Davis Homes shuts some sales sites, lays off 15

[Ex-Indy Resident]

Maybe if they'd cut back on their political contributions to liberal advocacy groups and liberal candidates, they would have a better bottom line. Instead they get rid of their workers. Love those limosine liberals!

[YES]

Ex-Indy Resident wrote:

Maybe if they'd cut back on their political contributions to liberal advocacy groups and liberal candidates, they would have a better bottom line. Instead they get rid of their workers. Love those limosine liberals!

I blame it all on George W. Bush myself....

[Guilty friend]

Bill Clinton wrote:

<quoted text>
I have a question. Did you have a realtor at your side when you purchased your home? I mean a good realtor. Davis, Ryland, and even the sleaziest builders will respond to a high powered realtor or real estate broker. They do not want to mess with getting upside down with the source of 65% of their business. I got the regional VP of Beazer to come to the jobsite of one of my clients.
ANSWER:
Yes, we did have a realtor we trusted. We thought we were handling the issues ourselves and actually were proud of ourselves for catching so many things. Davis fought us all the way but fixed all but two things. We were distracted by illness in the family and that was a problem.

Did you have a home inspection? My guess is no. You can pay approximately $400 to have a reputable home inspector to make three visits to a home during its construction.
ANSWER:
We did not have an inspection during the building process, but immediately after we moved in we had a complete home inspection to prepare for the walk throughs at about the price you quoted. This reputable inspector gave our house a clean bill of health except for a soft spot on the roof and a slanting gutter. I can see where the inspection during the building would be much better, but we did not know that could be done. Thank you for pointing that out to the readers of this blog. It might really help someone else.
The problem is that so many major things did not come to light until we had lived here for a while. I call the problems "things behind the walls problems" that just aren't evident to the eye.
I will say that we were too nice and let them rush us in for closing. We thought they were reputable and had no reason to think they weren't.

Third..why on earth move from a home with character in Broad Ripple to a non-appreciating big box? If the reason was space...you should have considered an older home in Carmel.

ANSWER:
The home we were in in Broad Ripple no longer fit our family dynamics. Plus, we had no idea that a nice higher-end Davis home wouldn't appreciate in Carmel. This was before the big boom in Broad Ripple. We looked for three years and we found the location we needed and the floorplan that we liked and at a price we could afford without any worry. We had no luck finding older homes in Carmel that were any better than our older home in Broad Ripple - at an affordable price. You have to remember that ten years ago, the booming market in Broad Ripple was only just a whisper.
We DID NOT MOVE FOR SPACE, BUT MAINLY FOR LOCATION. We had a four bedroom Cape Cod in Broad Ripple and plenty of space and a beautiful yard. Please, be careful about making assumptions. My only relative had been in a critcal care facility and I had visited her every single day for 27 months by the time we moved into the Davis house, which was only five mintues away from the facility. That was reason number one. I was so tired of making that trip each and every day. The second reason is that my husband works five minutes away from our Davis house. Reason number three is that our Davis house is five minutes from 465 and that is a much easier trip to the airport when one travels frequently on business, than the trip to the airport from Broad Ripple.
Thanks for your concern. Somehow, even though you were making some incorrect assumpitons, I got the feeling that you did care that we have had so much trouble!

[NEVER AGAIN]

At the end of Oct 07 Davis Homes stopped building houses for about a month. They tried to keep the subs in the dark with bullcrap stories about lot price problems with their developers. Their was no work for most of the subs and Davis could care less - but I did get a 911 call to do a small job at Brads new $2,000,000 home in the shadow of the Davis Office Complex. The company is sinking and Brad is building this house with our money. Asshole! Nov 25 they released about 10 jobs and we jumped on the work with the word that things were wotking out with the banks. Dec 20 they called us in to sign papers agreeing to go from 15 days to 30 days for our pay period retoactive Dec 1. Screwed again! If I had quit at that time they would have kept the money for 90 days or longer. Come spring I am done with all builders... They pay rock bottom prices for our work and do not care about the quality at all. Example - 30' x 3' sidewalk labor pays $70.00. Two men, 4 hours to form grade and finish concrete, fuel, insurance, daily expences.They do not expect quality and this is across the board. As for Davis-they will not surive.

