Senator Homes

We moved into our first home in October and have been pretty happy with the services Senator has provided. First of all we LOVE our home and think its absolutely beautiful. Next we have had good service from almost everyone we've encountered. Bob is bob, hes a saleperson there to make a sale, he answered any questions we had and everything that he told us or that was promised to us was followed through. Any upgrades that were listed in the purchase price were given to us. Next Barb was friendly and did go out of her way to make us feel comfortable, she didnt rush us and only offered an opinion when asked. In the end she always made herself available when I called or needed a question answered and the choices we made in that appointment ended up looking great in the house. My only complaint with the decor center would be that the samples are very tiny and it was hard to visualize how something would look, but overall i was impressed by the large selection and modern choices. Our PDI happened two days before we closed, we were only delayed 5 weeks from our intitial closing date, and we purchased the home one year before it was built, so we felt 5 weeks only was amazing. Ive heard horror stories of friends being delayed YEARS! Most things in our PDI were completed immediately, anything that wasnt was put on our 30 day inspection. It took 3 months to have everything on our 30 day form to be completed but we uderstood that this winter was obviously way wrmer then expected and workers were needed to finish the other new homes on our street. But everything has been completed to date with no issues, weve found all the workers who entered our home to be friendly and respectful. Now Marg is very hard to get a hold of, but again eventually she always returned our calls and emails and handled all of our problems, i feel like instead of blaming her senator homes needs to hire her an assistant! We bought a new home expecting to have some issues and knowing not everything would be perfect, and after reading other reviews we were really concerned especially since it was our first home but I have been pleasantly surprised with our experience and hope the other new home buyers aren't scared off by some of the reviews. In the end we got exactly what we wanted and paid for (and we did have a great lawyer look over every document) and if you buy a home by senator in courtice you will end up with amazing neighbours!

My experience has been very similar to others on this site. We purchase a new home in 2010 off the floor plans(there was no model available). The service by Bob K. was great, untill we signed the papers. They changed the sales material AFTER we signed the papers and features that were supposed to be included in our phase were not. These features were hardwood on the main floor, stained railing, upgraded padding in the carpet upstairs and access to the garage from the house. When we got to the decor appointment, these features convieniently ate up our "$5000" in upgrades.

The decor centre is an hour away and the lady was unprofessional and gave us downright false information(Cost of features was changed) improper placement of things on the floor plan = cable outlets, phone outlets, electrical outlet in the middle of a mirror directly behind the faucet etc, etc.

The closing date was delayed 90 days about 2 weeks after we signed the papers.

The PDI was performed 11 days before we picked up the keys and none of the issues were addressed in that time. In fact we still have issues from the PDI that have still not been addressed 17 months later.

It is nearly impossible to get a hold of the customer service manager Marg donalson. Conversing with her is like speaking to a wall. If there are issues(and there will be) her response is almost always, "oh that's normal" For example, we recently had our one year inspection and it took more than 19 days for her to respond to the problems that we were having and I had to initiate the response with several emails.(I can provide the emails if anyone is interested. They would be unedited with the exemption of my personal information.) I have also experienced their habit of letting the warrenty expire and then saying its out of warrenty. It usually goes like this: I email her with a problem, then I email her cause she hasen't responded. She will respond and then schedual trades to come by. The trades no show, and then the process begins again. It has taken more than a full year to get things like a heat balance done, or the proper amount of insulation in my attic, or heat registers that don't fall into their holes.

Bottom line is this, Senator Homes builds poor quality homes and they don't stand up to their warrenty. If you think that tarion is going to help you that's a joke too. Tarion is run by the builders and it there to protect them, not the consumer. I was surprised to find out that I have to pay an additional $282.50 on top of the mandatory tarion insurance to have tarion come out and determine if my issues are warrentable.

Please, Please do not give any more of your hard earned money to these people!

