Clayton Homes

One day, I went into the dealership in Texarkana to see what they had. The salesman there said, “Oh, we can get you into this house for under $60,000, blah, blah, blah.” I said okay, then I left. I thought about it and said to myself, “I'm gonna call back and talk to the manager.” I called back and talked to Leon and he was absolutely the best thing that fell out of the sky that day. He was amazing. He said, “Come back up here. I'll walk you around. We'll find you something. We'll find you something you like.” We went back up there a few weeks later. We were walking around and I saw the trailer that I had seen at the Sulphur Springs dealership. I loved that trailer -- the layout, look, and everything. I said that I love that one, but I also said that their salesman already told me they can't do that one. He asked, “Why not,” and I said that I didn’t know.

We started talking and he asked how I was gonna do it. I said that I was gonna pay cash and he said, “Well, it's that much big difference.” Nobody else had let me get me that far. He said that they could do it and that he could get me a discount. We ended up doing the paperwork. We got it done and cut in the check. Not even three weeks later, they were bringing my house out and it was amazing from the beginning until the end that I got the one I wanted. I got the one that I was in love with and I got to deal with somebody like him and got to meet him. I feel blessed because he was absolutely the best, the sweetest person I've ever met.

I've given great reviews to Clayton in Texarkana because of the fact Leon went above and beyond. As a salesman or as a dealership manager, he didn’t even have to get involved and he didn’t even have to do anything. He could have just let it go. He was so pleasant and so nice to deal with. He was an awesome person. The guys in the office were really sweet and very helpful, and always wanting to know how things are going. I would really love to nominate Leon or whatever I'll have to do to get him some recognition for the work that he has done. I called with a complaint and he was on it. The stove was messed up and he was on it. He has been fantastic and I really would like to see him get the recognition he deserves.

I picked the home up straight off the lot. There were some things that were different, like the refrigerator, that were different from what I had picked out. I didn’t choose any colors, flooring, and carpet. I fell in love with the house just as it was set up. It had a very rustic farmhouse style to it. It was called the Anniversary, but they changed the name of it now to the Farmhouse. It had the farmhouse sink and a lot of cute little neat stuff. However, we had a little bad problem with the snow. We had a guy come out and tell us, “Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that,” and supposedly fixed it, but not even two weeks later, we had somebody else come back out to do the same thing again. After about three times, we finally got one and so far, it has not messed up since we got it replaced. They brought us a different unit all together and it has been fine ever since. There have been no problems, no issues.

The dishwasher is still messed up, though. It will not do the heated dry cycle at all and it is getting to where it is not washing really good. I'm gonna give Leon a call and see if he can send someone out. He is very good about getting on the problem and getting it solved, and that is what I liked. He is a man of action and when he finds out there is something wrong, he takes care of it. He is amazing. I feel blessed from the moment I walked in the door and talked to him until now. I feel lucky because I had a great salesman. If I hadn't dealt with him, I wouldn’t have the house right now.

I love the house overall, although there were just a couple of things. We've had some appliance issues with the stove and we had one with the refrigerator freezing up on the inside and not doing what it was supposed to do. But other than the appliances, I'm totally happy with this house and I couldn’t be happier. We got an extended warranty and mine is around eight years. It covers everything, so we are pretty set on that and I'm glad I did it because, with the stove issues, you never know. Just because you buy something new doesn’t mean it might not be defective.

But at the manufacturing level, they must’ve hired all the incompetence from miles around. I have a tub and they put a wood skirt around it. They also put in a new outlet. But the ventilation system is not working right and the master bedroom is very cold. They came yesterday and put in another ventilation duct in the floor. So it was a little better last night, but not really good. There are still some major problems here that somebody’s gonna have to deal with. But every time the fan comes on to heat the place, the return air is so high that it sucks air right in through from the outside. I had to get the AC people to explain that to me. I’ve been working with Clayton Homes here in Spotsylvania and they've been very cooperative and sympathetic to the problems. They also sent somebody right out. But these things keep showing up.

