Centex Homes Reviews

The grates only partially help and are not maintained. My center island between homes gets partially flooded out and I spend a fortune on maintaining it. 3. In clearing off the land next to me, my house shook and rattled so hard that some tiles in my home cracked, wood floor paneling separated and pieces fell from my ceilings. I complained and had patch-up attempts for ceilings that failed until I gave up. As for tile and panel replacement, they wanted to nickel and dime me. Eventually, sent guys out who didn’t speak English to look over flooring issues. Pandemic happened and afterwards, no follow-up, got the runaround. Issues still unresolved and it’s 2024! 4. Lastly, molding is incomplete in my home in dining room under stairs. I’ve exhausted myself dealing with Pulte Centex. I’ll save up money to have these issues resolved on my fixed income. So I’m waving the white flag! Goliath wins…

There were 3 separate fixes on day 1. The service guy caulked the area which took less than 3 minutes and no one showed up for another 2 days after I spoke with my builder. The 2nd service is half done and no one has completed the remaining tasks since. A text message was sent to the coordinator and the confirmation is someone will be there on Friday April 19th 2024. It's been a no call, no show since this started. One section of the garage is separating from the nail used and the coordinator photographed the area after having an OMG moment, yet still no call, no show. This is not intended to sway anyone in a particular direction or another but this review is based on my experience. Would I recommend Centex based on my experience, NO!

If we had to buy a house again, we would buy an older home with bigger rooms, more yard, and a home that already had fans, a garage door opener, grass in the backyard, fire alarms with batteries that work longer than a few months, electric outlets that allowed us to plug things in, carpet that wasn't showing wear after 8 months, and so many other things. You will get the bare minimum for a high price. You won't realize it until you're already living there. It's also the little things like the garage door handle that is so painful to use to lift and close. You need to buy your own since there isn't a garage door opener. There's no room to park on the street because the houses are too close together. We wish we could afford to sell the house and buy somewhere else. Zero amenities! There should be a pool. I want to mention the flooring again... it's the worst cheap flooring that I have ever seen in my life!!! The homes are overpriced.

The rep we were forced to go with had not been there long and was not as helpful as the other. From the beginning they were always pushing the sale (saying the incentives are about to end), if not for our realtor we probably would have walked away from the deal. Which I wish I had at this point. The next step as far as financing went was a disaster, we were locked in to only find out we did qualify for a conventional loan. We had to fight to get this loan not even knowing to the last day of signing it was gonna happen.

We were told by the sales person that the conventional loan was no longer available with the incentives. Then later the loan officer saying it was still available, they did not share this information until we were locked into a FHALoan. After several weeks they finally said we could get the conventional only to find out it was not for sure, because our spot had been given to someone else. We finally got the conventional loan, but only after a lot of back and forth argument. We were not even fully accepted for the loan until closing day. So this was very nerve-racking up to the last second.

Now we are in the home and tons of things that were marked in the inspection have not been completed. Our construction manager said he would personally fix them, which talking to other home owners on our development is not a good thing. Several stories about our cm making things worse in the homes when he tried to “fix“ them himself. There are some instances where he also removed tape marking areas of Sheetrock, paint, and flooring mistakes. Our upstairs guest bedroom slants significantly when you walk into it. Another thing that he said he tried to fix. There is a whole area of just bad painting and Sheetrock going up the stairs that needs to be fixed.

At this to say we have tried submitting these things to the customer service website to only be told we would have to wait like 8 or 9 months. This is supposedly referring to the 1 year warranty on workmanship, which I could understand if these are new problems we face after we moved in, but we have what feels like a used home at the moment. I have tried to contact our original warranty to person to no avail. I finally had to contact the air conditioner people myself to get a coil replaced along with other things fixed on the ac unit.

My biggest thing right now is that it would seem that the construction manager has the biggest blame for allowing the shoddy work and not completing what he said he would. We are trying to figure out our next steps, because we don’t want to wait to get these things fixed for fear of other excuses of why they can’t be fixed and they are done with the development of the property.

