K Hovnanian Builders

My siding fell off of my house, also had warped siding. Siding is making a popping sound. My subpump was not installed correctly and had stopped working. Nails in the stairs carpet that hurt. Leaking pipe in basement that needed to be fixed twice. Had a large gap in my molding on kitchen cabinet and air bubbles in another. Caulking in my kitchen and bathroom is already coming apart. I wish I didn't buy a house with this company. If I wanted constant repairs I would have brought a fixer-upper. Not happy with craftsmanship and quality of house. This process has been mentally exhausting. The sales team was excellent though.

* Poorest workmanship: used cheap material that looks good at the surface (so they can justify robbing buyers) and put together by cheap incompetent labor. Within 2 years, cosmetic discrepancies started to surface like trim ungluing, roof tiles/weather strips ripping/bending, etc.

* Worst customer service: had Freon leak in A/C and was reported within the 1-yr warranty period to the builder but was never addressed. So, to maintain comfortable living standards, I annually kept the freon refilled. After 3 different techs making freon-leak hypothesis each year, I finally decided to call this "great" builder. They don't have an address listed online so I could visit that customer relations office and the rep wouldn't give me the address either and insisted I call the A/C installers and have them analyze it and work directly with them.

After her refusing to take ownership for their poor subcontractors, I decided to try reaching out to the installer and of course they were happy to come out to inspect and fix everything for full cost. So, I explained this to the builder rep and she offered to have the manager reach out to me. He was even worse than her, kept denying there was ever a record of my bringing this issue to their attention within the warranty period. When he was out of responses, he asked me instead - "ok, so why didn't you complain about this every year after the 1st year to ME until now?" ... like seriously?! After this, his last response was that I'm out of warranty period and there's nothing he will do to help and I'm free to do whatever about it ... that's right!

Just a few highlights, the plumbing backed up the second day we were in and the basement had 1.2' of sewer water in it. Most every room has substantial cracks in the drywall. Both showers have leaked into the basement, hopefully stopped after 4 fixes, including cutting into walls. Those walls are still waiting to be fixed correctly.

This is only a small part of the list. My wife's favorite was the toilet paper holder laying on the floor because it wasn't installed properly. One of the minor problems, but indicative of the general workmanship. My favorite was the faucet in the Kitchen that almost no cold water came out of, "it is supposed to be that way, it's a faucet designed to meet California's water saving guidelines". Of course not true, the cold water line was plugged with dirt, they cleaned once, but the problem is coming bad two weeks later.

KHOV tells customers that houses built in the winter months months, "WInter Houses", may not have their driveways poured or lawns installed until the weather breaks in the Spring. But as soon as they switch to building "Summer Houses" most work stops on the "winter houses". Homes that were started after we moved in have driveways and complete landscaping, the winter houses are surrounded by mounds of dirt. This was written in late August on a home we closed on in March. Our driveway wasn't poured until mid July. They will tell you it is a rule of the city, this is a lie, anyone can call city hall and get the facts. KHOV does this so they can bill the construction loans on the Summer houses sooner. I believe they cut a deal with the lender they recommend so they get most of their funds on the Winter Houses, without finishing the work.

If you read the reviews on **, they are all glowing. I believe these are fictitious, many for this area refer to employees by name. NO one in this neighborhood has ever run into anyone by any of those names. And it's not that big of a group locally. Do not build with this company, they had a good reputation in the past, but everything in our experience has been very poor. From discussions with neighbors, our experiences have been about the same as others, poor workmanship, repairs take far too long, and employees that don't care if the job is ever done right.

We were forced to close the house with a bully because we needed a house and we could not find anything else within the time frame. We had to wait until our house to close and got all the paperwork so that she could not touch our house and we can finally stand up for ourselves. We wanted to share our experience with you and let you know that she is not a qualified manager and lacked professionalism and training for her job. She is an embarrassment to KHOV.

