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Meritage Will Not Return Our Earnest Money Deposit
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

SANTA CLARITA, CALIFORNIA -- In May 2016, my husband and I found a home big enough for us and our foster/adoptive children (three). We agree to come back the next day. First thing, I did more research and see that there are tons of negative online reviews, especially from people who did not receive their earnest money deposits back. The next day, we tell the salesperson, Maggie, that we are no longer interested due to the negative reviews we have found online.

She insists that the keeping of deposits only happens in very rare situations after many issues have taken place. We decide to go forward and meet with Maggie and decide to put a deposit on the home. Of course, we should have paid attention to this *huge red flag*, but we made a mistake and went forward. More red flags ahead.

We went in to sign the contract, but there is no hard copy of the contract. Maggie sets up her computer to display the agreement on a monitor and sets up an electronic signature application for the contract. The application always jumps to the next signature or initial section and we have to try to scroll backward to see what the section is about. The document is 142 pages long. Maggie provides a verbal summary of each section. At no point does she say that the deposit is not refundable. We also make it clear that the purchase of the new home is contingent on the sale of our current home. A deposit check of $5,000.00 is provided to Maggie.

The next week, we begin to have serious doubts about moving forward on the purchase of the Meritage Home. These doubts are due to layout designs (patio located off secondary bedroom rather than master bedroom or common area) and discrepancies in the advertising of the home (the ads all say there is ceramic tile, wood flooring, and carpeting in the home -- there was never a plan to put wood flooring in this home). Although the flooring isn't finished yet, we are told we are not able to choose the flooring.

Then, escrow opens with the $5,000.00 deposit. A couple of days later, we inform Maggie that we are having second thoughts and that we would inform her of our final decision on May 31, 2016. On that date, Maggie calls to ask what the status is. We tell her that we will not be moving forward with the purchase of the home.

At that time Maggie says that Meritage Homes will not be returning our $5,000.00 deposit, and she is clearly angry. So angry that she hung up on our Realtor when he asked for her supervisor's name. She refused to provide any information. We eventually were contacted, but only after making formal complaints to as many organizations as possible.

Just a note or two about the contract: Although we made it very clear that any purchase of a home would clearly be contingent on the sale of our current home, Maggie had us sign a non-contingency based agreement. In addition, Meritage Homes did not provide us with a copy of the contract signed by them, when it states very clearly that the contract is not in effect if they don't sign it.

We believe that we have a legal right to the earnest deposit money. However, even if the contract is in effect (the wrong contract that they did not sign), it is unethical to hide the contract in this way and not provide a copy signed by Meritage (so that they have to keep their end of the contract). It is also bad business. Our buyer and seller Realtors now know about Meritage's poor business practices. Most often, even when upgrades are made to a home, usually a solution can be worked out.

The facts are that escrow was open a total of five days. The home was completed except for flooring when we placed the deposit and we made no changes or upgrades to the home. We had not chosen a mortgage lender. The incorrect agreement had been given to us to sign. The agreement has never been accepted, signed, and completed.

We were provided with a document to sign to get our money back in 30 days. It was ridiculous - it left Meritage wide open to sue us for any number of reasons, including not rescinding formal complaints made to the Better Business Bureau (or any other org), if we did not delete our negative online reviews, or if we wrote anything at all disparaging about Meritage on social media.

The agreement states that if anyone asks, we cannot tell them even that we received our deposit back - only that we worked it out to both parties' satisfaction. As of now, we have sent them an official email canceling escrow, as well as the industry standard forms for cancellation of escrow. We'll see how far we get.

In the meantime, I would certainly advise everyone to trust their gut and pay attention to red flags if buying a home from Meritage. In my opinion, they are unethical and immoral. If they treat a foster/adoptive family this way, how will they treat your family? Even the folks who have left reviews that bought the homes did not fare well.