When I came in in the bedroom, the electrical outlet was hanging out of the wall. Somebody just somehow stuck the receptacle in there and didn’t nail it down to a stand. Apparently, when they unplugged their Sawzall from a nearby receptacle, they pulled the receptacle right out of the wall. There has been a lot of stuff like that. Plus, I need to address the issue with the insulation in my ventilation piping. I also had a little trouble with the air conditioning not being what I thought it would be. The bill payer is uncomfortable. Aside from that, my front and my back storm doors won’t close and they never fit right from the get-go. They hit the door casing and as far as doors, I had to slam on past that to get the storm door to close.

So far, I had 27 items that were pretty well took care of. Clayton got people down here and they were good people. They had no attitudes or anything like that. Right now, I’m about to launch a new punch list in a new billing. That's when they finish putting the building together, then everybody goes to work and develop some punch list of discrepancy or problems and submit it back to the contractor. I got a five-year guarantee on everything and I’m just playing along with the way they’re working and we’ll get them all fixed eventually.

But my point of view is that I bought a new house with all new appliances and equipment, and all should be practically new. But Clayton does not have a good professional inspector, particularly with this house. It went out with a lot of discrepancies and I didn’t expect some of the problems that I'm coming up with now. It makes me wonder whether the people that are in the office understand what’s going on in the field. I talked with the salesman about coming out in the house and he said he has never been out to the house. All he does is sell them.

Clayton has more than one person out there running the show anyhow and these are some things that somebody in the upper echelon needs to look at in Clayton Homes as far as quality control. Everything looks good when you get it, but it ain’t so good. I’m not trying to make any noise though. I just wanna get what I paid for and get down the road. But I’ve never been angry about anything. Their reps were very cordial to talk to at the home site and mostly, I was very satisfied the people at Clayton. But I don’t like the people they hire to do the skilled work. They certainly aren’t very skilled. I got a bath tub sent here right next to an outside wall that has no siding between me and the outside. So, that is one situation. I’ve been trying to get things straightened out since last May when we went to closing and things are moving along slowly. But they did get the first list worked out back in November.

George over at Clayton Homes where we bought was very helpful and he did a fantastic job working with us. He can answer any questions we had and he stuck with us, 'cause we've been trying for close to two years before we have got it. It took so long because at the time we were starting to finance it, my daughter was still in college, and I had a parent loan. At the time, the parent loan doesn't come until she ends school so the question with the finance company was how much was I gonna be paying a month for the parent loan part, and I couldn't tell them because she wasn’t out of school at the time. But once she's finished, then I negotiated with the student loan people and everything was fine.

We've also had some issues with the paint peeling on the cabinets, and we brought it to their attention. We sent pictures to George and the lady, and the lady dealt with the factory people. The factory people came out and replaced all the cabinet doors that were peeling. They worked hard and did a great job. The cabinets, after they left and all, they need to do the same thing. They even brought new indoor doors because some of them were scratched and minor damaged. When I shut them against the door stopper thing, the wood that goes all the way down the door to keep you from going past and when you shut it, it hits the bottom of that wood. It was off for about a quarter inch, and it was closed at the top. But they brought new doors and replaced all of them.

However, when they brought them from the factory on the truck, there wasn't any paper or cardboard between the doors. It had the tendency to scratch on it so the doors they put on was in a worse shape than the ones that were originally on there. I went on ahead and rehung all the old doors back myself after they had left and brought it to their attention when they came back out with some more doors, but it was like the same thing. They still just stacked them on top of each other. They ended up fixing the main thing that was in the hallway where the two spare bedrooms were by taking the door off in the doorframe and fixing the doorframe 'cause it was the problem and not the door. They fixed all that and got it all painted back.

