TL;DR - do NOT buy a Westin Home…read more
We've lived in our new build Westin Home for a little over 3 years and have had nothing but problems since before we even moved in. Our problems started with our project manager, Zach. Anytime we met for a walk through, he refused to write any issues down so naturally they were never fixed. We would routinely mark up problem areas with blue and green tape, then the next time we would go to the house, the tape was removed but the problem was not fixed.
We discovered many, many more problems when we got our house reinspected (by a different company than we used before closing) after 9 months so that any serious issues could be fixed while the home was still under the builder warranty. The two biggest issues were:
1. Nearly every window in the house had to be replaced because there were manufacturer defects in them that were either not noticed or ignored during the initial installation
2. A gas leak in our attic. Yes, A GAS LEAK IN OUR ATTIC
I called the Westin office to make them send out the plumber and it took multiple attempts within a one hour time period to finally reach someone. When they did send someone out, they sent out the same crappy company that had installed it incorrectly to fix it. I don't remember the name of the company but they had a less than 3 star rating on Google.
We've also had a plethora of problems with our AC unit. Their company, Houk, came out to work on it a couple times and still it wasn't cooling. We finally gave up on them and called our own company who figured out it was a part inside the unit that was defective, which was covered under the manufacturer's warranty but because we weren't using the original installer, we would have to cover the labor. Considering the original installer was never able to correctly diagnose the problem, we bit the bullet and paid the $1500 because I didn't trust Houk to do it properly. We later had to have the capacitor on that same unit replaced.
We recently started getting quotes to have our master shower redone because some of the grout in the shower is falling apart, the door keeps falling off its hinges, and the floor was never done properly. It looks like they ran out of spacers and just started putting tiles down because there's whole rows of tiles that are butted up next to each other with little to no grout in between. Where those tiles meet, they aren't flat on the floor as they should be, but slightly lifted. It's borderline dangerous and I'm honestly surprised we have managed to avoid cutting our feet in the shower for 3 years. One of the remodelers we contacted for a quote declined our business because "the original quality of craftsmanship is too poor." Based on the tile work, he expected there to be additional, worse problems behind the walls. Whether that's the case or not remains to be seen but it honestly would not surprise me if that turned out to be true.
You can tell by looking at our home that Westin cheaped out on a lot of things. For instance, none of our hardware/fixtures match. The downstairs faucets are all black, the upstairs faucets all chrome but all the doorknobs through the house are brushed nickel. The half bath randomly has white cabinets when all the other bathrooms have brown. Our gas cooktop only has 4 burners, when 5 seems to be standard now. And the large burners, as in the ones you would be most likely to use, are in the back. Our microwave won't even pop a bag of popcorn correctly. We already replaced the dishwasher because it sounded like a jet engine in our kitchen. Try watching TV or sleeping with that going! I looked up the models they gave us on the Home Depot website and unsurprisingly, they were the cheapest Whirlpool options.
I know some design is a matter of personal preference but it seems like whoever picked the colors for this house were colorblind. We have two different shades of gray tile in the bathrooms and neither ones goes with the cabinet color at all. They make it extremely hard to decorate.
I'm sure as we live here longer, we'll discover more problems, I just hope none of them end up being structural.
We're not planning to move because we love our lot and we love our neighborhood but I regret buying this house. I will never buy another Westin Home. Luxury prices for less than DR Horton quality.