Clayton Homes

Then I got Candice. She was who I bought my home from. She was very good but after the sale, she was not. And instead of pacifying me when I called her, she was, “Don't call me. Call Nikki. She is in charge of that.” “Well, I don't know who's in charge of what. Why couldn’t you just pass the message along since I got you on the phone?” I even said to her, “Candice, you’ve got to have service after the sale.” Nikki was fabulous. Billy, who has nothing whatsoever to do with me, was fabulous. If I needed anything, and I asked him can he do it, he would.

I had a little issue with my heating and air conditioner unit outside. The air conditioner man got COVID and was down for some time. But when they put my trailer in here on my land, he told me, “You got air but you don't have any heat, but we'll get yours fixed.” It was October, and I complained. I called people. “I need my air. I need my heat fixed.” I finally got him out here to fix it and I said, “Did you remember to bring something to put under that air conditioner? ‘Cause you didn't do that before.” And he said, “No, I got a man but I forgot about it.” “Okay. When you think about it, do it.” At some point, he came out and did it and I never even knew he did it until a friend of mine said, “Hey, you got your pan under your air conditioner.”

Blake, the young man who if I got an issue and he would come out and fix it, has been out here a couple of times because the drawers in my kitchen have broken. And they're not as good a quality as I would like for them to be. Other than that, I'm good. I would recommend Clayton.

Right now, we are still doing custom things to the home. We needed more cabinet space, so bought some cabinets and got them in. One other thing was our bathrooms. We weren't satisfied with the mirrors and the light was reflected in the wrong place. But we put in new medicine cabinets in each bathroom. Then, we wanted to hang pictures and it was difficult because they always want to come loose and bolts want to come out. But we figured if the wall was untaggable, we were able to put things in the walls and the pictures would stay there long if we want them.

Aside from that, our home is not going to repair very easy. If something breaks, it's going to have to be replaced. Our floor looks like tile, but it's linoleum. It’s too easy to scratch the top surface and ours got scratched the time when they were moving stuff in and out when we moved in. And since it is linoleum, it’s one thing and you got to fix all of it. If I had to do it all over again, I would say go with a house and don't get a trailer. The lady that lives out here had seen them when they brought the mobile home on to the property. She said that they pushed it in such a manner that it looked like it was going to fall completely apart. But it lived through it and nothing was broken.

All in all, the home is about as good as you can expect in a mobile home. Plus, Clayton has done everything they could do to make things better for us and people could depend on the fact that they are going to sell them a good living space. A mobile home’s got a lot going for it, too. It's easy to clean, to keep warm, and to keep cool in the summer.

We purchased our first home from the Mesa Clayton Homes office. We went to our sales rep and had such a wonderful experience. We said, “We're buying some land in Chino Valley, and we would love to do another Clayton home with you.” They were very happy and really excited to get onboard with that. They suggested that we go to the Chino Valley Clayton Homes sales office and “Tell them that you're working with us in Mesa. Tell them that you just wanna see some model homes.” We went to the Chino Valley sales office to look at some models, and we told them, “Everybody from Mesa sent us here. We're working with them. They told us to come and see some models.”

The Chino Valley sales office got some of their contractors who just happened to be in there, and the sales rep, and they were trying to talk us out of working with Mesa. They wanted us to work with them directly, and they were bad mouthing the Mesa guys and saying, “You know, you don't wanna do that. And we know the area better, and they don't know what they're doing up here.” I don't know if that had anything to do with how our house looked when we first walked in, but I'm sure that the Mesa guys eventually had to say to the Chino Valley sales office, “Hey, do you have contractors in the area that we can use to put the house together?” ‘Cause I'm sure it wasn't the same people as Phoenix.

When we moved into the Chino Valley house, there was glue all over our countertop. We upgraded the countertops, and they weren't granite but Corian. We also had to use razor blades to try to scrape glue off the counters. They didn't even put fasteners on the shelving. When we went to put plates and glasses, the shelves just came crashing down. There were also a lot of things that weren't finished with caulking and grout. There were flooring issues and big scrapes in the laminate, and the flooring is scheduled to be replaced.

There were a lot of things that were vastly different from the experience that we had when we purchased our home in Phoenix. Whether it was doing the cabinetry or the countertops, it seems like that wasn't done very well. A lot of corners were cut, and a lot of things were missing, but the Clayton Mesa individuals stepped up to the plate and remedied everything. However, it would have been better if we went to the Chino office and not even told them that we were working with Mesa. If we would have just said, “Oh, we just wanna look and see some models,” it would have been a way more pleasant experience.

When I met the rep, Morgan, she was very kind. I said to her, “Just go step by step with me because I'll get overwhelmed.” I'm a police dispatcher, and my days are just crazy. She told me exactly step by step what I needed to do. I told her, “Okay, what's the step after that?” That was the only time she gave it to me in advance, was when I said to her, “Okay, I got that.” She also hooked me up with everybody that I needed to be hooked up with like the bank. She went way over and beyond. She was just a great person to work with.

We bought land in July. Right before we bought the land, we went into Clayton and said, “How does this process work if we wanted to buy our own land and have a home put on it?” We told her what we were looking at. She told me I just have to go from there and to get a closing done on that, to get the property, get the closing done, and then get all the paperwork over to them. She just took it from there.

She went a little further. There was a well that was supposed to be on the property that we bought, but we never found it. And we didn't want a well. We wanted to get public water and there weren't any lines. It was never lived on. It was just completely open land. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for it, whether it be the city or the county. She went way over and beyond. She got in touch with the county, and said, “These people just bought this and they're gonna live on it. You're messing with our livelihood. Somebody has to take responsibility for this piece of land and put the pipes down.” They did it with no charge. They ate about $5,000. There was no charge because it was just such a process. They didn't understand who was gonna take it and who was gonna be responsible for it. She went to bat for us.

She gave us choices and options of what we wanted. When we went to look, she gave us an open court of what we wanted. She let us go through each one of them and didn't pressure us into anything. Just told us to take our time and think about what we wanted. If we had picked something that was out of our upbringing, she gave us options for something different. We told her what we had wanted and she stayed in that area.

They had a floor plan, and that was the most fun part out of it. Going in and picking out all the colors. It was great. It turned out exactly the way that I wanted it. When we were doing that, she said to me, “If there's something in here that clashes, we have professional people, and we'll just let you know that might not go together.“ But that never happened. Everything was just the way we wanted it to be.

It started in July and we were all moved in by the end of December. That was all it took and that was during COVID time. So, that was during the time that we didn't know if we were going to get our cabinets. We didn’t know if we were gonna get our appliances. Anything that came from Mexico, we didn't know if we were gonna get it on time. We didn't know how long it was gonna take and she kept on it. She made it work. We were in there a week before Christmas. She’s a top-notch woman. We couldn't thank her enough.

I bought the repo the first time and this time, I bought a new one. It was a little bit of a lengthy process because of some of the delays with materials but that’s happening with everything. That wasn't Clayton's fault. The first one back 12 years ago was probably four years old when I got it but there was no major damage. It was just my daughter and I wanted to make it just a two-bedroom instead of two little bedrooms. They were kind enough to take a wall out, finish it up and make it one big room for her on that side of the house, which was really cool. However, the quality of that home from 12 ears ago is better than the quality of the one I just bought. I’m finding some of the things are very cheaply made.