As you well know, selecting a builder is an integral part of the house building process. We took the selection process very seriously and took our time to ensure that we choose the builder that we felt was the best fit for our needs. Our objective was to select a builder that:
- Builds a great house
- Has a good reputation
- Offers a fair price
- Provides outstanding customer service
With these objectives in mind, we set out to choose a builder. From the very beginning, we decided to build a semi-custom* house instead of a custom* house since we felt that building a custom house will be time consuming and will require a lot of effort. We looked at 5 semi-custom home builders**: Sekas Homes, New Dimensions, Stanely Martin Custom Homes, the ANV Group and Classic Homes of VA.
During the builder review period, we visited builders' web sites, visited model homes and/or open houses and had extensive discussions with the builders to make sure we understand what they had to offer. When we walked through model homes, we asked detailed questions to understand which items were standard features and which ones were upgraded features. In order to easily keep track of what we saw and to make sure we have everything organized, we used spreadsheets to document the detail of each house visit and each discussion. We negotiated with the builders to make sure we get the best price for the upgraded features we were interested in.
After two and half months of a rigorous review process, we selected the ANV group to build our house. We chose ANV for the following reasons:
- ANV builds great houses in the price range we were looking for. Sekas Homes also builds very nice houses but their price is much more expensive than ANV's. ANV's price was not the cheapest but we felt that they provided the best value.
- ANV has a large selection of floor plans that we could select from. With the number of floor plans that ANV has in its portfolio and it's Mix and Match option for the exterior elevation, we felt that we could easily build the house that we like.
- ANV's customer service during the builder selection process was unmatched, it was far superior to its competitors. ANV allowed us to walk through their homes multiple times. In addition to visiting homes during open houses, we were able to setup private appointments to walk through homes. The vice president of sales spent many hours walking us through the homes and explaining every little detail about every part of the house. He patiently answered all our questions and provided us outstanding customer service. We also got the chance to meet the owner of ANV very early in the process and it was clear to us that outstanding customer service is a culture of the company which starts at the very top of the organization.
* A custom house is a house where the home owner works with an architect to design the floor plan from scratch and selects all building materials to be used during construction. A semi-custom house is a house where the home owner works with a builder that has a portfolio of floor plans and selects one of the floor plans and modifies it slightly to fit his/her needs.
** Some of the builders were recommended to us by our real estate agent (Sekas Homes, Stanley Martin), some we found by driving around in McLean VA and seeing their company sign on the sites they were building (ANV group) and some were recommended by co-workers (Classic Homes of VA and New Dimensions).
I have no connection with any of these builders but agree with the article's assessments. ANV is not cheap but they bring tremendous overall value, and get you fairly close to what you will want in the end. Review and make changes to the build contract very carefully! This is critical with ALL builders. ANVs finishes are beautiful and add tremendous value. Their staff is top-notch, but they are slow. It will take 7 - 9 months minimum AFTER your building permits come out from the County. Make sure your construction loan takes this into account or else you will suddenly owe alot of money with no house to live in. Visit the site often. Don't expect perfection. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteGood to hear that you had good experience with ANV. I have a contract with them to build a new house. The house will be starting soon and I will post my experience as we go. Currently we are having disagreement on who should pay for something that was missed because of builder's miscommunication. Stay tuned.
ReplyDeleteWould you mind sharing what that might be? I am currently going through the permit process and my experiences have not been as nice as the person that started the blog.
DeleteSeveral issues - my houses is under construction in Great Falls and I will post my experience here and on Angie's list once the house is completely build. Most of the issues are with communication and ownership when they commit mistake.
DeleteI made a very bad mistake in selecting ANV to build my home. They are absolutely horrible. People should stay away from ANV. I will be posting my horrible experiences with ANV as much as I can to discourage people from selecting ANV to build their home.
DeleteGreat Falls, is your house done? Could you share your experience? There is another site called "Citi-Data.com" that has a lot of people looking for information on ANV. It would be great to have them hear your story as well. Here is the URL to one of the blogs on ANV.
Deletehttp://www.city-data.com/forum/northern-virginia/2099497-can-you-share-your-experience-builder.html
Don't go with ANV and make your life miserable:, all the good reviews are written by ANV people, so don't believe until you verified. If you want to live happily, don't ever meet ANV people. They cheat in all steps of the process and you will be sucked for ever.
ReplyDeleteI think all builders have created some sort of a process that intends to make money out of you. I am currently going with ANV to build a new home on a vacant lot of land. The ANV's lock process is horrible. After you sign a contract with it and go through each lock, you don't know what is the option and what is the upgrade. I ended up add money almost every lock. if you choose to have he finished basement with ANV, there is no window and the basemen windows are options. It is stupid.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing is true for Elevation. Sale people explain you one thing and will sell you different thing. Be careful with with what they told you and with what they will sell you after you sign the contract.