[Robert]

Anyone who buys house knows full well the risk involved making a commitment to buy a house with payments ongoing for several years (or should know).

We don’t buy a house on the assumption that we will get a raise we think we could get. We buy home insurance in case we might get sick. It isn’t up to the lenders to provide you with health insurance. If you can’t afford health insurance you have no business buying a house in the first place.

It all comes down to personal responsibility. Nobody is promised anything without some kind of risk involved, it is our job to do what we can to eliminate as many of those risk as possible for us.

Many of these loans were made because minorities raised all kinds of hell because they couldn’t get loans on account of their credit standings and other reasons they were bad risk... so they went to their leaders and got them to use government to force lenders to make these loans that shouldn’t have been made. It was bound to fail. Now, this is what we get.

Most of the people who are losing these homes should not have been able to buy them anyway. What they need to do is learn to live within their means. They want everything they see and they want it instantly, that’s what got them into trouble in the beginning. If these people would admit ti they would tell you so, some do.

Some of the blame should go to the black leaders like Jesse Jackson and democrats in Washington who instigated this whole thing in order to buy votes. Once again it is proven the government doesn’t know how to run anything and should keep their noses out if where it doesn’t belong.

[WGT]

Robert wrote:

Anyone who buys house knows full well the risk involved making a commitment to buy a house with payments ongoing for several years (or should know).
We don’t buy a house on the assumption that we will get a raise we think we could get. We buy home insurance in case we might get sick. It isn’t up to the lenders to provide you with health insurance. If you can’t afford health insurance you have no business buying a house in the first place.
It all comes down to personal responsibility. Nobody is promised anything without some kind of risk involved, it is our job to do what we can to eliminate as many of those risk as possible for us.
Many of these loans were made because minorities raised all kinds of hell because they couldn’t get loans on account of their credit standings and other reasons they were bad risk... so they went to their leaders and got them to use government to force lenders to make these loans that shouldn’t have been made. It was bound to fail. Now, this is what we get.
Most of the people who are losing these homes should not have been able to buy them anyway. What they need to do is learn to live within their means. They want everything they see and they want it instantly, that’s what got them into trouble in the beginning. If these people would admit ti they would tell you so, some do.
Some of the blame should go to the black leaders like Jesse Jackson and democrats in Washington who instigated this whole thing in order to buy votes. Once again it is proven the government doesn’t know how to run anything and should keep their noses out if where it doesn’t belong.

What a moronic post. Only a Republitard would try and single out Jesse Jackson (how in the he-- is he responsible?) and the Democraps who have only had control of congress for one year. Who has been in charge of congress and the White House for the past 7 years?

Take your biggoted opinion and bring it to the next Klan rally.

p.s. show us where the "minorities" caused this problem.

[Jim]

WGT wrote:

<quoted text>
What a moronic post. Only a Republitard would try and single out Jesse Jackson (how in the he-- is he responsible?) and the Democraps who have only had control of congress for one year. Who has been in charge of congress and the White House for the past 7 years?
Take your biggoted opinion and bring it to the next Klan rally.
p.s. show us where the "minorities" caused this problem.

Not well stated, but the post you refer to had some truth to it. There was a large push to bring about more minority home ownership. To do this many rules had been relaxed on qualifications (read sub-prime.) Many of these buyers came to the transactions with extremely poor financial habits and skills. Many were not using check books, had no savings, and had very low credit scores. Until the continued relaxation of the rules of qualification none of the buyers with those habits would have ever been approved for a loan. This of course crossed racial and ethnic lines. However, many of these programs started to bring more into home ownership. It worked, Indiana for one, had the highest percentage of home ownership in history. The good news is that it still does since over 97% of mortgages are servicing just fine.

