help with builder warranty

We bought our van metre built home from an investor. It's about 7 months old. We will be moving in this weekend. I noticed that the windows have not been caulked well, the concrete walkway has a huge crack near the entrance stairs. The basement flooring has many hairline cracks all over. Are these items covered under warranty? who should I contact regarding this? Do I need to wait for the final inspection(11 month) ??
Thanks for your help

 

Every item that you listes should be covered under the 1 year warrenty. The question is did that warrenty move over to you from the invester when you bought it. Your best bet is to contact van metre's customer care and ask them. It can suck working with them but if you become "the squeaky wheel" you will eventually get a response from them. I've learned that if you annoy van metre you tend to get action out of them.

 

Also many cracks will not be fixed. We had cracks in the basement floor but since they were hairline, the warranty does not cover them. It states somewhere in the warranty that bumps in the floor, cracks in the sub floor, and spacing in your wood floors have to be a certain height/width.

 

Well, how's that for kismet. I was going to write about this very topic. We purchased our house from an investor (he flipped it within 2-3 weeks of his initial closing). We were not informed nor did we ask about the warranty (we found out about the 60 day and 11 month warranty checks/repairs only after we closed and got the Homeowners manual). While we have the RWC Warranty, I asked to get the forms for the 60 day and 11 month warranty checks/repairs. I was told that, since we are not the original owner, we don't qualify for the 60 day and 11 month warranty checks/repairs; it is only valid for the original buyer. This burns my britches! That means that any investor can easily neglect poor craftsmanship such as horrendous carpet tacking, drywall nail pops, floor molding that is coming up or poorly built, stairs treads that are not nailed to the stringers, etc since they know they won't be living with them.

I am going to check the RWC warranty but believe that's for structural only. I also think we are covered for heating, electrical, and plumbing for one year. I'll be interested to hear the rest of d_kodali's experience, but I do plan on taking LOstSOul's advice and become a squeaky wheel. It bothers me that I have to do this before Van Metre will stand behind its product. I amd not an unreasonable person asking for different cabinets or appliances. I'm a ticked off new home owner watching my carpet peel away from almost every tacked corner, stair, etc.

As I told the Van Metre Customer Care center, it's just plain wrong.

I'd love to hear similar stories and what you did to get action.

Thanks in advance.

 

for hardwoods, they only fix if the gaps are bigger than a credit card thickness. not sure about cracks, but they won't patch if they are not too wide.

 

Once the owner takes possession of the house, the builder no longer has any responsibility whatsoever for hardwood floors. The "credit card" test determines whether the builder will fix the floor prior to closing</u>. If you already own your home, don't expect any service to your hardwood floors.

 

I'm not sure where you get your information, but we've had our floors worked on several times (much to our shagrin) since we've closed. It will be two years in July and they are still tweeking things.

 

That's what everyone (the VM construction supervisor, the VM QA inspector, etc.) told us during our walkthroughs. We closed in Nov '03 and haven't had major issues with our floors, so we never had any need to try to force the issue.

Maybe we misunderstood the policy or were misinformed about it (not that THAT ever happens!).

 

Does anyone buy an additional warranty after the builder warranty has run out?

When we bought our house just over a year ago - we are the second owners - it came with a 1 year HMS warranty. Does anyone think it is worth renewing?

 

Just chimining in on the hardwood floors--at our 11 month we had some issues with bowing and squeaking and VanMetre was more than willing to call the sub-contractor and have them come out and rip up a section. I declined. It wasn't bad enought to go through the hassle, but we included it on our list so that we could negotiate it off for other things we thought were more important.

Also, we hired a home inspector before our 11 month and it was the best money we ever spent. He discovered several significant and expensive problems-sump pump motor was burned out, 3 inch gaping hole along the roofline where water was coming in, etc. He gave us a comprehensive list with each item tagged to the Loudoun building code. Van Metre was incredibly responsive once they received our warranty list and photographs. They came out, evaluated it (read: negotiate!) and scheduled a date. On the date scheduled they arrived at 8am and worked until nearly 3pm fixing pretty much everything I asked for and then some. Roof was repaired, new sump installed, my oak stairs were stripped and refinished, door locks and knobs adjusted or replaced, outside garage decorative molding replaced, resodded areas, etc. They even recaulked all the cracks around the front porch for us, even though they were not technically covered by the warranty.

