Meritage Homes Consumer Reviews - Page 2

BRIGHTON, COLORADO -- Save yourself money and headache and do not buy from Meritage Homes. We purchased many upgrades and now wonder why we wasted our money. Our floors were cupped from the day we closed until the one year inspection. We have been informed it's due to 'homeowner cleaning and maintenance'. We have gaps so wide in our granite counter tops, tile floors, and trim that it defeats the purpose of paying for the upgrade. Be prepared to go thru your home with a fine tooth comb to catch any issues - especially the outside of the house. Meritage will not. We would have received MUCH better quality if we would have installed the upgrades after we purchased the house. It's been a very regretful decision to buy from Meritage.

TIMNATH, COLORADO -- Sales lost each set of my papers at least once. First contract papers, then upgrade options, then cabling options, then messed up the totals. I had to re-sign the papers starting from the contract papers to the upgrade options. She lost the upgrade selection papers once again for 2nd time. When I commented that this is not right, she got very angry.

On our first visit, the sales representative handed out a buyer agent's card. We went there on our own but she asked us to consult the agent. Another day, I arrived at the sales office and overheard her arguing with a person and then when she could not answer his questions, she shouted at him to get out. Later I talked to him and found out that he was a paying customer and she had messed up his loan papers.

There are a lot of new constructions coming up in this area to choose from. Stay away from Meritage. There are some very good custom builders too in the same community. The starting price is only 100 k more but if you compare per sq ft, then they are at least 20 USD cheaper than Meritage. Their upgrade options are a sham.

Do not be misled by the Model home, that is at least 100k more expensive than the base price. You will notice the poor quality construction and they will not fix the flaws. They will simply say it is the standard. If you object, you will be humiliated and insulted by sales. So, mathematically it doesn't make sense to go with Meritage. Go for custom homes instead. Meritage takes a long time to build (10 months), custom homes build in 3-5 months. I am at pre-drywall stage after waiting for 6 months.

SAINT CLOUD, FLORIDA -- We closed on our house back in June 2010. At first all looks good and had few complaints. Then in 2011 one of the rooms started to flood. Long story short, I submitted the claim. They fixed the issue not without a lot of back and forth but to be honest they fixed the problem.

Then in 2013, I started to notice a crack in our driveway. It was small at first, so I sent a new claim, thinking this is a structural problem and because our house has 20 years warranty. I thought, well we should be covered. WRONG! By now, April 2014, the crack could be used as a scale of the Great Canyon. But, they said this is not structural so no fix from them.

At the end, we installed pavers and the driveway looks really nice. Later I knew this company was facing a lot of problems, financial ones. So the moral is: "Do your homework and investigate the builder before you even consider signing a contract."

ORLANDO, FLORIDA -- First, we thought to do our mortgage with Meritage they gave us a 3X higher APR. Ended up working with WF.
Then, the builder (Bryan) wanted to close as soon as possible and we were also in a hurry since we did not want to pay rent. So we closed with the contract in mind that the builder will take care of little fixes. Is he taking care of them? Yes, in super slow motion! Besides that the fixes they are doing are mediocre with terrible contractors and garbage quality material. The doors are like they found them in the trash, the upper floor makes a lot of noise since the floor was not done properly. They bring in contractors in a hurry and they do a terrible job and everything can be stucco-ed.
In summary, they are terrible and I would never buy another house with them. The WORSE experience ever!

CHARLOTTE AREA, NORTH CAROLINA -- We closed on our home in September 2015 and have had nothing but issues. Our closing date pushed back several times, which was huge because our children were in school and the school was threatening to kick them out unless we were physically not living at our address. We were staying with friends, with our four children and it was a huge inconvenience to all and having to ask multiple times to "just stay a week or two more" was dreadful! Once we had been living here a year I tried to contact them on numerous occasions regarding our warranty items.

Fast forward and it's been almost 2 years, finally after a year of trying they came and approved our list and sent in workers to patch up nail pops...that was over a month ago! We have patches everywhere and 90% of our list hasn't been completed! We have a crack in our foundation and want to have it looked at by someone other than Meritage! We requested our blue prints of OUR OWN home and they refuse. I can't count how many times my husband and I have called, left messages, emailed...with no response or some excuse i.e.: "we just can't get anyone out there...a crew quit today..." etc.

There are so many more horrible instances it's just too much to list! By far THE WORST experience we have ever been through with a company. All of our neighbors agree and have had similar experiences. How this builder is still in business is beyond me! Word of advice: STAY FAR AWAY FROM MERITAGE HOMES!!!