[WGT]

Jim wrote:

<quoted text>
Not well stated, but the post you refer to had some truth to it. There was a large push to bring about more minority home ownership. To do this many rules had been relaxed on qualifications (read sub-prime.) Many of these buyers came to the transactions with extremely poor financial habits and skills. Many were not using check books, had no savings, and had very low credit scores. Until the continued relaxation of the rules of qualification none of the buyers with those habits would have ever been approved for a loan. This of course crossed racial and ethnic lines. However, many of these programs started to bring more into home ownership. It worked, Indiana for one, had the highest percentage of home ownership in history. The good news is that it still does since over 97% of mortgages are servicing just fine.

Once again, provide factual evidence of your "opinion".

[A hole]

bye bye wrote:

Goodbye Davis Homes.....this is the first step to Bankruptcy

Nice remark to all of us loosing our jobs.Our economy depends greatly on the new housing market.

[B DAVIS]

Petzazz wrote:

Yes, let's hope this is a harpinger of things to come for Davis Hovels. You don't know how many moderate to upper scales areas have been parasitized by one of Brad's developments in adjacent corn field that lowers home values.
It is interesting that Davis attempt to make the read think he has shut down several subdivisions. He Mentions Crappermill near Eagle Creek as one. Interesting that this particular subdivision was built out five years ago.
Beware of anything Davis states. By the way, it has been observed that the economy has hurt his chances to infest eastern Zionsville. His Willow Glen subdivision now has MI sales signs at its entry. Way to go economy. Every dark cloud does have a silver lining.

You obviously know nothing,including how to spell.

[B DAVIS]

Disgruntled Davis owner wrote:

<quoted text>
You were very fortunate you didn't have them as your builder. Thank your lucky stars, please!!!!
If our ten year old Davis home is any example of their typical work, I would venture to say that their poor workmanship would have caught up with them eventually anyway - even if there was not the slow down on building or people living beyond their means. We bought a "higher end" Davis home precisely because we couldn't afford a custom home and this one was affordable to us. We were led to believe that it was quality worth its price. It wasn't. When we questioned anything, the answer from the construction foreman was that it wasn't a "custom" home and we couldn't expect more than we were getting - like bowed walls, a mantel that was completely curved and slanted i.e. We, of course, insisted on changes to these things that were so obvious - such as bricked up vents etc. We watched them like hawks every day during the construction period and made them change as much shoddy workmanship as we possibly could that was visibly wrong, but they absolutely refused to comply on some very obvious quality issues and blueprint specifications. It was getting down to the wire and we were tired of bickering and had already sold our own house. We found out later that they also cut corners like crazy on many things we could never have seen (we have since found out to our despair) and were in a hurry to get us in the house and themselves on to the next house. Now, we have lived with ten years of them returning under warranty to make apparently only cosmetic fixes to our myriad problems, but they never took care of the root causes of the problems, so of course the problems continued. Our warranty is worn out now and so we have paid for a real fix to the problems ourselves. Nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble from day one with this house!!!!!! They kept us waiting all summer for an answer from their insurance to see if they could come back again for another shot at fixing things. They denied us and the warranty ran out the next week. We later asked a lawyer active in this kind of remediation if they had kept us hanging on purpose and his quote was: "Davis isn't that intelligent!" And yes ... we feel like fools for being so trusting.

The prolbem is you exspect perfection and in the housing market that is not possible.I'm sure every thing you do at you job is perfect.

[B DAVIS]

Fishers wrote:

Oh how I just cringe when I even see a Davis sign! You talk about shotty workmanship in their homes, why dont' you just picture this: Was in the process of building a new home as a new homeowner and went to look at it after work. Went into one of the bedrooms and was looking in the closet and low and behold 2 of their workers were in the closet having sex. Gee, Rick would not even return my phone calls until I left the message, "Your employees are having sex in my closet!" Not a fun experience with David Homes.

Wrong Builder we are DAVIS HOMES not David and it could not of been our employees because we do not let women employees on our job sites.

