Pulte Homes

Two weeks later, the contractor showed up with more than 300 sq ft of flooring to redo our kitchen. I asked, why would you show up with this much flooring if there is one spot buckling? he replied, “They didn’t tell you? This unit had severe water damage before it closed.” We were not told. In fact Pulte and our builder lied directly to our face about this. Just before closing, while installing pantry shelving Pulte builders nicked the water line to our fridge. This led to an over-weekend flood of our finished first floor and standing water that soaked into the drywall, doors, and finishes.

Pulte, lifted a couple planks turned a fan on, replaced the molding to hide the soaked drywall and proceeded to close with us about 2 weeks later. The floor technician told me they had product in a warehouse for our unit because they were “waiting to hear from us”. When I discovered the wet concrete under our floor boards in July I asked them to remove all of the flooring- we found soaked concrete. We pulled the molding off, found crumbling drywall.

We lived on concrete, dusted floors with a dehumidifier until September 2021, when they finally had the material in to replace the water damaged floor. During that time, I requested compensation for the cost of our mortgage payments while living in construction. Pulte refused and said the best they could do was a $100 gift card.

I have been in conversations between our lawyers for over a year at this point. Pulte still owes us thousands from when we lived in a hotel for 10 days while they remediated the unit. They finally released the restoration images to us and turns out for the first 3 months in our brand new home, we were living with growing mold.

Pulte had NO intention of informing us of the damage THEY caused while building our home. I discovered (luckily) early on what they had done. The evidence of them trying to hide this (from ordering addition supplies to “hold just in case” specific to our unit) proves they knew there would be a claim. They were going to just pull the floor up and replace it had I not called inspection in to find the level of damage to our walls and doors. This would have left the mold growing in our walls. Almost everything on our first floor was torn out and replaced. (You can see the map of damage in the drawing)

Now, Pulte refuses to share completion of work documents and has been pressuring us into an NDA without it. We have asked for compensation for the time we lived in concrete and mold, our pay for relocation and legal fees. Pulte barely answers our lawyer and refuses to help with the future damage in equity this has on our unit (stigma damage).

I want to protect other local residents from this horrible company. If they built your house, get it checked. If you’re looking to build, do NOT go with them. They have not compensated us for the damage and TIME spent remediating this mistake, and we will continue to pursue legal action so they are held accountable.

My second advice is to be there at the construction site daily, and DO NOT believe your construction supervisor when you point out an issue and he says he will take care of it. You have to keep on them, and continually verify that it is done, or they will just try to cover up the issue -- literally! While it is hard to say to them, "Do not go on to the next phase until this is fixed," because you want your house to be done on time, but that is what you have to do. TAKE HUNDREDS OF PICTURES of every pipe, wire, wall, floor and ceiling from every angle, and at each stage of the process, so you have proof in case something breaks later.

Thirdly, do not assume that Pulte is looking out for your best interests by protecting any of the materials during construction. I could go on and on about this, but they will leave doors, molding, wall board and other materials out in the rain or in the humidity, with no protection. It will get damaged, warped, and moldy (here in the South), but they will install it anyway. You have to protect those materials yourself. Have rolls of plastic to cover up things, and take dated pictures of anything left out in the elements, even in the garage, to show proof that the item's storage was mishandled. Since workers pull off the protection, it often has to be put back on daily.

Finally, get a professional inspector. Don't let Pulte say "It isn't necessary." It absolutely is necessary! Pulte listens to inspectors (your own and from the county, who just checks safety basics). NEVER believe that Pulte's "inspectors" are looking out for your interests. They aren't. Make sure your own inspector is there to check each major stage of construction. This is critical, since the inspector knows what problems to look for, and can document the problem. Our inspector found things like missing outlets, improperly wired switches, an unfinished open vent in the attic (which would have caused us to forever cool the attic space), missing insulation, poorly aligned lights and ceiling vents, warped walls, broken tiles, etc.

So, take care. I have built four homes, and it seems like the subcontractors are getting worse as time goes on, so keep an eye on things, because Pulte won't. It will be extremely frustrating, because most of the Pulte subcontractors don't speak English (or act like they don't), so you cannot communicate with them. They come in for a couple days to do everything on their list at once, and by the time your Pulte supervisor shows up to look at the problem you have found, that crew will be off to another community, so everything will come to a standstill (sometimes for weeks) until someone on that crew can come back to fix the problem. Surely, the Pulte people themselves will do nothing to fix it. So very frustrating!

One of my final pet peeves with Pulte is that they do not keep a clean construction site. They say they do, but don't believe it. Visit some homes under construction. You will see that it is a junkyard throughout the process, and I believe that leads to mistakes and construction being done poorly. But that's just me.

Rats find their way to the house through point of entry. Hauls in the frame of the house. Pulte warranty unit is made of people use terms like "made to specifications" "not under warranty" "you left the door open" "my VP will not agree to this" or simply do not respond. I emailed the CEO of Pulte and their top 20 executives. None of them has the decency to understand how it is like to see your own kids frightened of dead rats. Kids and their mother vomit constantly. Kids cry and sleep hungry day in and day out because they are afraid the food got touched by rats.

I paid $650000.00 for a Pulte house that ended up being a nightmare investment. Warranty and customer service is part of the contract but in reality the staff in the warranty department do only what their VP ask them to do. That is to say: to screw new home owners". The AC show reading 73F in some parts of the house and 85F in other areas. Technicians visited the house tell me they know exactly how to fix the AC air flow- their management along with Pulte customer service don't want fix anything.

There is absolutely no excuse for doing things right the first time, but Pulte's philosophy is we don’t give a ** about quality we care about quantity, put them up as fast as possible and worry about issues later. It truly is disgusting what Pulte is claiming and then what they are actually delivering, a substandard home, lousy building, cheap materials, lack of empathy and truly horrendous customer service. Pulte you should ashamed of yourself as an organization and the product you put out.