Strong builder incentives does not a good home make

First let me start off this post by saying I'm not a KHov hater! The information I found was strictly by accident; I got a laugh out of it so I figured I'd share it. Anyway, one of the local Tucson home builders, K Hovnanian, has been advertising a promotion called "Homes for Heroes", which offers a 3% discount to military veterans. I haven't been by the "K Hov" home site lately so I googled them to get more information, and was surprised by the search results that came up for this builder.

K Hov is currently building homes in Oro Valley and Vail, and is a popular builder due to their competitive pricing. The Somerset Canyon community in Oro Valley is nearly complete, and they've began building in the Torreno community as well. The incentives being offered on some of the homes are great; I know one individual that backed out of an existing contract with another builder to buy a K Hov inventory home because the deal was so good (a little crazy IMHO). So I was surprised when I googled K Hov and found some of the first web results to be individual sites protesting the builder. As a real estate agent I'm familiar with the various builder's reputations, but seeing some of these sites made me laugh. In the top three search results I found http://www.khovsucks.com/ , which appears to be an aggravated K Hov home buyer that's lashing out at the world. It doesn't have a lot of substance but it's kind of funny so I would advise checking it out anyway.

The second site I found in my K Hov search results was a consumer resource site called Not-KHOV.com , and it's goal is to warn potential buyers about K Hov construction and business practices. There's some interesting info on this site as well.

My goal here is not to bad mouth K Hov, but to advise home buyers to really check out a home builder before they sign on the dotted line. Sometimes builder incentives seem like they're too good to pass up, and builders count on people seeing their beautifully decorated models and buying emotionally. Just remember that no matter who the home builder is, there's a good chance that at least a few buyers are going to have some problems with their homes. You can't expect perfection, that's why home builders offer warranties on their products (although sometimes those warranties are pretty worthless). I found a site called Homeowners for Better Building , and it provides some nifty info about different home builders and consumer complaints against them. It might give you some idea of builder reputations, but take the information with a grain of salt. The best way to find out who's reliable is to ask around. Most homeowners know who the best builders are in their town, and real estate agents should know this information as well.