Lennar Tampa Call Center Initial Contact - False Sense of Hope?

After I found out that it would be impossible to sell my home at fair market value, I contacted the Lennar Tampa call center. Here’s what happened.

As you can imagine, I have no desire to be in this Lennar home any longer. It’s been a nightmare. It’s impacted every aspect of my life, including my health.

I purchased this home as an investment. According to the current market, I have close to 200% equity in the house. However, if I want to sell it, I would have to sell it for MUCH LESS than I paid for it. Yes – that’s how bad and extensive the construction issues are in my Lennar home.

On February 14, 2017, I met with yet another realtor. After walking through all the outstanding defects, I was told again that it would be impossible to sell my home anywhere near market value. If I really wanted to sell it, it would most likely have to be a short sale.

Several realtors indicate that even if all the construction problems are fixed (never likely), because of Florida disclosure laws:

It would be difficult to get a mortgage so that would make any prospects likely cash-buyers.
I would need to sell it well-below market value.
Any cash-buyer might still have difficulty obtaining insurance.

So in other words, I was told I was stuck. That’s not my fault. I was done and I wanted my life back.

Call to Lennar Tampa call center

On February 17th, 2017, I called the Lennar Tampa Customer Call Center. After speaking with a fantastic agent, I was connected Joe Fulghum, a leader in the call center. I am not sure of his title, but I thought it was Vice President or Director.

After explaining my situation, Joe assured me he was going to get the right people involved and he would contact me soon.

The call started at 2:33 PM and lasted 25 minutes. I felt a sense of relief.

lennar-homes-initial-call-customer-care-feb

After a 25 minute call with the Lennar Tampa call center, I felt a sense of relief. The experience was much different than Lennar customer care through Twitter. This is also where the roller coaster begins.

Mr. Fulghum was a man of his word. I received a response very quickly.

Initial email from Mark Metheny, Lennar Division President

On February 17th, 2017 at 3:23 PM, I received my first of many emails from Mark Metheny, Lennar Division President (here is his LinkedIn profile). Here is the email:

“Mr. Fannin – I understand you’ve reached out to Joe Fulghum with Lennar. I run the local operations for lennar [sic] and would like to coordinate a time to meet with you, along with our Director of Construction, Steve Smith & Director of Customer Care, Jim Yeadon.

Are you available any of the following:
Monday 2/27 at 2pm
Thursday 3/2 at 1pm

Or if you’re not available to meet during the daytime, we can try to coordinate evening or weekends.”

My response to Mark Metheny’s email

Just reading it gave me a sense of relief. I responded at 6:48 PM with this email:

“Mr. Metheny-

Thank you so very much for the response and time to meet. I am very much looking forward to an open discussion.

I am so sorry to ask, but is there any possible way we could arrange for the coming week? Tuesday-Thursday I have flexibility to move around as we are doing internal build projects.

Let me know if there might be some flexibility and can work to accommodate over the weekend.

I can also prepare electronic sheets for everyone to make our time as productive as possible. If you have not yet been in the neighborhood, I am also happy to give you a tour.

Thank you all, and looking forward to it.
Kris”