[B DAVIS]

WTR wrote:

<quoted text>
I wondered how many posts I'd have to read before someone mentioned that these builders had their own mortgage divisions. Some folks have no clue as to how to crunch numbers. They trusted others to give them correct and honest numbers.
Some say that these folks should know how to add and subtract for themselves. I agree. Consider the sales techniques though. Some were given outright false information to base their decision on.
I am a carpenter and this will effect me somewhat. I did not work for production builders though. I speak English. There are still custom homes being built.
As for Davis Homes, wasn't it just a year ago that Johnson County red tagged their whole operation (in Johnson County) for lack of customer follow-up? And I think this included having the home buyer move in before final inspection.
Buyer Beware.

For you info that was not us.

[RAY DEISSLER]

We have a lawsuit in Johnson County courthouse against Davis Homes in April 2008 and we would appreciate anybody who would help us testify in our case of Fraud and Breach of Contract. Apparently, Davis has been taking consumers' deposits for homes, not building and then refusing to return deposits and interest on the monies they have rec'd. Davis has forced consumers to incur court & attorneys' fees to the consumers detriment and lots of customers' have just walked away letting Davis have their money. We stand to lose over $50,000.00 to build with another builder as Davis took us out of the market for other builders' in 2004,2005 and 2006 by delaying our build by corporate maneuvers such as not returning phone calls, not giving estimates in a timely manner, firing staff every 3 mos, etc. We hope to have consumers call us and join us in filing a Class Action Lawsuit against Davis Homes for the fraud they have been committing against the people of Indiana. We are in the phonebook. If busy, keep trying! We are getting everyone's names and calling them back. Thank you.

[RAY DEISSLER]

Sorry-We are in Indianapolis, In. and are looking for consumers who want to testify in the DAVIS HOMES Breach of Contract and Fraud case we have pending in the Johnson County Court in Frankin, In. We are in the phone book. Keep calling-we will return all calls!

[Cat]

presidential way wrote:

Can u please fix my leaky fireplace before u run outta money

As a neighbor, your efforts are better spent on pursuing the contractor that replaced your roof after the hail storm.

[Brill weed]

I am just amazed people purchase cp morgan homes. Take a look at one under construction. The cheapest building material known to man. The home would be built with straw and mud if they could get away with it. Those neighborhoods will look like crap in a few years as the siding sags and the pigments migrate from heat. Its amazing that all the people with bad credit all live in one of these neighborhoods. I sold this product and I could tell a sale pulling up. These homes are brand new fixer uppers.

[Aaron Kerstiens]

I would be willing to testify for you in this case. I have had a number of problems getting simple things done. Missed Appointments, have not even came in and properly corrected issues stated prior to closing. In addition, I have an 800 dollars lawyer bill to protect my home from a lein. After all the delays, broken promises, etc. I felt it was a proper move.

Please contact me at [e-mail]

RAY DEISSLER wrote:

Sorry-We are in Indianapolis, In. and are looking for consumers who want to testify in the DAVIS HOMES Breach of Contract and Fraud case we have pending in the Johnson County Court in Frankin, In. We are in the phone book. Keep calling-we will return all calls!

[Melissa]

I was working there at the time and IT WAS THE CLEANING PEOPLE subcontracted by Davis have sex in the closet. The neighborhood was Persimmon Creek on the northeast side. They were promptly fired. Even more gross was that the rumor was the man and woman were cousins! EEEEWWWWW!

Fishers wrote:
Oh how I just cringe when I even see a Davis sign! You talk about shotty workmanship in their homes, why dont' you just picture this: Was in the process of building a new home as a new homeowner and went to look at it after work. Went into one of the bedrooms and was looking in the closet and low and behold 2 of their workers were in the closet having sex. Gee, Rick would not even return my phone calls until I left the message, "Your employees are having sex in my closet!" Not a fun experience with David Homes.
Wrong Builder we are DAVIS HOMES not David and it could not of been our employees because we do not let women employees on our job sites.

[Melissa]

We all predicted this would happen when Mike Davis started trashing his best assets (the people loyal to Davis.....the long term employees) and replacing them with lower paid dipshits.