There are still some issues because of the problem with those particular type of white cabinet. After a period of a little time, the paint kinda chips on them and they're not paintable. If they were painted, we're gonna have brush streaks on them. Right now, they're smooth but they're trying to figure out an alternative on how they're gonna fix the cabinets and they're supposed to send a crew back out to handle that. Overall, their product is sturdy and not cheap, and I feel happy with the quality of our home. If someone asks me about Clayton Homes, I will tell them it was a wise choice to go with them. We spent more to make sure that it was energy efficient, and we had to upgrade on a lot of stuff in there, but it was well worth it. I would highly recommend them over anybody else.

We started looking and decided that we do some changes with the house, and they were willing to work with us. They went to the manufacturer with answers they didn’t know and the head guy from the manufacturer came up to Clayton Homes here in Lexington and sat down with me to let me know what I could or couldn’t do. They did everything I wanted and did a bunch of changes for me. We absolutely love the house. Not only that, they are really good too. If we have a problem, I've called them and within some time the next day or within two days, they have somebody out there. The problems had been minor and we haven't had anything major at all.

We customized the family room that was a living room and it had a dining room at the end of it. It also had a doorway to go into the hallway and to the kitchen. They let me take the little half wall out and get rid of the dining room. It's all family room now as you walk in. They also let me do a half wall, but I wanted to make it into a foyer since the house didn’t have one. It was just a walk-in to a living room area. Then, they let me take up part of the columns that were in the archway because I didn’t want the column.

Some of the big changes were where the family room was. At the end of the kitchen, I made that a dining area with a glass slider door instead of windows because I don’t need a living room and a family room. We needed a bigger family room because of all the kids in the family we have when we have them over. So, right now, the way with my archway here between the family room and the kitchen and when all the families are here in the family room, I can see and talk to all of them while I'm doing stuff in the kitchen. It's very family-oriented and everything is so easy to get to. I also rearranged the kitchen a bit. I wanted two ovens, so I've got a slide-in range and, on the end of the wall, I have an oven and a microwave over the top of it into a cabinet. They let me put a pantry in my kitchen as well.

We also put another pantry at the end for the dining room. One whole wall is nothing but a huge pantry for dishes. I put dishes and party supplies in it. They also let me rearrange the master bathroom. I changed it all around. I took the tub out and put a larger shower stall in there. I also made a private party area. And being a woman, I wanted a sink and a vanity, so on one side of the wall, we had two double sinks. I did a sink and a vanity for me and, on the other wall, we did a 30-inch sink for my husband and a linen closet. The house was so customized. Everybody who walks into it really likes it. We've had people stop by after we moved in and they asked if they could come in and look at it. Also, in this house, you can't hear it when it rains outside and the house is very well insulated. In the winter time, it is very warm and during this hot summer, it's great. I only have the air conditioning set on 75 and it's cool in here.

Clayton Homes worked with us in every aspect. We were coming down every couple of months talking to Clayton Homes and seeing what they could do. I had another place that was gonna do some stuff for me, but Clayton Homes was right here and everybody was really nice. There isn’t a person in that office that wasn’t nice to us and still is. I've been recommending them to several people. There's one couple that really wants this house, but they can't afford it. We got a heck of a price compared to when we were looking down in Sanford. They worked with us and really gave us a great price. The house had one price on it and I customized it which brought it up a bit more, but it was worth it. We still feel we came out of hand every bit of the stuff they did to it and we really got a great deal.

I am a first time buyer so I had some things on my credit report that needed to be cleared up. There were a couple of medical bills that I needed to get paid off, so that process took a little bit just because we had to wait for them to send a confirmation email that it's paid off or for it to show up on my credit report, which sometimes takes a while. But I was really fortunate because the creditor was more than willing to send me something via email. I would have it within just a couple of days. There were no hiccups or any major issues.

The home is great. There were some cosmetic things on the inside because it was a show model. There were some little cracks here and there, but the initial contractor that was sent out did not do a good job. He created more issues than he needed to and it was probably where he would be paid more. I took pictures after he left, and luckily I'd taken pictures before he came: a little crack above the window and crack in the ceiling, which are normal things when the mobile home moves because I know the walls and the ceiling shift, so I knew what to expect. I'm glad that I took before and after pictures, but the dealership got on top of it. It took them about two weeks to find someone to come out, and he came out and did a great job.