We purchased a Home in their Courtice Village location June of this year, we foudn them to be excellent, anything we have asked of them they have done! Marg is hard to get a hold of and she passes all requested off to 3rd parties however everything has been completed, Luke who maganes the workes is fantastic! he is so nice and always avilable if we haev questions or concerns as well as the workers! they are all still here working on other houses and if I asked them for or to do anything they do it right away! this has made our first new home buying experience really good! I couldnt ask for anything better then having them be so atttentive and avilable! I think that some people forget there is always something late or wrong when buying new you haev to be ready for that! thats the reality of buying new but relax and enjoy it! dont cause your self extra stress! I would buy another house with Senator I found them VERY helpful!

I wanted to add some comments to the review board, as I have been monitoring this board since before we decided to purchase our home in the Courtice location. Our home has not been built yet, but I wanted to share our experience thus far. This is our first new home and we took a lot of time to research before carefully choosing a builder. I found that the comments on this site made it very difficult to feel confident choosing Senator homes, but I think that having as much information as possbile can help you have a better experience.

Some of the comments written on here are defintiley important to consider and helped us to make our decision. One person complained of the $150 admin fee for changes, but it is clearly outlined in your decor package. Another, wrote that the decord centre was too far - yes, it is far, but also something you should have been aware of already.

We took a trip down to the decor centre prior to firming up on our offer to get a feel for the standard choices offered and to meet "Barb" who everyone seemed to be complaining of. I would agree that she is sometimes unprofessional, but I think she is very nice and only trying to make people feel more at ease because making all of the decor choices can be overwhelming. That said, she did take personal phone calls during our appointment more than once and did spend too much time telling personal stories. However, she did do a great job helping us put together kitchen and bathroom colours and knew a lot about the product offered. As well, she was not pushy about upgrades and allowed us the time to decide what would be best for us.

I think it is best to research what type of upgrades you want before signing your offer and getting them to void the $5000 in upgrades in leu of specific ones on your contract. We did this and were able to negotiate many upgrades that went over the $5000 mark. Some upgrades that you may want to consider is upgrading the carpet underpad, as it's very thin, adding a drain into your laundry room, running a water hose to your fridge (if you have a fridge that has the water and ice dispencer), running your TV cables away from the fireplace(HDMI), and putting a rough-in for a bathroom in the basement. You may not need all of these, but they are things that you cannot do easily after you get the house.

My next piece of advice would be to ask as many questions as possible before signing anything! By getting answers to as many questions as possible, you will have less surprises later. One thing I was adament about was including that a professional home inspector be able to do the PDI with us. They wrote it in the amendment for me. A professional home inspector will check our places that you may not be able to. It is also important that any changes made on the amendment be sent to your lawyer and looked over, again before you SIGN anything! It is your job to look out for you.

Another thing I thought was important is that sometimes if you ask Bob a questions, he will tell you an answer, but that answer isn't always correct. Anything you are questioning, ensure it is put in the contract in writing. For instance, Bob told us that the driveway will be double paved, but it doesn't say that on the feature list so we had him write it in. Unless it is in writing, you don't have much ground.

I hope all of that information helps the next person who buys a home with Senator. As mentioned before, we are going through the process, but we will keep posting our experience on the site and offering any advice we gain through our experience along the way.

Poorly constructed home. Problems with cedar shakes, lose bricks that were not tied to the house, lose stone work, poorly installed hardwood, dis-connected duct work, lose sub-floors, lighting without the ground connected, garage doors withe exposed wood not primed or painted, strike plates missed aligned, front door that wouldn't shut properly, shower stall that was not caulked and flooded the dining room, etc. The list goes on and on.

There is no customer service. No follow-up, and you constantly have to complain to the owner and the senior staff at head office. They are actual pretty good. Its the customer service staff and on-site staff where the issues is and their inability to get quality workmanship from the trades people.

I had to install drainage pipes myself just to get water damage insurance. between the leaky porch roof and improper drainage, I couldn't get water damage insurance. Still don't have the insurance. The builder won't even give a letter to outline the repairs that were required for the porch. Still waiting a the final leleak test.

This builder doesn't learn.

It has been a constant battle with the builder since august 2010.

We have a total of 60 items on our year end list.