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Builder
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

CENTENNIAL, COLORADO -- We contracted with Meritage Homes to build us the exact model as the Konosha at Richard's Farm in Arvada. (Ryan Gamble sold us 12910 W 73rd Pl.)Thursday at 6 pm we received a 70 plus page purchase agreement that had to be e signed and returned no later than 9 am the following morning, he claimed "we have a buyer standing by to buy that lot, it would not be fair to the other sales person" I thought that since he took our earnest money we had the lot! we were told by Ryan not to write anything in the contract (opinions, questions or changes etc.) because it would complicate the contract and purchase, never believe a sales men, you will pay for it. The contract is extremely one sided for Meritage Homes (consult lawyer). The models are done extremely well and are deceitful, constant bate and switch. The water line on the model is 1 1/4", they installed 3/4" and was expanded to 1", not what we were sold. Our loft was miss-framed by three feet, brought to their attention, walls were cut in place along with the exterior sheeting, framing and dragged over.I regretted having said anything after repairs were done. Where the Tyvek was cut it was not taped, the siding was nailed to the sheeting not the framing, missing/loose framing etc.
Met superintendent Mitch burner, third in six months. Questioned him about the dinning room light switch installation on the back wall, light switch for the bedroom on the first floor, he said "the dining room switch was due to framing, its extra money"! Called for curtesy electrical inspection to check over the location of the switches, I was informed that if it was over 5' they would have to change it, it was only 4'10" in the bedroom! Mitch Burner was mad and began to yell and scream at the top of his lungs as to why I dared to call for the curtesy inspection and how I dared to question him? Few windows were not installed on the house, the inspector inquired about it and told Mitch those windows were to be installed by that evening or fail rough inspection due to weather exposure, code violation. Never seen them do something so fast! As you can imagine, I had to deal with such difficult circumstances and nothing was fixed when brought to their attention and business continued as usual. I sent Mitch numerous emails, text and pictures to correct. His reply "it is all WHITE WASH, we are not building customs or semi customs, we are track builders." More like blow and go!
On December 27th my realtor, Ryan Gamble, Mitch Burner, Paul PM and Jason from main office met to express my concern and bring to their attention what needed to be fixed prior to house dry-walled. Mitch had the walk through list, Paul agreed to install one three way switch in that bedroom. Nothing different than before, email, text, calls and more..... Insulation was done and lots of spots needed attention, Mitch during pre drywall walk said it had to be 4", I taped my meetings, took pictures, kept all emails and text to prevent claims of hearsay by them.
So much frustration, I called the president of Meritage Homes "Rusty Crandle" he said "I will send my VP, Jon Dorothy, to meet with you and resolve these issues". We met, Paul (PM), I showed him many pictures and he said and agreed that "he would not take that either", I mentioned to him that when they had started the drywall I had spoken to Mitch and asked him to call the insulation company to touch up areas of concern, above the garage there was exposed plumbing and walls that had less than 2 inches of foam sprayed and he replied proudly "I have passed third party verification and City of Arvada's permit too"! I showed him the layout prints for our bathrooms that we had chosen and signed on 6/23 and he said " we will tear out the wall sections and will fix the insulation along with the bathroom vanity to reflect the layout you have chosen, will vent it through the roof, will caulk the siding as it is required by CYM plank etc." he also emailed the list to me and nothing was ever done. We upgraded our cabinets for an additional $14000.00 to natural maple finish, we received pink cabinets and they refused to replace. Painter used primer for ceiling only, no paint, we paid $2200.00 to have the ceilings painted not primed etc. Long story short Rusty Crandle had invoked article 7 A and D from the purchase contract to cancel our purchase. Lots of useless taped meetings, kept emails, text and conversations, he would have never cancelled and would have bent back wards to fix everything if the housing market had cracked and would hold us to pay full amount as agreed on the contract! Look up my3cents.com reviews etc. Rusty Crandle is so shameless, he cancelled our purchase agreement 1-2 weeks from closing! My advice to you is take your money and RUN, they sold the house to a nice unsuspecting family as is for $666K, $28K more than our contract and told them "the purchaser walked away from the house" yeah right Crandle!

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Meritage Homes in Raleigh, NC - Buyer Beware!
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA -- Buyer beware of Meritage Homes in the Raleigh, NC area. They are not equipped to keep up with the demand, and it is manifesting itself in delays, poor quality, poor communication, poor customer service, and unhappy customers.

We had a contract to build a home with Meritage in Durham, NC. Delays, mistakes, poor quality, communication problems, and lack of experienced construction management started from the very beginning. After we signed our contract, it took three months for Meritage to break ground on our lot. During this time, we received no updates and had to persistently inquire to get any information. At first Meritage avoided our inquiries and we couldn't get any information about reasons for the delay, and then the reasons for the delay kept changing, and some of the reasons given were lies.