But there was a discrepancy on the registration. There were two copies of the registration so in my understanding there's the one that the dealership keeps and one that I keep, and the one that they have has the correct serial number on it while mine does not. It's missing a digit, which is a big issue because if I ever need to sell, that's going to be a problem. I had to have a copy of the sales agreement of the registration in order to get my taxes set up for it to be registered with the Tax Assessor's office here and one of he great ladies in the office pointed that out to me. She said, "Well, you know the numbers on the sales agreement and the registration don't match." I looked and it was just missing a digit. It looked like a typo. And the lady said, "You know, it's not a big deal. Just call me back and let me know which number is right."

I had my poor husband go underneath the trailer. I didn’t know that it was right there on the inside of the door in the kitchen under the sink. I didn’t tell him that. He took a picture of it and it matched the registration that Clayton has, not the one that I had. Clayton is supposed to be attending to that but it has been a month now. I was gonna give it another couple of weeks to get a status. But that's the only thing pending on it, and I don't know how that would even be corrected.

But my experience with Clayton Homes themselves has been topnotch. Even the issues that we had with the repairs and what the contractor did, and then waiting and all that, it was still a good experience because I know that they were doing all that they could. I had faith in them that it wasn’t them just dragging their feet, that they were really on top of it and I still believe that. I would recommend them, but make sure your registration is right.

We love our home consultant. Smitty was a super nice guy. He has followed up several times with us. For instance, we were promised certain things by the subdivision where we rent the lot, and he has followed up a couple of times with the office here. We were promised certain things but they still haven't fulfilled some of the promises that were made. And he has followed up numerous times. We would call down to the office and they wouldn't call us back. He stopped by here one day and went down and talked to them. Although we have talked with the office here numerous times, they keep saying, "Well, you're on the calendar," but nothing ever gets done. So, it's not Clayton's fault. This is a Clayton community for the most part. It's more so the holding company that runs the whole place. Smitty has been really good.

We were able to customize our home. The master bath was customized by my wife. And from what we understand, now the floor models at the dealership are now equipped the way we wanted it. We eliminated the garden tub and made a very large shower. And in doing so, that eliminated a window in the bathroom. And it wasn't until later that we discovered that and talked to Smitty about it, and they came right out and put a window in for us at no charge. So, it was phenomenal.

When it comes to manufacturing homes, I had a very low opinion of them. And after actually walking through several of the dealership models, I completely changed my mind, except for two things - the carpeting is just standard and it's about as cheap a carpeting as you could possibly put in a home. But I understand because that was the one that was included. But everything else was eye-opening and surprising to me. The level of quality of the walls, the cabinets, and the kitchen are really very surprising. I love the house. We went to two other dealerships other than Clayton Homes. And when I left, I was like, "I don't think I really wanna get a manufactured home." And then, we went into Clayton Homes and I completely changed my mind. It truly is amazing to me how nice the place is. So, I'm very impressed.

The people were phenomenal when I was making the purchase. Taking the money was easy too. My salesmen were great but getting people to follow up and do the warranty work is another story. At first, I couldn't get anybody for all the warranty work. When I did, they would show up once then they would go back to order parts and I wouldn’t hear from them for six months. This is still going on.

I buy multiple homes and sometimes the finished workmanship is not that great. The trim just doesn’t look good and it sometimes has to be redone. Once, they didn’t cut the roof vent correctly so I had to cut the vent. They put the vent on top of the house but it was on top of the plywood and on top of the roof sheathing so it didn’t do any good. I pretty much abandoned getting Clayton to do the work. Now, I just hire somebody else and pay.