ROCKWALL, TEXAS -- Stone Creek is a beautiful community in Rockwall, TX but the Zachary Hunt, Sales Associate, is unprofessional, narcissistic, rude, condesending and disrespectful. He has been sarcastic with us since his first interaction but we attempted to work through it on several occasions, looking at the larger picture. He continues to show us that he has no use to us or our business at Meritage. We were told last week that Mertiage teaches him to treat the business as his own so if this is the image that Meritage wants the community to see, they have succeeded, because we can't take anymore.

This process has been the worst experience of my life. They have found every opportunity to make me feel devalued as a person, customer and woman. They have created me unfairly and racially unequal. We am spending close to half a million dollars on a home in Rockwall, TX but you would think that we were purchasing a pair of flip flops at the local Wal-Mart. We have attempted to speak to someone at the corporate office on 2 separate occasions and to no avail.

Please DO NOT spend your money with a builder who do not value you, your time or your money. There are many builders in Dallas. Do not make the same costly mistakes we have.

We are attempting to seek some sort of resolution to this issue amicably but see no light at the end of this tunnel. We deserve to be treated as equal citizens and not lower-class minorities.

ARVADA, COLORADO -- Kevin ** used shady sales tactics to get us under contract. He told us our incentives would expire so we tried to put an offer on a home where he stalled our offer while he waited for a higher or better offer come in. We were out to the sales office 2 weeks ago where we signed some of the contract paperwork. He then stalled this paperwork by telling us the incentives were expiring. He suggested we make an offer. When we immediately presented an offer he stalled putting it in for over a week and then proceeded to write a contract at full price on the home we wanted.

BEWARE Kevin ** only cares about selling homes for his commission percentage, not working with a buyer and what they want and need in the home. The only reason we were negotiating in price is because we wanted to make sure the home had some of the options we needed in the home.

ARIZONA -- Solar Hot Water Heating System.
Sept 2016 Meritage Homes Agrees To Pay Out Of Pocket For Warranty Work On Homeowners Solar System. Work Order Issued. Meritage Home's Contractor Arrives Sept 28, 2016. He Disconnected The System Shut Off Turned Off. Stated That The System Could Not Be Repaired. (No Parts, Installed Wrong) System Costing Home Owner MONEY. Meritage Homes Contractor Writes Up Statement To Replace System. Solar Hot Water System Still Down. ( 11-23-2016) Meritage Homes Will Not Proceed With Any Work Until Homeowner Signs A Complete Release With A Gage Order. This Will Release Meritage Homes From Any Further Responsibility. (Repairs Or Service Of Any Kind) All Warranty Coverage Will END. No Wrong Doing From Either Side, Homeowner Unable To Tell Anyone About The Problem Or Solution Offered By Meritage Homes. This System Has A Very Long Warranty With A Performance Guarantee Lots Of Homeowners Own This Built-in Solar Hot Water Systems Installed By A Solar Company In Meritage Homes. Meritage Homes Will Not Replace The Solar Roof Water Heating Panels For The System. The Paid For Solar Panels, That Are Indeed Part Of The Solar Hot Water System Become Useless & Now Would Be Back To The Homeowner. Note- Homeowners Have Now Lost Any Monitoring Service For The System.
Is It Producing ?? Meritage Homes Customer Service AZ Has Provided The Homeowner With A List Of What They Will DO In Writing. Then Came The CATCH.
Only Replace Part Of The System & Also A Signed Release With The Gage Order Before Any Work Will Be Done.

PARKER, COLORADO -- We picked out a home that we liked. The price was $307,900 base. The model of the home happened to be an inventory home and was listed as $469,000. We figured that based on this there was a lot of room for design center choices and upgrades.

We chose the fixtures, structural changes, paint, etc. that you could change at the home sales office and the price of the home was then at $357,000. OK! We could live with that, we had to have the garden view ($15K) option as that is the only model that would fit on our lot, the lot had a premium of $3000, we chose upgraded fixtures etc. for about $8k, had rooms changed from study to bedroom, etc. We figured these were all reasonable charges for the changes we were getting. We went ahead and scheduled for the design center to make our final choices.

We spent 3 hours in the design center making very particular and precise choices, to design the home the way that we wanted it. The sales representative wanted us to stay around $25K in choices. I admit we went up to $36, but figured, that's OK, I am financed to cover these choices so let's get what we want.

We then went back to the sales office and the price of the home was at $391,000. The sales agent said that her manager would not approve of the house at that level of design upgrades because we have a VA loan and the downpayment is so low ($1500) that we did not have enough vested in the home and that we could walk and not stand to lose much. They wanted me to come up with $15,000 additional besides my earnest money before the would approve the build.

