Homes by Avi, Stepper Homes or Excel Homes?

[Alberto]

First of all, I wish to all of you that 2014 to be the best year of your life!
Secondo, for next year I am looking to build a new house with one of the 3 builders mentioned in the title. Any suggestions? JD Power kills Excel Homes, are they really that bad?
I live in Cochrane, maybe someone will have a success/horror story in relation with their own episode.

Thanks, and peace on Earth!

[benyl]

Stepper is supposed to be the best bang for the buck.

[turbotrip]

homes by avi

[tch7]

Avi built my townhouse (coming up on a year old).
They've generally been good, although I've been nagging them since May to fix my eavestrough, but I think the issue there is their contractor since they've been responsive with everything else.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[UndrgroundRider]

Excel built my house and the wife and I have been very happy with it. In fact, not only are we happy with the house, we were happy with the company. We purchased a month before they ran a pretty big promotion. They later gave us the promotion deal even though we had already signed our purchase contract and they were under no obligation to do so.

I found all of the staff very friendly, from the sales to the warranty guys.

Honestly, I don't have a single bad thing to say about my experience. (Which is pretty rare, I'm high maintenance when that kind of money is on the line.)

[Kloubek]

I built with Centrex... which is owned by Excel and the build quality was really silly in a few areas, but overall not bad. The biggest complaint I have: Their fixes to the issues I brought up were equally as substandard as the issue was in the first place, and virtually all "fixes" have failed.... making me left to fix it properly as per my original suggestions to them that they failed to heed. Kinda frustrating.

I almost bought an AVI home instead, and the build quality actually looked pretty good on that place on two viewings.

[anomaly2]

Stepper Homes was good when our house was built, good service and repairs done.

[R!zz0]

Heard some bad stories about Excel. Than again you'll probably hear that about every other builder.

Happy New Year :)

[rharko]

We are building with Excel right now and it has been nothing but problems. They have had to redo so much stuff and there is still lots that they have to fix and we are suppose to do our final walkthroughs really soon.

[TL911]

Never ever build with Excel! I built my first home that I currently live in and there were A LOT OF PROBLEMS! I can further elaborate but it would take me a few hours to write all their mistakes and how they much they suck.

worst builder ever.

[prosh]

I have a Stepper home and it was built back in 2003. Bought it used but I have nothing but good things to say about the craftsmanship and build quality of our house. Of the 3 builders listed, I'd build with Stepper first.

[conschoi]

don't build with excel except if you wanna argue with them everyday about the little mistake \they made which they are not willing to fix.

but i gotta say the after service people are a lot more helpful than the contractor or sub - contractor who build your house. over all i wouldn't build with excel ever again

[Lex350]

I built with Stepper a ways back. The house turned out ok but it was hell getting them to do it properly. They tried to cut corners all the way through the build and I kept calling them on it. It was not a pleasant experience.

[Alberto]

Hey, thanks all for keeping the info coming... One thing for sure, Excel is off the list!

[Ntense_SpecV]

Originally posted by rotten42
I built with Stepper a ways back. The house turned out ok but it was hell getting them to do it properly. They tried to cut corners all the way through the build and I kept calling them on it. It was not a pleasant experience.

As much as I was smitten with Stepper when we first purchased from them (prebuilt spec house), now that the house is 3 years old, I'm finding more and more little corners that were cut from initial build.

Things like bad finishing with trim (they used lacquer finish for all door/window casing) is starting to delaminate in small portions, and how in our master bath the grout is cracked in large portions of the floor (never should happen). Are the small things easy to deal with...sure I guess, but like all builders it comes down to the trades and super that controls them.

All in all, I would recommend that you don't buy a prebuilt new home if you can help it, that way if things go sideways you can rectify this during the build as opposed to trying to do something after the fact.

[TurboK]

Alberto, did you end up choosing a builder?