This Lennar Homes review comes from a homeowner in Winter Garden, Florida and was originally posted on the ConsumerAffairs review website. I made some minor formatting and grammatical changes to the review. I added relevant links to similar Lennar construction defects I experienced to add additional context.
“We purchased a Lennar Home in Winter Garden, FL back in October 2016. The final warranty repair items from our hit list were literally just finished last week.
It took Lennar 19 months to fix the warranty repair items in our home!
Let me tell you, if the homeowner doesn’t stay on top of Lennar getting things completed, they never will be done. Their Customer Care Reps that handle the post-closing items are absolutely inept, ill-trained and cannot coordinate trade repairs. There is absolutely zero quality control on Lennar to ensure the trades are doing the proper repairs and quality work.
Our warranty repair hit list was moderate. Most items were very easy fixes for the respective trades to complete. The largest items on our list were the Lennox central A/C evaporator coil that was defective (class action lawsuit) and the 1×12 trim on the staircase. The evaporator coil in the Lennox A/C unit began to leak approximately 6 months after we closed. We noticed the air conditioner would run constantly and never cycle off. The inside temperature would never drop to the set thermostat temp.
We discovered that many other Lennar homeowners in our community had or were having the same problem.
Research uncovered a class action lawsuit for faulty evaporator coils from Lennox. Ours was replaced under warranty. The company that installed the original HVAC unit was called out to replace the evaporator coil. I was present with the technician as he tested the coil and found it to be leaking from a few areas. Rust began to form on the coils. After replacing the evaporator coil, the technician left a mess for us to clean! (Del-Air).
The other huge undertaking for Lennar was the replacement of the staircase trim. It was originally cut too short at the top stair riser. I could put my hand between the trim and the stair riser!
Lennar’s first idea to remedy the problem was a short-cut, to say the least. They wanted to have a carpenter cut a sliver of wood and somehow attach it to the trim to fill the void. The second idea was to install small pieces of trim on every stair riser (so they all match). I wanted it fixed correctly, and stood firm on them replacing it properly. This all took place in October 2017. The carpenter trade they used was New England Trim.
They started the project by delivering one piece of 20′ MDF 1×12 trim to our home (we should have received two).
That piece of trim sat in our home from October 2017 until April 2018 before Lennar’s Customer Service Rep finally (after my constant calling) started to schedule the repair.
Another huge problem is that the Customer Service Rep doesn’t have enough respect for us to check with us first prior to scheduling the trades to show up and work. I missed work hours because of Lennar! New England Trim must have some of the worst carpenters. It took them two attempts to get the kneeboard installed, and still failed.
While @Lennar Customer Care sometimes tries to address some issues, it is extremely disturbing that construction workers show up on your property without notification. #lennar seems to keep the right to do what they want when they want. Can you respect privacy? @LennarMiamiFL
— Tarkan Kocoglu (@Tookbank25) April 18, 2018
They also only attempted to replace six of the eleven spindles which did not even match the original ones that were installed. The trim nails weren’t countersunk in the MDF and the paint never adhered to the fake wood. The carpenters wanted to fill a 1/4″ gap from the bottom of the MDF to the top of the trim with caulking!!!
We had one side of kneeboard trim the original pine wood, and Lennar attempted to replace the other side with MDF which is fake (pressed) cardboard. This repair would have been so easy to a trained professional carpenter! Lennar eventually had to dismiss New England Trim and use DriRite to complete the install of another piece of pine wood. DriRite did a decent job on the install.
One other point I want to make is how irresponsible Lennar is in the quality control over the construction. As we were already living in our new home, other homes were still in the construction phase.
At one point, my wife’s black car was parked on the street in front of our home. Lennar’s painters began priming a house across the street on a windy day unbeknownst to us. My wife went out to find her car covered in smurf blue overspray! Would it have taken much for the painters to knock on a door or two and advise us to move the car??? Or perhaps Lennar taking the responsibility to inform those homeowners in the immediate area when they are scheduled to paint? Of course not!
Lennar never took responsibility for the damage to our vehicle’s paint.
We found this to be extremely discourteous, irresponsible and ultimately disrespectful to us and the other homeowners that suffered the same damage to their vehicle!
My advice to anyone set on purchasing a Lennar home, be vigilant and know that you are going to have to battle this builder to do the right thing.
Lennar is NOT going to step up and do the right thing for you!
Your pre-closing walk-through is going to be the most important day (or two) of the purchase. Look at EVERYTHING!!! They want to close on the home so they will repair items quickly.
After you close, they forget all about you, nor do they care about fixing your warranty items. Quite possibly look into other better quality builders.
Bad week for @Lennar. Our warranty contact was extremely rude to me last Friday, half our items aren’t finish, no front yard (still), and I left 3 messages with corporate and never heard back. Just laughable how bad this company is. pic.twitter.com/BV8W8uFBFk
— Brian Pontarelli (@bpontarelli) May 13, 2018