I said "I can't come up with that right now, please see what you can do." They came back two days later and said that we have to get the price of the house down to $370,000 before they would even talk to us about decreasing the amount of downpayment on the design center choices. So..... we went back to the design center. We were able to grudgingly shave off the $10K they originally wanted us to stay below and had our design choices total out at $25K. We thought alright, we are good to go. NOPE.

During our original cut back, to drop the price of the home at the sales center, we had opted to, under the suggestion of the sales agent, to get rid of the french doors that enclose the office and leave it open. We later decided that this was not a good idea and wanted those left in the deign structure of the home.

Final price of the home at this point is $380,000. We said we wanted to add back in the French doors. We were told only if you shave $2000 off of somewhere else. I said "I am paying for the doors and the house, I understand the price of the house is now $382,000 and I am OK with that." "NO - you cannot have the french doors unless you shave $2000 off somewhere else." They said the home would not appraise for that amount, yet the model home of the same builder in the same neighborhood with similar design center choices was appraised at $460,000, which is $80K higher than ours was being priced out.

Bottom line, I am still not sure if I am going to complete the build with them and go without the french doors. If they are this difficult to deal with during the design process, I can only imagine how difficult they will be to deal with during the build process. In my opinion, Meritage homes, at least in Colorado, is NOT responsive to the customer and should be sanctioned.

MESA, ARIZONA -- I believe that an employee of Meritage Homes has stolen $7,000 of valuables from my house, of which most is irreplaceable. I believe this is due to the negligence of Meritage Homes Management. On Tuesday October 31st we closed with Meritage Homes on new home. I was issued house keys, garage openers, keys to the mail box, and keys to the single garage door, and other items. After closing I dropped off a few of my belongings into the garage. Since the garage openers were not working, I went in through the front door and opened both garage doors from the inside.

The house comes with a three car garage. The garage door is split into a two car garage door, and a single garage door. The single garage door is not attached to a garage opener, and it needs to be opened manually, which I did from the inside. I unloaded my belongings which included the missing items, as well as other sports gear (baseball bats, golf clubs, basketball, football, etc…) Before leaving, we had an employee of Meritage Homes come in to touch up the kitchen cabinets. Afterwards I locked up, closing the garage door from the inside, and leaving through the front door, and made sure it was locked.

I did not return until that following Saturday. My brother and I, along with our families moved some of our belongings from his garage. We made two trips and in the evening decided to head back and stay at his house in Glendale AZ, an hour north. My wife and mother-in-law decided to stay back and start unpacking. Since we were unloading everything in the garage, we had opened both garage doors from the inside (garage openers were not working, they had not yet been programmed) Before leaving for the night, and being concerned that my wife and mother-in-law were staying back, I decided to check all the keys and doors, everything seemed fine.

Afterwards I closed the two car garage door from inside and walking out through the single garage door and pulling it down, I check the handle and it was not locked. I grabbed the keys from the inside and tried to lock it, but the keys were not working. I checked the number on the key and the garage door handle, and they did not match. I did not think nothing of it, but did tell my wife to lock the inside door and to contact Christy **, the sale person for Meritage Homes, and have the keys changed.

The garage door handle and keys were changed the second week of November. All this time the garage door remained unlocked, and it had remained unlocked – unknowingly to us – for the first few days after we closed. Even if it was locked, who had the real keys to the garage door?

After we had moved in, we were trying to locate the home phones and they could not be found anywhere. We thought they might have been thrown away mistakenly. On Sunday, November 19th, I was searching for my paintball guns and could not find them. I asked my wife and she said she hasn't seen them. Then it dawned on me. I started searching for my silver coins, my foreign currency and my baseball cards. I couldn't find any of it.

Then I realized that all these items I had dropped off that Tuesday after we had closed. I hadn't known about the unlocked garage door, and wasn't aware of the wrong key. I put one and one together, and realized that someone must have stolen these items.

I informed Meritage Homes, and they said they can't do anything about it. I reminded them that they were the ones that gave me wrong keys to the garage and it was unlocked all this time. If I had known it wasn't locked I would not have dropped off my stuff there, and that even if I had known I wouldn't have been able to lock it because they had issued me wrong keys, and where were the real keys? I told them that I believe this was done intentionally, giving whoever robbed us, the opportunity to walk in without a problem.

They told me to take it up with my insurance company. I'm sorry I don't have receipts for each baseball card that I had collected back in the 80's and early 90's, and I don't have receipts for all the silver coin that I had collected over a 10 year period, or any of the missing items. I guess this is my problem not theirs, they already have their money.