The lock process is setup to rip people off. Make sure you have everything in writing such as email when you talk with sale people. make sure also you make a selection with what you want in a home such as elevation, layouts and have every pricing in writing. I tell you - if you dont, they will rip you off.
All builders always say something good about themselves. They all intend to make money out of you in every step in the process. I went through the design with NDI and i like this NDI better for this portion of the building process because they presented to you upfront without going through a step or lock process like NDI. I dont know after this stage what trick they have. But i did not like the NDI contract language and i decided not to go with NDI. The NDI contract language is ruthless - if signed, it takes away your ability to stand up to them if there is any problem. NDI contract takes away your right to go to court - not that anyone want to go to court. My legal counsel told me that such language can tell that it does no indicate something fishy about it. Plus, NDI has 90 days to reserve its right to increase the price if the construction does not start 90 days after signing and they know that it will not likely start within 90 days. This leaves too much uncertainty for the budget and the price you agreed with it. Also, I felt that NDI lets you on your own regarding the county permit. I think this is a big mistake from the building business perspective, since not many people know this and ones probably build a new home once in their life time.
This is probably part of the game in the new and custom home building. I talked with friends who have built home with either NDI, ANV, and Stanley Martin, none of them are happy in every process. They feel the same as i do about all these builders.
Heh, I just think that this is a good experience to go through and good luck!!
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DeleteFor over last 26 months, I have refrained from talking about my horrible experiences with ANV Construction Group as a goodwill gesture to get my issues with the construction defects resolved amicably. I believe my efforts were in vain. It is time that I reveal their bad and unprofessional behavior.
ReplyDeleteI contracted with ANV to have my house built in 2013. The entire process was not as smooth as they explained to me. Their customer service was horrible. It's been over two years since I moved in. As of January 2017, three major issues are still outstanding. There are water leaks that the Fairfax County Code Enforcement office found ANV in violation of. One of the garages built is too shallow for me to park my midsize sedan. The garage door falls on the trunk of the car if I try to close the garage door. They changed column designs arbitrarily without my approval. DPOR found enough evidence to forward the case to the Board Directors' review. One of the consequences of DPOR decision will be suspension of their license.
ANV's construction process is slower than many builders in the area. As can be seen in the attached pictures, their poor workmanship added months to the already long process. This is significant because any delay adds significant expense to overall cost.
Looking at another person's post on Angie's List, ANV is habitual in their bad behavior of not addressing customer issues.
Please note, the user, nea mut, is a liar. He also goes by the user name "llcplus" on other websites. Yes, this person is an ANV client, but the claims that they make are FALSE. We have compiled a book of Exhibits detailing, item by item, how every one of this persons claims is false and we have the proof. If you would like to see the proof, please come visit us and we will be happy to provide it to you or see other blogs on the internet. Unfortunately, this site has a limit of about 4,000 characters, which is not enough to post everything.
DeleteSome of the issues that this client claims which we address in detail are:
-ANV built his garage too small
-The Garage is not built according to the plan
-DPOR suspension of ANV's building license
-The water leaks
-ANV does not try to fix the problems
-and more...
But in short, the complaint about the leak is about a SMALL leak on the EXTERIOR of the porch between the gutter and the soffit and is dripping very close to the landscape bed, NOT ON THE INTERIOR OF THE HOME. The homeowner won't let us fix the problem without unrelated additional (usually financial) stipulations. Fairfax County has also requested that the homeowner let us on the property, and they have also been unsuccessful, unless we agree to pay the homeowner an exurbanite amount of money in addition to fixing the drip, this is unacceptable.
Issue 2: ANV built the garage to the exact specifications that the homeowner's 3rd party grading plan engineer provided and Fairfax County approved. ANV has no choice, it is the law.
In our opinion, we feel that these lies are a way to extort money from us and we will not be bullied.
DPOR did an investigation and said, "THIS FINDING BE CLOSED WITH NO VIOLATION” and “THERE WAS NO CHANGE TO THE CONTRACT, AND NO CHANGE ORDER (OF ANY SORT) IS (WAS) REQUIRED” This is available for review. This is the opinion of John O’ Dell. He is the presiding member of the Board, and as we understand it, is the highest authority in the issues listed. Not only was the house built to plans, DPOR stated it was a "fine home", the Fairfax County inspector said, "ANV has gone above and beyond a normal builder and has done everything we asked."
This is for public review, file number 2016-00713
The builder of ANV and other companies has built over 1400 homes in Northern and Central Virginia and has never had one complaint filed against them with DPOR until this client, yet this one client has had litigation with two separate vendors for two separate projects on his only lot.