Keith Roberts

Review of Lifestyle Home

Beautiful House, Horrible Experience

Beautiful House, Horrible Experience

UPDATE: LifeStyle has made it very difficult to have even the simplest items fixed after we moved in. We are very disappointed with the after-closing experience, and the typical used car salesman response from the building supervisor.

In this review we will try to focus on the facts, not our opinion, with the experience during the building of our new home. We hope this review will help future homeowners out there as we heavily rely on customer reviews when we chose a product or service.

Building a house is said to be one of the most stressful endeavors you could make. We recently completed the construction of a new home in Vero Beach Florida with LifeStyle Homes, and that old saying couldn t be truer!

Base on our experience we would not recommend building a new house, in general, unless you have the time, energy and patience to supervise the building process yourself and to be ready for many confrontations when things were not done as in your signed agreement. You will essentially need to know how to build a house yourself. This could very well be the same scenario with every builder, which doesn t make it right, and these were our experiences.

Custom designed homes: We love LifeStyle s willingness to change house plans to accommodate your needs. LifeStyle was eager to help create our dream home. The design and planning phase with was exceptional. Living 1,500 miles from the build site, we exchanged emails and drawings with LifeStyle almost on a daily basis. They were very responsive to changes and helpful with advice on the floor plan layout. Once the contract was signed, a very busy Indian River County planning board took 6 weeks to approve the plans before building could commence.

Trust, but verify: We went into this venture on the assumption that people are honest. We would take the building supervisor s words as truthful and at face value, and over time learn this was not always the case.

Be on-site: I fortunately work from home and had essentially moved to Vero Beach for over six months to be involved in the building process, to make sure that the house is built as specified in the agreement. I expended a tremendous amount of my own time and energy to monitor the building process, visiting the house every day after work.

A picture tells a thousand words: I documented every corner of the house, literally snapping thousands of pictures and videos, and taking notes of daily activities and conversations in detail. This valuable information was later used more than once to defend concerns to the supervisor and aided in getting things corrected. It also allows us to see behind the walls long after the drywall is installed; placement of plumbing, wiring, location of studs, etc.

A home inspection: We would strongly advise hiring a Home Inspector BEFORE the closing to verify that things have been done properly. We had a few things identified that once reported by a licensed inspector were difficult for the supervisor to simply ignore. The supervisor said they had fixed all reported defects, but upon our re-inspection found that some had not; be vigilant.

Delay closing: I had the advantage of staying in town for as long as it took to complete the construction. This being a second home, we were not confined to a closing deadline and simply asked that the supervisor take your time, do things right . If we had a deadline, we are not sure if the end results would be the same.

Despite the stress and torment we withstood, the end result is a magnificent home that we describe to our friends as living in a luxury hotel. The hard work and perseverance paid off and we are delighted with the product. LifeStyle does truly build an outstanding home and we re proud of what has been achieved. We would love to see that LifeStyle places more focus on training their staff in customer service, monitor the subcontractor's work more closely and be more concerned with getting things done right the first time. Repetitive repairs are very stressful to us as the customer.