When Meritage did finally start we had all kinds of problems: concrete slab problems, framing problems, electrical outlets in wrong location, HVAC vents in wrong location, brick columns on front porch not straight, walls not straight, trim not straight, bad fireplace stone installation, mistake pouring concrete driveway - the list goes on and on. We requested meetings with Meritage about problems several times, and none of our requests were granted or even acknowledged. We had a real estate agent representing us, and he couldn't get Meritage's attention either. He told Meritage several times that there were problems and that we were not happy, and Meritage ignored him also. Meritage's lack of interest was frustrating and baffling. Meritage's modus operandi appears to be to ignore the customer as long as it can and then if pressed either claim ignorance about the problem or say that there is no problem. There were also several times where we were told something would be done and it was not, and we were not told why. Meritage lost their credibility and broke our trust early, and it only got worse. The communication and coordination between Sales and Construction appeared non-existent. There were many, many times where we asked our Sales associate, who was supposed to be our prmary contact for questions, something about our house and he either did not respond or did not have the information we needed. It definitely seemed to us and our agent that Sales was not getting the information it needed from Construction. It was a typical example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.

One contributing factor to the problems we experienced was that Meritage changed our construction manager, with no transition or handoff (even though our agent suggested a meeting), at a critical time in the process. Things went downhill after that. Several things which were discussed with the previous construction manager were missed or done incorrectly. Our new construction manager was inexperienced, appeared overwhelmed and not knowledgeable about our house, and was not present much at our job site. We and our agent felt that our construction manager was not giving our house enough attention and was not walking it like he should.

The problems piled up to the point where we decided we could not close because Meritage was not fixing anything and we did not have confidence in the quality of the home. If there were that many problems we knew about, how many problems were there that we didn't know about? The final product was as flawed as their processes and communication. We informed Meritage that we would not be closing, and only THEN they decided they wanted to meet with us. We met with management (Director of Sales and Director of Construction). They claimed they had not heard about any of the problems. They admitted they had problems with their internal processes and with their staffing and with our construction manager being inexperienced, overloaded, and insufficiently trained. They admitted they were having trouble keeping up with demand. They agreed that our concerns were valid and reasonable. They offered to "look into" the problems but could not commit to fixing them. We politely asked for a refund of our $11,000+ deposit, and they refused.

We also had issues getting a closing date from Meritage and Meritage's in-house mortgage company, MTH. When we got to the point where we should have received a closing date, we did not have a closing date. We went several weeks past the point where the builder should have provided a closing date - the mortgage company even told us that it was strange that we did not have a closing date by that point. When we asked our Sales associate about a closing date, he told us he had nothing to do with the closing date and passed us off on the mortgage company. The mortgage company passed us off on Meritage. Not getting a closing date for so long and so late in the process made it difficult for us to lock a mortgage rate and resulted in us getting a higher rate than we should have.

We know Meritage can easily sell the house for at least $10,000 more than our contract price. They raised the base price on our model $9,000 shortly after we signed our contract. Meritage should not be able to keep the profits from selling our home AND keep our deposit. Falling back on what the contract says about the deposit is not reasonable, fair, or acceptable given a) Meritage did not fulfill the terms and conditions of the contract b) all of the attempts that we made to get Meritage's attention about problems fell on deaf ears and c) everything that Meritage put us through.

We forwarded our request to the Division President in Raleigh but have not heard back.

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Meritage Home warranty
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

ORLANDO, FLORIDA -- It is very hard to get approval for Heritage home warranty work even within the first five years. Our roof tiles got displaced and cracked. I contacted Meritage Homes for filing the issue. They rejected my claim saying they will not cover tiles cracks and displacement.

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Herons Landing, underground testing
StarStarStarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 3/51

SARASOTA, FLORIDA -- Were deep soil borings performed to located the known underground toxins, please provide same. There are test results showing cadmium, chromium and other toxins lay beneath these properties. What have you done to inform or protect new homeowners, as stipulated in the zoning variance ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5etHqDcZYk

This video states it is going offline, were you involved with the shutting down of this video ? See attached documents, Was this information disclosed to homeowners or potential homeowners ?

