It has taken me nearly five months to write a review because I was so overwhelmed and angry that I wanted to make sure I was giving an accurate review, and not an emotional one. Here is what you need to know before working with Walker Home Design:
1. If you have never built a home before, make sure you talk with at least 2-3 architects before making a decision. You will find that Walker Home is much more "commercial" in that it seems to spend more time marketing than actually working with clients. Although you meet with Jamie, he assigns most of the architectural work to his team, so you have to be aware that things will often be miscommunicated. We were unaware of this going into it and it was frustrating that it seemed nothing we had communicated was translating to the plans (for example, we asked for a full brick house and the elevations didn't have a single brick on them). What this ultimately means is that you are likely to waste time unnecessarily to correct things.
2. Speaking of timelines, because Walker Home Design is more commercialized, they put you on a routine schedule where you meet every two weeks to go over progress. No changes will be made until the night before you meeting so you will not have a lot of time to think through them before your meeting the next day. When working with other architects, we found that they would respond much faster (sometimes within minutes) and gave us multiple options for our floor plan. This is a major flaw in the Walker Home system. The team doesn't communicate effectively and there is a disconnect with the client. Takeaway: you should only work with Walker if you love their existing floor plans and don't plan to do a custom plan, or if you are an experienced home builder and can very clearly (and frequently) communicate your needs.
3. Don't buy the sales pitch that Walker's architectural design is going to offset his high fee by reducing the cost of building. We literally spoke with 9 different builders and NOT ONE agreed with this. And contrarily, two of them voiced the opposite (that their plans end up being more expensive to build). Jamie is someone I've known since my childhood, and I felt confident in working with him because I assumed he was honest and cared about my family. He did not.
We decided to cut ties with Jamie and lose our deposit because the plan he had presented was so far from what we actually wanted. We lost over $5000 in deposit and he tried to come after us for an additional $2500. The house his team had designed was not even close to what we had discussed. I was crying because I disliked it and didn't want to build it. Jamie got nasty and threatened a lawsuit. In addition, he tried to make me feel like I was dishonest. Later, he tried to come back and tell me that he cared and still wanted to try to correct the plans (for an additional $5000). We decided that we were not confident that Walker would be able to give us a plan we liked enough to build. We ended up going with another architect who was a great listener, responded quickly, and gave us everything we asked for (and had great suggestions for improvements). Jamie did not seem to be creative or problem-solving. When we presented problems with the plan, he shrugged them off and basically told us that we had too many constraints. Our new architect helped us to prioritize our needs and come up with alternatives that allowed us to have exactly what we wanted in our new home. I honestly think the reason Walker Home Design requires a 50% deposit is to discourage their clients from walking away when they get frustrated. No other architect we spoke with requires a $5000 deposit. Our new architect only asked for $500. We ended up spending the same amount we would have spent had we gone with Jamie, but we are much, MUCH happier with our plans from the new architect. read more
