep, but that is just the nature of building a home in Utah no matter what builder you choose. Things started to take a turn for the worse when it came time for the "Four way" inspection, where you look for anything that needs to be corrected before sheet rock is put on the walls. We were not invited to the four way inspection, and I had noticed some things that were wrong (warped or broken studs, the wiring looked like one of those spider webs done in space, some of the air ducting was crushed so limited air would be able to get through the ducts, etc) I pointed this out to the foreman and he said the studs and ducts would be taken care of, but the wiring was going to remain all tangled. After a few days of nothing being done, I had another contractor come in to inspect the home. He created a one page punch list of things that should be done before sheet rock. I gave this list to our Realtor at Perry, he showed it to the contractor, and the next day over 60% of the house was sheet rocked with NONE of the items addressed. The next day the entire house was sheet rocked, the Perry philosophy is, "it is so much better to cover up the problems instead of fix them". Then came the exterior of the home. In our preconstruction meeting we had chosen to have a stone façade put on the home. KC (the Perry Homes realtor) said we would need to pick out a brick accent strip to go around the garage which we did. When the exterior façade of the home was begun we noticed that it was brick, not stone. We were told that our house was going to be half stone and half brick. We told Perry that there was a mistake, that the façade was to be all stone with just a one strip brick accent. KC told us that it was an "upgrade" to have all stone or all brick, and that the standard was half and half. I looked around the neighborhood and not one house was half and half. KC said everyone but us, had paid for the upgrade. I went and asked my neighbors if they had paid to have their home upgraded to be all one or the other. Every person said they had not paid for an upgrade, it just came that way. KC said all my neighbors were mistaken or lying. So we would have to pay $1100 to have the brick removed and stone put on. When we resisted Perry said we could have our money back and they would sell the home to someone else. The Perry Home answer to almost any concern, or mistake on their part is "You will have to pay to fix our mistake or we will keep the home and sell it to someone else. We agreed the price of having the exterior of the house upgraded to a craftsman style was $4500. That was written in the contract and everyone signed it. Two weeks before closing Perry informed us that price had gone up $1500 and we would need to pay the extra. We reminded Perry that the amount was already set in the contract. They informed us that the home was not yet ours, and we could pay or lose the home. This is just a couple of the numerous negative experiences we had while building with Perry Homes. If you are still crazy enough to build with Perry, make sure you have your own experienced realtor because there is going to be a lot of battles. Also, take a video camera to the preconstruction meeting because there is going to be a lot of "Oh no, that was never said...". Finally, do not use KC as your realtor. All of this will give you some limited protection, but the best advice I can give is, with so many home builders in Utah, just use some one besides Perry Homes. There will still be some headaches but at least you are unlikely to hear, "We at Perry did not make a mistake, you did, and now you are going to have to pay $__,000 extra, or we will sell this home you have invested 6 months into to someone else."