We lived about 15 minutes from our build and drove by at least once a week. I noticed that the new sod was not getting watered, and that the sprinkler system was not even plugged in. I contacted the construction manager who flat out lied and said it was because of a recent freeze and it would come back nice and green by closing. We ended up closing with a dead yard. We were told we had to accept the lawn the way it was and that if it did not come back in 30 days they would replace it. Well, it never came back; it didn’t help that during our initial walk through we found several sprinkler heads that did not work or were watering the dirt next door.

It has now been almost 90 days and the sod has yet to be replaced. The grass is an eye sore; we got a violation notice for a poorly maintained lawn, and have been told we are not a priority because they need to concentrate on new homes both with this builder and others. This was just the tip of the iceberg with the issues we have dealt with. The carpet in the family room right as you walk in was two different colors, there was a patch that was a third color and shaped as a hexagon in one part of the room. The carpet in the loft had and still has a large lump that is the entire width of the loft, we were told they are allowed a certain level of error and that this fell within that, so they do not need to fix it; it is easily a trip hazard.

The carpet in the master bedroom was also two different colors and the best part of all, the painters spilled a can of paint on the stairs and the construction manager did not want to clean it up. It is still crunchy where this happened. There was a two-paddle light switch that was fully mudded and taped into the wall, the cover and all. All you could see were the paddles themselves. Our cabinets were scratched up, the dishwasher was not connected, the kitchen sink leaks, and several windows did not open all the way. They had the wrong window installed on the second floor, we were missing most of our screens, and had holes in the shingles on the roof. There were nails sticking out of the trim that we told the construction manager about and all he did was pull them, not bothering to fill or paint the wholes.

We had a light on the second floor that would not turn off, the closet doors were not secured, and the master door was so far off the door wouldn’t shut without excessive force. Outside there was white glue calk all over the roof seen from the second floor and on the siding. The water line for the fridge had the threads faced the inside of the wall, making it so you could not connect a water line. The construction manager said he didn’t think it could be fixed and was going to leave it if I didn’t push the issue with him.

After working with the construction manager for a bit I came to understand where part of the problem lied, and we are not alone. Everyone we have spoken with in our neighborhood has had numerous problems as well. As we created our list during the first walk through prior to closing, there were several things the CM was not adding. He said they were minor things that he would fix himself, and they don’t put the list. When we came for our final walk through, hardly a thing had been fixed. We initially refused to sign off on the list of issues but were supposed to close in a couple hours.

The construction manager told us it was common practice that the remaining issues would be handled by after closing warranty, the CM even went as far as typing up an email, showing us this email, and then deleting it never sending it to the warranty manager. We were very apprehensive about signing but he reassured us and begged us to sign it, so we did. What a mistake that was! We contacted the warranty manager to find out it was all a lie and we had been conned into signing the documents. All of the issues we had were supposed to be fixed and handled prior to closing.

We were very blessed with the warranty manager, however, who had really gone to bat to get most of the issues resolved even though it was not supposed to be her job to do so. There are still some issues that she has not been able to get resolved. We were one of the first houses to close in our pod, after seeing the lack of oversight I completely understand how the issues come about. First off, the workers are sub-contractors of the sub-contractors, they drink on the job, there are always crushed beer cans around the homes under construction. The worst part is the CM knows about this but does nothing about it. In Florida it rains a lot, the windows are left open 24 hours a day rain or shine on the houses.

I mentioned to the CM that a fully dry walled home behind us had its windows open all Memorial Day weekend and it rained a lot, his exact words were “it's not my house” and left the windows open for several more days over which we had heavy rains. One of the worst experiences we encountered was the painters next door spray painted the under-construction home on a windy day. The paint and primer covered our car, side of the house, soffits, patio furniture, grill, A/C unit, and anything else that was down wind. I contacted the CM who met me at the house with the painting company. However, not a word was said, not even an apology. We then found out it was a sub-contractor of the main painter.

The sub-contractor is refusing to take ownership and won’t even give the contact info or company name. Now I am forced to hire an attorney to get this resolved, and of course Centex is not offering any help. What should have been an extremely happy time in our lives has been nothing but stress and disappointment. I do really want to stress, the only saving grace in this experience has been the wonderful warranty consultant who has gone out of her way to try and make what she can right. Please, Please Please, consider another builder!