The only thing that is good, is the drywall

Brad

I have recently moved into a semi detached home in the Courtice subdivision and am quite satisfied with what i have received thus far. This is now my third home and i can say from previous experience with larger named builders that this one shines brightly in comparison. My dealings at decor with Barb was extremely pleasant, she was very helpful in putting together exactly what we had envisioned for our kitchen and bathroom selections and was always available if we had questions. I have only had a few dealings with Margaret, once during our pre-delivery inspection and a few times on the phone. In my past dealings with builder service i have found that patience is key and with senator the minimal deficiencies that have been left to be fixed are being taken care of in a timely manner. All and all my experience has been an enjoyable one and i felt i should share it with the masses.

My experience buying a new Senator home in Pickering was abysmal. The quailty of work and after purchase service was completely unsatisfactory. I recognize how easy it is to complain online so I rarely do. Here I'll make an exception. If I can help someone avoid one of the most poorly run and mismanaged business' I've ever witnessed I'm happy to. My situation resulted in the President coming to my home - he took less responsibility than his staff in diagnosing and fixing problems that were blatant and obvious. It was clear his only concern was for his welfare - he completely disregarded ours. Looking for a new home? - buy a Tribute or a Great Gulf with a proven record of service. I'll guarantee you'll be disappointed with a purchase by Senator. Don't be fooled by pretty pictures and advertisements - they outsourse these for development. Otherwise the pictures would be taken on a Polaroid with a misspelled hand written message printed underneath.

We had our Decor Centre appointment recently with "B" who we found to be unprofessional and very annoying (constantly trying too hard to make us laugh). She was the only one laughing. This made it difficult for us to stay focused on our questions and concerns.

We purchased our new Senator home in Courtice... Like many, we had a wonderful experience and very attentive service when we were considering purchasing, and even a not too bad experience pre-close... Unfortunately, ever since we closed on the house, we can't get a response from the Customer Service Department at all!! Phone and email messages disappear into a void; never to be seen again...

We did some homework before deciding on this community - we even read some of the blogs out there before we bought. We spent some time asking around in the area, since many of the disgruntled homeowners seemed to be pre-closing homeowners in Barrie... We were told that this community was different, and that the Customer Service department worked quickly to fix up any issues that do arise... Boy Oh Boy - How wrong that was!

During our Pre-Delivery Inspection, the "Customer Service Manager", Margaret, actually skipped the exterior inspection of the house because there was so much not yet completed. She actually wrote on the PDI that the exterior inspection would be completed at the 30-day inspection...

Ha Ha Ha - How naive we were!! There was no 30 day inspection!! I tried to contact her for 2 weeks prior to the 30 days, and she absolutely did not even TRY to contact me back! We were forced to try to identify the deficiencies ourselves for the 30-day warranty form!

She has contractors contact us to set up the appointments to fix the many, many deficiencies (she, of course, doesn't contact us herself), and yet somehow half of the deficiencies for any given contractor never make it onto their work order...

The expiry of the company's action period (re: our 30-day warranty form) is fast approaching, and I am very carefully documenting everything... I will have to post an update in a bit and let you know if they turn any of this around as the sand starts to dwindle in their hour glass...

I am still in my Senator Home purchased in 1996. It was the first project Senator did in Burlington, in the golf community of Millcroft. I was lucky to have a great sale gal and was able to negotiate many upgrades without extra cost.

Many of my neighbours did have leaking ceilings and floors, likely I did not.

The only problems I had with them are as follows:
1) The cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms were done by Canac Kitchens which is fortunately now out of business. I paid an extra $1,000.00 for a six foot pantry in my Kitchen and an extra $500.00 to have three drawers in my ensuite bathroom instead of the traditional two door cabinets. I have had terrible discolouration with all these cupboards and not uniformly... the pantry has two sections much whiter than the other. The kitchen cupboards too have some door yellow, some white. Also, while I have a relatively large kitchen I have smaller than usual drawers for utensils etc.
Also Canac did a poor job of planning the drawers and so instead of putting new faces on these cabinets I have to remove everything and start over from scratch.
2) I was told the grading of the street would prohibit a two car garage and was forced to go with a single. Once the house was finished it was very clearly the grading would have easily accommodated a two car garage.

Overall I am still very happy with my home and am more impressed with it's huge increase in sales value. While I still love my home I would have tremendous reservations recommending Senator to anyone else.