This is our second Van Metre home and I must say, a totally different customer service experience than the one we had in 1996. I do agree, that sometimes you have to nag. But our 11 month went smoothly and we were very impressed---I think the home inspection made the difference. They knew we were not messing around.

 

I talked to van metre customer service and they said that the 60 day and 11 month home inspections were complimentary to original first owners only and not transferable. Its adding insult to the injury especially after owning the house after paying such a huge price than the original owner.

They said the RWC is transferable. Now I have to register to see if the problems with my house qualify under RWC.

 

T8ergirl, who was your home inspector?

 

d_kodali,
We got the same response. We are reviewing our RWC Warranty and we'll see what that says (we had to ask to have it mailed to us but have not yet received it). However, we have also taken pictures of the items we'd like taken care of. If the RWC Warranty does not work, I plan on sending a letter to Mr Van Metre and asking him if he would be proud of such craftsmanship. Would he walk someone through our house and say "here's a house I've built and don't you love it!"

First the RWC Warranty check then this. Hopefully, we'll get this take care of in the next few weeks.

 

T8ergirl, who was your home inspector?

 

Same story for us, original owners lived in the house for 3 weeks...our contract in 2004 had an item for the VM warranty...which was our saving grace. However VM Customer Service...wow that's another story...forget about the wheel...we turned out to be the 8ton boulder that wouldn't go away. After ranting for several months, getting a real estate lawyer and another home inspector (keep in mind I am worst than a perfectionist)...what do you know VM sent our 5 crews to fix 200+ items (to include Hardwood, subfloors, windows, roof, outdoor pillar and the list goes on). Dig your heals in, btw..RCW no help...so VM was my target and they did fix 95% of the issues we uncovered. Hope this helps.

 

We encountered the same problem with Miller and Smith. However, we discovered that while M&S didn't transfer the warranty, many of the subcontractors did. In our case, the plumber had made a mistake that required drywall, paint, and tile work afterwards. M&S tried to say they wouldn't coordinate this and the plumber had to have a VP call M&S to point out that the contract they had said that M&S had to do this. It all gets billed back to the contractor responsible for the error; for the life of me I can't figure out why the builders won't do this, it costs them virtually nothing and they create amazing ill will. I suspect this will come back to haunt them as the market softens...

(BTW: someone I know bought a townhouse from Toll Bros and said they transferred the warranty.)

Best regards,
Richard

 

Well, it's been a while but since this has come up again . . .
We did get Vm to fix some issues but only because they fell under the RWC warranty (or at least we "threatened" use of that). We had some water sopt under and over a few windows so VM re-caulked those windows and did some repairs on the roof where it was leaking into the attic.

Just recently we started to notice that some of the floorboard in most of the upstairs room are separating since we can feel the different heights of the wood under the carpet. This is happening in both our son's room, our master bedroom, and the hallway. I think it's starting in one of the upstairs bathroom which will lead to the tile cracking. So, I plan on discussing this with VM but don't think I'll set my sights too high. BTW - on my original list of items, one of them was the fact that, fomr the basement, you could see many many nails that missed the floor joists and my guess is that the same thing happened upstairs. No tongue-n-groove here.

ARRGH!

 

Sorry. I didn't see this post sooner.

House Doctor Consulting
Ted Collins
703.777.9222


He did a great job. He gave us a 20 page report with photos and each deficiency was related to the building code requirement. As I said earlier, it was well worth it. He found a fairly large hole in our roof that eventually would have been big $$$ and he found that our sump pump was not working--something we wouldn't have realized until the basement flooded. VM fixed virtually everything on his report. They were at the house for nearly a whole day checking off every item.

 

When I was dealing with Van Metre with my fist house, they told me that "poor and sloppy workmanship does not fit the requirement for warranty work." How's that for a company standing by their product!!!!!!!

 

WHAT? Well if that does NOT qualify, I'd hate to see what does.