I will post more details about my experience on a blog as all of my issues are too long to list here. But here are some main issues. We signed a contract August 2020 and had backfill completed April 2021. It is July 2022 and we're still not done. Our original completion date was Dec 2021 which got moved to Feb 2022 due to a framing beam issue that Reality took 3 months to even address. We had pay to move the beams back to where the floor plans had them originally! April 2022 we only had a few weeks worth of work left so we locked in a rate for our loan due to ever increasing rates. Now we are nearing the end of the 90 days and STILL have a couple weeks left of work to do. Everything takes so long. Reality Homes is very inefficient and it costs the customers. Our change in interest rate alone will cost us $129,718.63 more. This doesn't account for our construction loan payments, rent, etc. We've had price hikes, lumber surcharges, (those two cost over $20k) and so many more little costs that have made this build way more than we originally anticipated. We have caught them overcharging us on many occasions so be sure to keep a watchful eye and ask for a breakdown of the charges when you do change orders. We even caught them charging us more for lumber for the beams than it would have cost us to buy ourselves. When we brought this to their attention they wouldn't let us buy the lumber ourselves to save money. They upcharge their customers for everything. There were inconsistencies with pricing throughout the build (overcharging for a half wall being raised, pony walls, charging 30% in construction mark up verse our 25% on our contract, etc). Luckily my husband and I like math and caught many of these errors. The ones that were written in the contract they fixed. We also noticed an overcharge on our electrical permit because we talked to the permitting office but we never brought this issue up to Reality.
Early on they have you pick out your countertops, cabinets, etc. We picked a cabinet and granite color we liked. Months later we were told they changed the cabinets so we had to pick new ones. None of the new cabinets worked with our granite color so we needed to pick a different level of granite. Had we done this pre construction it would have been an $800 charge but during construction, even though the cabinets and countertops hadn't even been ordered, we paid $5,300+tax and a $250 change order fee. Communication with the office is terrible. They are slow and unresponsive most of the time and often rude with the exception of Savannah. Thankfully we get to communicate mostly with her now.
The trades are getting annoyed with Reality as well. I've talked to several that do not plan on working for Reality again. We asked one of the trades what they bid and what Reality was paying them. Reality was paying them $10-12k and they charged us $20k for the work. So they take a lot of the money instead of paying the trades more and getting better quality work and happier trades.
We've gone through 6 I think? project managers. It's hard to keep them as working for Reality is not worth it for them (their words not mine). The Regional Manager, Ryan, came to our site a couple times and he was awesome. He got the ball rolling on so many issues. Our current project manger seems to care about getting our build done.
There are so many errors we have to be at our house every day to keep an eye on things. Like they forgot to put in an attic access (it wasn't even on the plans), they tried to put carpet in before trim and paint was done, and same with the closet shelving, the drywall mudding had to be redone 3x due to poor quality, they tried putting in the wrong trim, they had to rip out drywall around the windows because Reality didn't let the trade know we were getting full window wrap, a rood leak that took 4 months to repair, I could go on and on. If you go with this company you will want to be very involved in the process. Be prepared to pay way more than you thought and to be just another house $$$ to them. If I had to do this over again I would not work with Reality Homes. If you chose to go with them, I wish you luck. You're going to need it.
**A funny side note, I was on their Facebook page and a woman asked about the process. I responded with what our current timeline was and told her she could message me and I would be happy to share my experience.Reality blocked me from being able to post on their page! All I told her was when we started and how far along we were (which was past completion timeline). read more