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Meritage Homes - Stay Away!
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

CYPRESS, TEXAS -- My wife and I closed on our newly constructed Meritage Home on July 31st 2015 and moved in on August 2nd. Within the first 2-3 months non-stop warranty request because it seemed our house was rushed. We went through two different construction managers as they were having a problem themselves. We waited a very long time to buy our dream home for our new baby that arrived 3 weeks after closing, but it has been a nightmare. Today is March 31st 2016 and we were just notified we are delinquent on all of our taxes. (Property, Mud, School).

For some reason the day we closed we signed hundreds of documents in which everything should of been processed smoothly, however it wasn't. As of today Meritage Homes still owns the home I live in even after 6 months of living here. All of our tax documents were sent to their corporate location here in Houston, Tx. Were we notified of this? No, Meritage did not make any attempts to notify us they were receiving our year-end tax documents. When contacting them today they were extremely rude, stating we should of known. Correct, we should of known, but also we would of paid these taxes as they came in if the house was under our name.

We are two months behind on taxes which there is a small fee. Asking Meritage to help pay for these fees was like talking to a wall. They were disrespectful over the phone and basically told us to ** off. At the beginning of construction we had already noticed some issues but was assured they would treat our home as their own. This comment was stated by Cary ** and Billy **. That is by far the one comment that has been burned into my wife and I memory.

When Meritage is trying to court you to make a purchase they are willing to bend over backwards, but as soon as you sign the dotted line... Screwed! I am a very patient person and tried to keep my mouth shut, but this was the final straw. I speak with a lot of my neighbors on our street and will discuss my concerns with them as well as new neighbors looking to join this area.

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Good to Know!
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

HOUSTON, TEXAS -- My husband and I are in the process of buying a home. Fresh and green on the process, we decided to educate ourselves and set a timeline for our purchase. We went to Waters Edge in the Humble/Houston area and met Katherine at one of the model homes in the area. When we walked in she was with a client - didn't greet us at all, though she was the only Meritage worker there.

We browsed the home, loved it and when walking out she rushed out to ask us to come back and visit with her. No big deal; we went back. She was rather pushy and kept trying to convince us to purchase right away though we explained that was not our plan. She switched up a bit when I visited a third time and gave the 'caring mother' approach and even had her daughter pull up what our current home is worth for resale purposes. I appreciated the information and she asked that I fill out a loan for to at least know my options. Again, not a bad idea because it would be good to know where we stood loan rate wise.

She scheduled to meet with me so we could chat once my husband and I received the information back. We did and didn't like the information so I emailed her to graciously thank her for her help and all that she'd shared with us and to cancel our appointment (2 days in advance). She never emailed back! Didn't say one word via text, email, call or messenger pigeon!

The day after said scheduled appointment my husband decided to view the model one last time to see if it would be worth the headache. She didn't expect to ever see me again and gave me this fake surprised hug! Once we viewed the model, while walking away she ran out behind us when we were driving away to say she didn't reply to me because she thought "boooo!" When she saw my email! HOW PROFESSIONAL!

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Poor Experience With Purchase And Build
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

CARROLLTON, TEXAS -- Meritage Homes treats their customers very poorly. Don't even count on getting a different experience with escalating issues to a supervisor or director. They will ignore your phone calls and emails. Below is my experience with purchasing a Meritage Homes. I advise you to stay away from Meritage Homes! I am an out-of-town buyer and I have made Meritage Homes aware of this situation many times. I have requested to be notified at least 2 weeks ahead for walk through and closing to arrange travels and request time off work.

Meritage Homes scheduled a closing date for the property I am purchasing on December 31, 2014 without informing me of the closing date. It was mere coincidence I found out about the closing date by calling the sales agent to ask for a status update. I later found out they have been sending information (closing, initial disclosures, and my SSN) to a wrong email address. First walk thru was scheduled on the December 30th, only one day ahead of closing.

Upon visiting the property for the walk through I discovered the property was not ready for closing: carpet was not fully installed, missing grout, unpainted door frames, paint/grout on splatter tiles and wood, etc. They could not deliver the home on the closing date they had set. This cost me one week of work and travel expenses. Meritage homes offered no compensation, not even an apology.