We bought a new construction house in Cornerstone Farms community located in Lorain, OH. We are first-time home buyers and rely on KHOV’s knowledge of the entire process. Although KHOV did not represent us, it is fair to expect KHOV to provide us with accurate information during this transaction and explain the contract correctly to us. However, two employees from KHOV misrepresented KHOV. When we hope to solve the problem, we were denied. Then we were yelled at, bullied, and threatened by Michelle **.

A. Two employees from KHOV misrepresented KHOV.

When we signed the contract on January 5th, 2021, we were told we could submit a loan commitment letter first and shop around for lenders later. In the contract, it does say we need the seller’s approval if we need to change the lender. We reasonably believed that means they will approve of the change, because we told the sales rep (Steve **) and the loan officer (Brent **) from KHAM (K. Hovnanian American Mortgage) verbally and in a written email that we would change the lender 2 months before closing. Both Steve ** and Brent ** did not say we were doing anything wrong, misrepresenting KHOV.

B. We hoped to solve the problem, but we were denied.

60 days before the closing date, we submitted a request to change the lender, and KHOV denied our request. We simply wanted to change the loan officer, keeping the same lender: Cross Country, with the same loan program, because the other loan officer has a better rate. The sales rep told us his management team simply said, “it was too late” but “we allow you to switch to KHAM”.

The sales rep cannot explain why is it too late. The contract did not specify when it is “too late”. The end loan is the same process as a conventional loan on a resale purchase, and it usually takes 30 to 45 days to close a loan. Cross Country can even close a house within 21 days (refer to 21 Day Home Loan Close Process: **). According to the lenders we talked to (at least 10), all of them confirmed that 60 days was plenty of time.

We also asked why it is not too late for switching to KHAM but not our previously approved lender, and no explanation was provided. The contract shows the purchaser has the right to choose, and the seller has the right to approve whether the lender is qualified. In our lender change request, we requested the SAME lender. We followed the contract to the letter. KHOV limits purchasers' right to choose by funneling the choices to its lender KHAM. It is unethical to only offer one option to purchasers.

Although KHOV can choose to not approve the change request, it is obligated to provide a VALID explanation in writing. If we were not misled by BOTH KHOV employees, we would have committed to a lender at the beginning. The seller should explicitly tell us we should stick with the lender we picked in the first place so we can follow the rules closely.

C. We were yelled at, bullied, and threatened by Michelle **.

We further pursued our request with Michelle **, Ohio’s Director of Sales. This was a three-way phone conversation: the sales rep, my husband and I, and her. She yelled at us, bullied and threatened us with keeping our earnest money and selling the house to someone else. Her unprofessionalism caused the entire purchase experience to feel like a disaster. She did not even greet us. She yelled her first sentence in the phone call, “if you want to change the lender, we will keep your earnest money and sell the house to someone else!”

We explained to her how we were misled with the wrong information at the start, and had provided the sales rep the email proof with the previous conversation. She doubled down and said that employees’ emails to us and verbal communications did not matter. She pointed out it was our fault to believe what sales reps said since there was a contract. I told her that misrepresenting oneself and falling back on a contract was not the way to do business. She argued, “This is exactly how we do business. We go with a contract. What do you expect? Shake hands on the deal?!” Her attitude is an embarrassment to the real estate industry. She is essentially saying that sales reps do not matter and are liars, we customers are idiots for expecting builders to do the right thing. Our attorney says that it is reasonable for us to expect accurate representation from businesses.

She went on to say that according to the contract, KHOV was fulfilling it and we were the ones about to breach it. We asked why we were allowed to change to KHAM, but she denied it and yelled that we could not switch and the sales rep told us incorrectly. She also yelled at the sales rep in front of us during the phone conversation. It is unprofessional to throw your employees under the bus, especially when they are following your orders.

We asked her why we could not switch. She grew angrier and said that the loan was complicated and needed to go through the underwriting process, and the loan commitment letter showed that there were funds for the constructions. If we switch, there would be no funding for the construction. We told her our new loan was in the underwriting process and we would get the loan commitment letter in a few days. We asked at that point if we could switch. She was frustrated and said we could not switch to anyone. We did not understand why we could not substitute one loan commitment with another because the two loans were in the same progress. She could not explain, so she simply threatened us again to keep our earnest money and sell the house to someone else if we wanted to switch the lender.