Clayton Homes' home buying process was easy as it gets. It was within two weeks of us walking in. A week after we walked in, we put in a deposit, a week later, we signed. It doesn't get much easier than that. I also talked to the service manager, and he and Adrian have helped me with anything I needed. When we were gonna close on the home, it was a Friday, and Adrian asked us to come up Thursday. And so, we met him up on Thursday, and then he went over everything with us and spent an hour and a half of his time explaining everything that we were gonna sign and what this meant and that meant. He did an outstanding job.

I've done a lot of remodeling in my day. So I wanted the cheapest mobile home that I could buy. 99% of the trailers you buy have the no good cabinets in them and the walls aren't done very good. And so, I don't wanna pay $80,000 and have basically the same thing. It looks prettier, but it's basically built the same way, when I'll just buy it for $29,900 and then I'll fix it the way I wanted anyway.

I've already recommended Clayton Homes to two other people. Our experience was great. Adrian made it so easy. Me and my wife's credit are not perfect. It used to be at one time, and we fell on hard times back in Colorado, made a move from there to here. We never thought we'd own another home. And we did some savings, scrounging, and everything else, and we bought some land, and then met Clayton Homes and they made it happen.

There are a few checkpoints that they should ask their customers. I didn’t have a checklist of things to consider and that would be a more helpful tool. There were some very minor things that was a little confusing.

For instance, the particular model I have comes with a power supply in the house, the place where you have all your cut-off switches or your breaker box. So, this particular model takes a 220 power from whatever source you get it from, and you bring it into the house, you plug it into the copper box. But there’s no space whatsoever to run power to the septic. So, there’s confusion. And the first thought was, we gotta run another power cable from the power meter. So, I had plans to have that thing fixed up again.

Right at the end, I ended up in a situation where I had the home and everything else done except the power to the septic. And then there was all kinds of confusion and the manager there at Clayton kept saying, “Oh, that’s on you, Mr. **.” I said, “Excuse me, we negotiated this at the closing. No, this is not on me. This is on you. You gotta come out here and do it.” They did do it and they did pay for it. They complied with the contract and I saw it. So, I had no real complaints, except 10 days that I should’ve moved in, and then I realized that there’s no power to my septic tank. It took 10 days for them to do it. That was kind of a little rough road. But that had nothing to do Colin. It’s only the misunderstanding of the clause of the particular, peculiar contract. It wasn’t a normal, straight process. But other than that, everything else went well.

I ended up having to view some of their contacts because they knew certain processes that they had from Clayton. I appreciate that. Our salesperson, Colin, who walked us through the whole process was outstanding. When there was ever any confusion or if the scheduled had to switched because of rain or whatever it was, Colin was really on top of the show. He impressed the heck out of me in many ways. Everything he did was great. All things considered, Clayton Homes did a wonderful job.

Every time I called for each step of the way, for instance, “Hey, it’s time for you to run the power to the house. And you can do these other things at the same time.” Every time, there was an argument over who’s responsible for paying they sent contractors out here and the contractors say, “I’m expecting you to pay for this.” I had to get back on the phone with Clayton and sometimes it was off hours. It was just a headache. But other than that, the purchase of the home was very smooth. The people there are very responsive.

I paid cash for this home and I paid the price they asked. I didn't even try to lower it, the salesman made me feel like Clayton Homes was the place to buy from. Everything has been lies and not ok. My last review I was told customer advocate will get ahold of me and that was a week ago and then they would only let me send a private message but the public need to know the truth about this company!

Original Review: I purchased a home from Clayton Homes cash. It was brand new and if I would of known all the lies I would be told I would of never spent a penny at this company!! Funny when you go to close they want to make sure they get a 100 percent perfect review and if I feel they deserve anything less let them know before the review so they can fix the issue. Here is my issue with that. I shouldn’t have to threaten a bad review or a call to Corporate to have things done the right way! This whole experience has been a complete nightmare! Still I am not in my house, AC won’t work but who cares. I have movers lined up and who cares they are paid, who cares it’s hot as heck outside. I was told to use a fan for a few days till they can get out to help! Let’s remember they had no problem taking that check but who cares I keep having to spend money on rent and other bills when I have a house paid! Once again worst company ever.

