Dealing with KHOV's Michelle Arocho is a nightmare!…read more
TLDR: If you want to be misled, and have a large builder beating you over the head with their contract, then build with KHOV! Specifically, Michelle Arocho, Ohio's Director of Sales, will yell, bully and threaten you with keeping your earnest money and cancelling your contract if you try to ask for explanations or point out their mistakes.
We were forced to close the house with a bully because we needed a house and we could not find anything else within the time frame. We had to wait until our house to close and got all the paperwork so that she could not touch our house and we can finally stand up for ourselves. Now we have to remember that we bought a house from a bully forever.
When we signed the contract, we were told we could submit a loan commitment letter first and shop around for lenders later. In the contract, it does say we need the seller's approval if we need to change the lender. We reasonably believed that means they will approve of the change, because we told the sales rep and the loan officer from KHAM (K. Hovnanian American Mortgage) verbally and in a written email that we would change the lender 2 months before closing. No one said we were doing anything wrong.
Then we submitted a request to change the lender 60 days before the closing date, and KHOV denied our request. We simply wanted to change loan officers, keeping the same lender and same loan program, because the other loan officer had better rates. The sales rep simply said, "it was too late" but "we allow you to switch to KHAM". We asked why it is not too late for switching to KHAM but not our previously approved lender, and no explanation was provided.
We further pursued our request with the regional director of sales, Michelle Arocho, who started by yelling and threatening us that if we change the lender, KHOV will keep our earnest money and sell our house to someone else, because it would be a breach of contract. We told her we were misled with wrong information to begin with, and even offered to show her our emails to her sales rep and KHAM. She doubled down and said that employees' emails to us and verbal communications do not matter. According to the contract, KHOV is fulfilling it and we are the ones about to breach it. We asked why we were allowed to change to KHAM, but she contradicted her sales rep and said we could not. She threatened that the only choices we have are to keep the current lender or give up the house and earnest money.
Why even hire sales reps if what they say don't matter? To KHOV, the contract is the only thing that matters throughout the process. Unfortunately, this means the sales department is free to promise anything they want, and we buyers are responsible for the consequences.
She is presenting that with KHOV, customers are always right until we give them the earnest money (deposit). After that, only the contract is right! Be prepared to be yelled at and threatened if you are about to talk to her.