At the very end, she finally asked why we wanted to change lenders. We told her we shopped for rates and found a better deal. It was the same loan, same company, just a different lender. She stressed the only choices we have were to 1) keep the current lender or 2) give up the house and earnest money. We ended up hiring an attorney to review the contract, and the contract never said we were not allowed to switch lenders! She showed that with KHOV, customers are always right until we pay the earnest money and got the loan approval. After that, it was up to them to interpret the contract.

While we understand that the KHOV’s purchase agreement is one-sided and protects KHOV (switching lenders is up to KHOV’s approval), but by denying our request when there is plenty of time, she is going out of the way (either out of spite or laziness) to hurt us. (When you join a gym, and the contract states that the gym is not liable if customers are injured, gym employees do not purposely try to hit customers with dumbbells.)

We filed the complaint with Attorney General, BBB and wrote reviews on social media to publicly warn potential customers. We also told our friends and family about this unfortunate experience. We will not recommend KHOV to anyone while Michelle ** is the director of sales for KHOV. We want KHOV to know one should never talk to customers like that and should never talk to anyone like that.

They kept changing their story and trying to go around me and again had no formal review process of paperwork involved. After KHov denied me I got pre-approval same day from another lender who felt KHov was doing shady business and still KHov void my agreement and wanted me to be homeless as I was already scheduled to move to Houston Texas from another state. Be careful of doing business with KHov. They are racist and want to keep minorities out of their communities and I will be filing a complaint as this is Breach of fair lending laws as I am being discriminated against.

From start to finish I would say KHOV work is subpar. Absolute low quality. The day of closing I had people inside my home without my knowledge. Using the bathroom. The entire house has issues in every room. There is no quality or care in their work at KHOV. Seems rushed and thrown together. 13 months to build and I still don’t have the refrigerator that I purchased with the home. Also my home is damaged inside. Looks like a couple year old house. When it should look new! The baseboards/trim is chipped/scraped in every room of the house. The drywall has holes, dents. Scratch's in the sink, chipped tiles in the master, squeaky floors in the master and stairs. Cosmetic issues everywhere and when mentioned to KHoV they just act like it’s no big deal and it’s normal. Let me tell you guys. THAT IS NOT NORMAL.

To move into a brand new house and need to have every vendor come back within two weeks to make fixes. Seems like KHOV likes to wait till the end to fix things to see what they can get away with. After I closed I now have to have pretty much every vendor come back to fix what should have already been done. You guys had 13 months to build this home. It truly has been a horrible experience from the very beginning. I purchased a brand new home because I figured I wouldn’t have to move in and work on the home.

Well I’m working on the home since day one of move in. I have countless issues. The house cosmetically is beat up everywhere. I had the project manager in my house on closing day doing repairs. I’m not happy at all with KHOV. I feel they are a terrible company. I truly recommend building with someone else who truly takes pride in their work. We will see if they make right with what needs to be fixed but right now I’m tired of having them come back 2-3 times to fix one job that should have been fixed before I closed on the home. BUYERS BEWARE! The project manager will try to take advantage of you!

For a first time home buyer-this was not what we had in mind. It's safe to say we will not buy NEW again. It's been a headache getting things fixed that shouldn't needed attention a day after moving in. Walls were scuffed, flooring coming up, windows scratched, a torn screen door, unfinished cabinets, a month after living here-a cabinet door fell off, chipped backsplash-which we are still waiting to have fixed. Hindsight, we read some reviews for homes bought back east, but had we found more open and honest reviews for Fresno, CA we would not have built with K. Hov. The sales agent was great, friendly, and SO kind when we discovered it wasn't the house we loved, but they tried to make it up to us as much as possible, but it was like a very bad breakup. Do your research, have them explain EVERY detail so you can avoid a fiasco like ours. Happy hunting!