We own a home and several vehicles. The home buying experience with Clayton was probably the easiest home buying experience that I've had. My husband and I have gone through it a couple of times before, and it was super easy. There's a really good crew up there and they will help the customer with anything. They went out of their way, above and beyond to help us with anything that we needed. I'm very satisfied with my decision to use Clayton Homes and I wouldn’t use anyone else. We had a great experience and it's a good home. There's an open floor plan on it and it works really well for us. My boys have a place to live in while they're at college.

The only thing that held us up was getting everything together, once the house was on site, getting it sped up, and getting all the electric turned on. It took longer because we had a lot of rain to deal with. When we closed on the house, they told me it would be two to four weeks before I could move in, and it turned out to be two and a half months. So, that was the only thing I was upset about. Some of it had to do with the weather, some of it had to do with them having so much business. There were so many different people that were buying houses, and they were overbooked. Even though I was living in a motel while they were getting all this together, I don’t think it was their fault. It was the contractors that they contracted that was taking a lot of time. I'm still satisfied with Clayton Homes.

I told them to bring the trailer out as is, and if ever anything needs to be done to it, I would change it out. I’ve put in some splash guards along the bath wall where the drain stop is and it keeps on sinking. I put a big, kind of a towel, splash guard upon it. It looked nice. But I don’t like the Formica tops on the countertops. There’s a few stuff that I don’t wanna do just yet and I’ll take care of it later, but they have a tendency to pull up from the edges if you bump them. There’s a center island in it that I’m constantly bumping into. My hips bump it when I walk through it, and it’s peeled up some of the edges on it. That’s something I’m dissatisfied about the whole rig. Other than that, in the back, there’s a washer room just off the kitchen there for laundry, and I built a little pantry in there. It blends in with the natural lines of the other house and it seems to flow pretty nicely. So, it looked good.

The overall home buying process through Clayton was easy and really simple. I got a really good salesperson. We had some issues at first with setting up the electricity in there for a very long time. And when the guys would come in to work on it, they would miss a few things because they couldn’t really see it that well. Other than that, we had some permitting issues. The people that set the house up got the address wrong on it, so the salesperson that I had dealt with fixed all that. She was really easy to work with. They also had two customer service ladies that came out. We did a walk-through on the trailer to get it stood up. They asked a lot of good questions and were really helpful explaining about the appliances and everything involved in the house. It was a really good experience. And it was the most painless home purchase I have ever made

When she saw the trailer she fell in love with it but slowly over time the more we discovered things wrong with it we slowly started to hate the trailer. Of course we called the dealership and told them of the problems and they only replied by saying "You bought a demo trailer, and there's no guarantee of anything". They never said that that they would be no guarantee on the trailer. And they should have told us that before we bought it. All we did was get scammed on a Clayton Mobile Home.

We're in our 60s. We're older home buyers, and it's gonna be difficult. We're going to be paying for this thing for the next 20 years, and I just didn’t think the quality was all that. It seemed like we had to call and call and try to get someone to come and do this floor. And I had plans for Easter. I had plans for Thanksgiving last year. And I couldn't have guests over because the floor was screwed up. I told the woman from Clayton, Lorraine, that I'd like to have something done before Passover because I was hoping to have family here. It didn’t get done. It came and passed. And then finally, after I hounded her a little bit, she sent a check for $1,400 for a damn floor that they were only gonna give us $600 for. And we're paying for this for probably the rest of our lives, and I wasn’t happy about that.

I have contacted several people several times. Randy, the guy that sold us the trailer, was hard to get a hold of because his brother passed away. He always had different excuses. And then he called and said, "Well, we're really counting on you giving us a good score because Clayton Homes is gonna be calling you and I'd really like if you'd give us a 10 because this depends on people and stuff." And this was before my floor was even fixed. He wanted us to give him a review of a 10. And that was hurtful, but we got the house and we're grateful to have it. We're very blessed, and I just didn’t think that it was appropriate to be calling and begging for a good review.