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Welcome To KB Home Problems

Our New KB Home Has Felt More Like An Old Fixer-Upper With All The Problems We've Had

A Warning To Everyone About The Potential Nightmare Experience Buying A New KB Home

Photos of our KB Home Living Room Ceiling Nightmare with a link to other KB Home Problems we've had below.

After reading about how much KB Home quality had supposedly improved, we decided to buy a KB Home located in Lathrop California in 2010. The name of this KB Home development is referred to as Autumnwood or Palermo. We found out from a family member who purchased a KB Home back when the company was referred to as Kaufman and Broad that he had a lot of issues. We were told about issues such as no electrical boxes for light fixtures and a large slab crack running from one side of the house to the other along with foundation issues neighbors also had. We were also told there was apparently a class action lawsuit. I've only talked with a few neighbors in our community so far and have already heard some things about their KB Homes.

The first issue we found is that the attic insulation was not 13" by code and only 6-7" with no insulation at the other side. Within a few months we noticed foundation cracks developing. We also noticed that the vinyl floor was bubbling in a line formation. Our KB Home representative said they would send their floor guy to cut open the floor to see what they needed to do. The floor guy arrives and says, "yeah, it's a crack, it's normal." I said "normal in a house that's only a few months old?" He replied, "yeah, all these houses have cracks, big cracks, cracks everywhere." I told him that I didn't think that's normal, maybe some hairline cracks. He then said "I'm telling you, cracks are normal." I replied, "if it's normal then why do people sue over this kind of stuff?" I then said "listen, please just cut open the floor so we can see it." He then replied "I'm not going to cut open the floor, KB Home is not going to pay me to replace it."

We then get a call from a KB Home manager telling my wife "I need to come out and have a talk with your Husband." The KB Home manager arrives and the first thing he says after he came into our house is "so I hear you're going to sue us," and in response I told him exactly what was said. He apologized and said the floor guy probably went down some roads he shouldn't have. He then proceeded to say "this crack could go all the way across your living room to the other side of the house", and then proceeded to say "and if it does it's purely cosmetic and I'm telling you right now we're not going to pull up any carpet." I now believe KB Home may have tried to discourage us from having this fixed after possibly realizing they didn't want us to see how large the crack might be or how far it might have went. I believe the floor guy they sent may have been told not to cut open the floor and just to say that it's normal.

We've had quite a few issues with our home, only asking KB Home to resolve a couple of the issues we've had. We've just fixed other issues ourselves or just lived with them. We noticed some slight indentations and bumps with what appears to be the outline of some joists in areas such as the living room ceiling and upstairs bedroom ceilings developing that you can see in certain lighting, however the living room ceiling located below our master bedroom had become significantly worse. KB Home had attempted to fix the issue twice each time making things even worse. The first patch attempt left large streaks across an approximate 10 foot span of our living room ceiling you could see when entering the house. The wrong color was used to repaint the area so I repainted with the correct color trying several coats even trying 2 coats of primer, then paid someone to repaint the area and the streaks wouldn't go away.

When our KB Home representative came out to look at the living room ceiling streaks we were told "this isn't bad, this is pretty normal after a patch, I've seen much worse." I made it clear to the KB Home Representative "if this isn't taken care of properly that we're going to have a problem." When I asked about our living room ceiling still having some ripples with what looks like indentations of floor joists in some areas we were told "it's within tolerances, you actually have a very nice ceiling, I've seen much worse." Maybe our expectations are too high for KB Home but I don't think a new home's living room ceiling should look this bad in a little over a year. I feel instead of focusing on making sure the work was going to be taken care of properly, that KB Home was more focused on trying to get the original drywall company to perform the repairs for little or nothing which had caused the repair quality to suffer.

I receive a call from the KB Home representative saying that he talked with a different drywall company working at KB Home Riverbend in Stockton and that they are going to skim coat the entire ceiling and retexture. Although I wasn't happy about having to have this amount of work done already on our new home, moving our new living room furniture upstairs and removing all of our light fixtures and heating vents I finally thought that this would be taken care of thinking we would have our living room back by Christmas. My wife and I along with our baby spent several more days living in our bedroom. I started putting our living room back together. I put furniture back, reinstalled light fixtures and heating vents. Even though the crews covered everything and tried to be careful, tools left scrapes, there were handprints I had to touch up, door trim was nicked, the kitchen floor scratched and carpet spots I had to clean.

After it was dark and I turned the living room light on I could see there were new lines and ripples that are now spread out over a larger area. Our living room ceiling is an embarrassment to us. We didn't expect it to look absolutely perfect but this is ridiculous. I have never seen anything like this in older or newer homes from any builder and none of our upstairs ceilings look nearly as bad as our living room ceiling in any lighting. If it was disclosed to us that our new home would have a bumpy, wavy living room ceiling with a lot of imperfections that would become worse over time we would have never even purchased this home even if we could have purchased it for less. We were told by our customer service representative when discussing issues that "these are some of the best homes we've ever built", however a living room ceiling that looks close to when we purchased the home is somehow too much to ask.

Recently KB Home agreed to take care of the ceiling issues by replacing the drywall. I explained that we wanted the ceiling to look like a new home without bumps, ripples and waves. We trusted that KB Home could properly resolve this issue hoping to finally be done with this. After KB Home's 3rd repair attempt we noticed ripples and bumps. The KB Home Manager we had been dealing with told us "there's nothing wrong, it's a nice ceiling." He then proceeded to say "this was the best crew, your expectations are way off." We've never seen a ceiling in any lighting that looks anything like this from any builder. Somehow after 3 repair attempts KB Home still cannot properly resolve our living room ceiling issues and we've had enough. We had to live in our bedroom for weeks breathing several coats of joint compound that gave us bloody noses, drywall dust and paint fumes on multiple occasions all for nothing.

We put a lot of money down on our new house and a lot of time and money into this home expecting to be able to live here for a long time. We just purchased all new kitchen appliances and upgraded some light fixtures. We were even considering things like crown molding but there's no point if every time we turn the living room light on at night we feel like we're living in a slum house because the ceiling of our new KB Home has so many imperfections. Our new KB Home experience has been a complete nightmare. We absolutely hate this home and it has made us miserable with all of its problems and issues. KB Home has made us so incredibly frustrated, angry and miserable that we wanted to express our tremendous frustration and dissatisfaction with KB Home. For a list of some of the additional problems we've already had with our new KB Home click the "Other KB Home Problems" link below.

KB Home made our living room ceiling worse twice and told us "You actually have a very nice ceiling."

Original KB Home ceiling photos taken October 2011

Ceiling photos taken after KB Home smoothed bumps

Ceiling photos taken after KB Home left large streaks

After ceiling work by KB Home to cover up the streaks

After 3rd KB Home repair attempt replacing drywall