Almost one month later, Meritage Homes scheduled a closing date on January 28, 2015 and gave me a one week notice. Due to work, I was not able to arrange time off and make travel arrangements for the new closing date. It was again brought up to Meritage Homes that I am an out of town buyer, and requested for a closing date the week after. I was denied that request. I made an effort to have the issue escalated many times to plead my case.

We received no response by email and no return calls from the regional manager or the director of finance. I managed to close on the home a few days later with a penalty fee of $1250. I'm being penalized for 4 business days, even asking for leniency so many times. They should penalize themselves for delivering my home a month later than promised.

I have made attempts to email and made phone calls to regional manager/director. I've only been able to leave voicemails. I called and asked the staff if he was in office. Their staff confirmed he's in office, but refused to transfer me to his line. They did not even give me the chance to plead my case. I called corporate and received the same treatment. All of my inquiries and escalation falls on deaf ears. Dealing with Meritage Homes have left me frustrated at the results in multiple occasions. Go with another builder.

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Stay Away from Meritage Homes
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

HOUSTON, TEXAS -- My Overall experience with Meritage Homes so far is very very bad. I would strongly recommend not to opt Meriatge Homes Builder in Massey Lakes or any other Community or Any State in USA. I signed contract 3 weeks ago and I'm scared what I have to go through by the time I complete my Home.

  1. They have restrictions like we have to pick same color cabinets throughout the house. If we prefer a particular Color & Level cabinets in Kitchen, we have to find same color for bath room Cabinets and if we prefer to go for low level cabinets in baths & If unfortunately if we don't find same color as kitchen cabinets then we have to change the kitchen cabinets for the sake of keeping all cabinets same color though we like & prefer to have that particular cabinets in Kitchen.

  2. Meritage Homes design Center prices are very high when compared to Highland Homes Builders (Pomona Community in Manvel, Texas). Highland Home Builders gave me 90% of the design center option prices even before signing the contract. But Meritage doesn't give any prices or will give wrong prices for few and later say prices are revised.

  3. Sales person will give a price for a product and Design center will give a higher price for the same product. (Since we already signed the contract with the earnest money, there's nothing we can do now except to pay whatever they say.)

  4. If you like something in model Home or Inventory Homes, Then Sales person will say thats not standard, design center will add you later after signing contract. Now design center sometimes says we just stopped using that product and we will be compelled to opt something out of very very few options.

  5. I bought House in Massey lakes Estates, Pearland, Texas. Sales Manager (Daniel) doesn't care for the customer concerns or issues. He simply says do whatever you can we will do whatever we want to. Thats not your home, its meritage home and it will be yours after closing so till then we will build it the way we want to. I am not worried that you paid earnest money and thats your dream home or first home. Also he blames us for not asking information about theirs interior restrictions.

5.They will behave nice until you sign the contract after that they are worried about their profits only not even try to discuss options for your dream home or first home.

So, beware of Meriatge Homes. From My personal experience Highland Homes is better in terms of Quality, Prices, Services, behaviour and Freedom to pick things for our home. Highland believes and feel they are building our home but from Sales manager Daniel's words Meriatge Builds homes which is easier & profiatable to them and least bothered about the Real owner.

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Solar Hot Water Heat
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51

Purchased 4-1-15. 11-29-16 - Sedela SOLAR Hot water HEAT Never Hooked up. 20 months later, Meritage Homes agrees to replace system & will cover warranty out of pocket cost. Agrees to replace hot water tank & a few other parts. Will not replace the three solar hot water panels on roof. These are indeed part of the system. Meritage Homes now requires a signed release with a gag order before ANY work will be done. This is to release Meritage Homes from all responsibility & liability & any future warranty work.

These systems have a very long warranty & even a performance warranty. This will also prevent the homeowner from releasing any information on what any settlement was reached. Way too many e-mails & phone calls in between all this.

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Meritage Homes Rating:
Star Empty star Empty star Empty star Empty star
1.1 out of 5, based on 22 ratings and
24 reviews & complaints.
Contact Information:
Meritage Homes
8800 E Raintree Dr Ste 300
Scottsdale, AZ 85260-3966
877-275-6374 (ph)
www.meritagehomes.com
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