We would not recommend Spectrum Homes in Whitehall PA to build a home. Once final payment was made, we felt they lost interest in our project & did not value us as customers, allowing warranty work to remain unfinished for over 1 year. With Spectrum and its subcontractors giving contradictory reasons for faults we feel their capabilities did not measure up to our project's custom design including questionable levels of craftsmanship, lack of listening to our concerns, not following agreed upon plans, low attention to detail & little empathy.
They offer a Total Quality Assurance Program stating they "care beyond the day you move in" with written claims to schedule warranty work within 30 days, have a final review within 11 months, & close our file in 12 months. None of those milestones were met for us.
We felt project management attention was lacking on the job site including:
* Installation of the wrong siding. They rectified this.
* Deck steps were missed. We noted & they were added at the last minute.
* A set of stairs was not painted. This was rectified after the owner conceded that it should have been done.
* Laundry plumbing & electrical rough in heights were mispositioned not accounting for appliance risers that were repeatedly mentioned & documented. They refuse to fix.
* Sloppy "finish" work: partially caulked window; holes in shower grout; shower threshold pitched outward allowing water to run onto the bathroom floor; uneven kitchen & bath cabinet doors; poor cuts to outdoor deck; flooring miscuts without cover up; cracks, dings & unevenness to trim work; paint drips throughout & varnish spills left to dry on stairs.
On move in day in early March 2023, several issues were discussed at final walk through & we jointly agreed these would be rectified by Spring 2023. We believed Spectrum would act in good faith to honor & complete our project in a timely manner & we paid them in full. By Autumn 2023 work was still unfinished.
Spectrum's owner came to the house in Oct 2023 after we requested a visit. He promised his lengthy list of concerns would be made right. Unfortunately, only a few items were addressed & again work was delayed until Spring 2024 "due to weather" not accounting for indoor items that could have been completed sooner.
In waiting over 1 year & 2 months for Spectrum to address our warranty work, we felt they did not empathize with our biggest & most important concerns. We rarely felt heard, respected & were made to feel that it was an inconvenience to assume a new house would have high levels of professional work & be delivered with timeliness as contracted.
As a result of their disorganization, planning & promises that would wind up changing without notice, times of inflexible communication, "forgotten" discussions leading to multiple occasions of us having to provide documentation of contract agreements & email trails led to our concerns about the integrity of Spectrum Homes. Notably cost-cutting on warranty work, a 2nd well needed to be paid for after we were not notified the 1st one collapsed, being pressured into signing off on completed work not actually done when papers were put in front of us & requesting "our story" for a Google review before the job was done.
Warranty work caused several new damages to concrete, metal beam wrap, mismatched paint was applied & uneven replacement column wrap was installed. On the interior they backpedaled & would not address some work previously agreed to & they worsened already poor situations to our flooring.
In the end, they say it is normal for lights to flicker if the washer or dishwasher is on. In under a year a window cracked & siding came loose. We're told it's normal for countless drywall nails to be loosening on ceilings & walls, windows to not open easily & door weatherstripping to fall off. Spectrum's owner has told us more than once "I have this same problem at my house" & we feel if that's the case, perhaps he should have selected a different builder. read more