There’s nothing quite as impactful as a firsthand account when it comes to assessing the value and quality of a service. In our latest testimonial, a proud homeowner narrates their intricate journey of building a dream home. From early challenges to the eventual triumph of discovering Rotelle, their experience paints a vivid picture. Read on to delve into one homeowner’s transformative journey with Rotelle.
“Let me start by saying Rotelle was a dream to work with. Our home building process started out as a long and frustrating process that ended with a wonderful builder building us an amazing home. Our Rotelle story started out with a friend who at the time was working for Hardie siding. He said to us, “when you eventually build your house, Rotelle is your only choice.” We went to a Rotelle open house and everything was great. We met with them and couldn’t wait to start our build. Unfortunately we were not financially ready yet.
Our new home adventure started with subdividing the lot at our previous home in 2018. The subdivision process through the township was a nightmare which took forever and was slowed even more by Covid.
We found a lot to build our house on, but the deal was, another builder came with the lot. After closing on the lot we were then put through weeks of cancelled design meetings and calls going unreturned, so we finally decided enough was enough and we moved on from that builder.
Builder number two was a friend of a friend who said he could save us lots of money compared to other builders. That should have been a red flag. He put us through an equally frustrating process of “we need to get the plan complete before we can put together a full budget.” Well, after about 10 months of back and forth with the builder and architecht, a rough budget started to come together. Turns out we were nearly 40% over budget. Instead of looking for ways to save and changes to make, the builder’s reply was, “maybe you could ask your parents for some money?”
Frustrated, I remembered the positive experience we had at the Rotelle open house and the recommendation from my friend in the industry.
We called Rotelle and the process took off at light speed. This was at the time when the mortgage rates were going up every week. Our first meeting with Rotelle was scheduled and on our way there, our mortgage broker called and told us, “I just got an email that the rates are scheduled for a hike tomorrow. If you can get some numbers from Rotelle today, we can lock your rate and get your application in tonight.”
We showed up to our first meeting at Rotelle with a budget, and 3 incomplete home designs that I had been working on myself for the past few years. Rotelle was able to take our designs, settle on an approximate square footage, take some features that we knew we had to have, and put that all into their formula. We had a rough budget the same day. We signed immediately.
When we first wanted to build a home we went and visited some new communities that were going up by the big volume builders in our area. We knew we had things we wanted and things we didn’t want in the home. The volume builders had a nice build process but that came with limitations. The customization was very limited and was also very expensive. Their whole model is based off of speed. Customizations slow them down, so they charge a premium for them. We knew we wanted the freedom to customize our home any way we wanted. We knew we were in the right place with Rotelle. Not to mention the build quality from Rotelle was far superior.
The whole process became fun again.
We met to go over the basics with Crystal, then met with the architecht to finalize the floor plan. She was awesome. She was able to take all of my half hand drawn, half found online plans and make one great design that fit our vision and our budget.
We then met with Madeline for the design choices. The process was so easy and fun. One huge frustration with our previous builders was that they just let us run wild, and then got the prices later. We were working with a pretty tight budget for a custom home. Rotelle understood that and gave us the options that were within our budget.
Finally it was time to build. The house went up pretty quickly. I’ve been on some pretty high end job sites for my work as well as some mass produced budget/volume builder sites. I got the distinct feel that our home was being built with our budget in mind, but at no point was sacrificing the workmanship of a high end custom home. That was later confirmed by industry friends and our home inspector.
The build process allowed us multiple walk through to check on the process of the house. And make some changes if we wanted. Simple stuff like moving an outlet or a light switch we were able to do with no problem. We used that opportunity to have a third party inspector come through and check out the house. He said the framing process, techniques, and execution of our home was that of a house twice the price.
The inspector came through again for a final walkthrough and had so many positive things to say. He kept commenting on the high level of the drywall finish. Saying the attention to detail in the home was very impressive. He mentioned the quality of the duct work and the way it was sealed was done very well, and he just doesn’t see that attention to detail in too many new homes.
We’ve been in our home for nearly three months. We absolutely love it. We had a couple small warranty type things that were handled quickly and easily. All of our friends and family that come by rave about the house. It’s hard to explain, but it just feels like a great house.
Bottom line, I would never consider another builder. Rotelle has a fun, engaging, thought out process. They make you feel involved in the process and valued as a customer. We were not high end million dollar customers, but we sure felt like”
