Highland Homes Reviews in San Antonio, TX

The home is beautiful and we love our lot. The actual experience has been really poor. From a list of items that still have not been addressed since move in (8/2/19), to $1500 water bills, to no mailbox keys for 6 weeks and misspelling of our last name on a "gift" from the builder. I would say that, if given the chance again we would not move forward with Highland Homes.

Poor painting. Back yard has a river running through it. Poor quality of tile. No attention to detail.

The more time I spend here the more issues I find with the home. It is quite obvious that the builders go as fast as possible without attention to detail, resulting in imperfections throughout the home. One issue for example is that I find dried up paint on the carpet or flooring throughout the entire home. I have been slowly trying to fix this but it's an issue that shouldn't be there in the first place.

I have been in my new home for 2 months and there are still MANY repairs that need to be made that were not done before we closed. But since we are in the home now, they are "warranty" issues. I did not have a working oven for a month because they electricity wasn't connected. I have had a mason come out 3 different times and I still have a hole in the wall outside. I have tiling, cabinet, sheetrock, and paint issues. There are walls that I'm sure are supposed to line up, that don't. I don't know how many appointments I have had for trades to come here to make repairs and there is very little that has changed. I work from home. To have people in and out of your home making noises disrupts my work. I went to 3 different Highland Models just to see how they look in comparison to my home and it just made me angry. They don't care about the owners once they are in the home. They are off to sell the next house. If we didn't constantly reach out, I honestly don't think anything would get done. I even had one of the trades tell me my complaint about a wall switch was petty when they came to make the repair. Needless to say, it didn't get done. I could seriously go on, but I feel like its pointless. It is really exhausting. I would NOT recommend Highland Homes to anyone. As soon as you ask about making a change to something since they have so much to do, they are quick to tell you it wont be covered by warranty. I know they had a good reputation at one time but I think those times have passed. ... More

whew. here we go. We moved into a new build home by Highland Homes in August 2020 and have found so many issues with build quality of the home, as well as drainage issues on the land. Land/ Property: Drainage issue was brought up during construction in March/ April and was not assessed until we threatened to pull out of home purchase in August. This is still ongoing even through October 2020. Have had 2-3 development managers come out and discuss adjustments, a few fixes have been made to little or no avail, but it should have been discussed/ adjustments made to the property back when we brought it to their attention months prior. Home: We have had doorknobs (front and back doors) completely fall off multiple times. I had the builder adjust twice and still has fallen more. these will be noted soon and hopefully completely replaced. Painters have needed 2-3 trips to get to where we are now, and more trips are still needed to complete their jobs. The AC thermostats did not work and needed to be replaced, the alarm circuit did not work and required adjustments, the digital locks were not tracked and it took a few discussions by BSG and builder to find out who is responsible for install of those. The skybell doorbell also needed replaced. The oven vent was installed incorrectly and needed to be replaced. Multiple trim boards were bowed out. We just discovered when it got cold that the Heating in the HVAC is not working. 2 closets did not even get all of the storage/shelving that was supposed to be added. One had no storage/shelving at all. Builder only discovered after we went into another same-plan home. Landscaping: Landscapers planted 16 plants which would grow to be gigantic bushes in a garden which shouldnt have had 3 or 4 max. When i asked about it, i was told they were weeds... even after providing photos from when they were planted by landscapers. Eventually they did come out and replace. but had to go back and forth between builder and landscapers to identify what was even planted. Conclusion: I have moved into 3 or 4 new-construction homes, and this one has had more problems than any of those COMBINED. If my family wasnt already in process of having their home built by Highland, i would never refer them. All of the individuals i have worked with have been nice and very accommodating, the followthrough is what has been severely lacking though. I honeslty have felt that every single week we have 2-3 new issues to add to our 90-day warranty fix list. I havent included a single one of those (30+) issues in this review. Overall, I do not recommend this builder. ... More

Builder rushed to complete the house for closing and failed. Promise to fix discrepancies and two months in we are still dealing with the initial issues. Very disappointed for the amount of money we paid.

This is the first home we have ever built. The process was less stressful than others warned us it would be. Highland Homes finished the house ahead of schedule, however not everything was complete. After walking through the house with the construction manager, we had developed a list of issues that needed to be finished. The construction manager signed a contract to have the issues completed within 14 days. It has now been 7 weeks and only half the original list is complete and we have made a completely new list of issues we have noticed. We were also told in writing we would have traditional mailboxes and Highland did build them. Apparently they did not have approval from the USPS which wanted community style cluster mailboxes for the 19 homes being built. USPS has refused to deliver our mail for 7 weeks now because of it. We have to drive 20 minutes each direction to the post office to wait in line for another 20 minutes to receive our mail. Highland has stopped updating on this issue or any of the problems with our new home. ... More

Very difficult process working with Highland. Both closing and builder repairs have been a bad experience - based largely on promises from Highland that they inevitably break (sometimes almost immediately). Setting up closing went well, but the morning of closing I was told the home wasn’t actually finished. I should have seen this big red flag. I went back and forth for a few hours trying to get them to delay the closing for their failure to complete the home on time - but I was promised that everything would be completed within 48 hours of closing. Based on the relatively short list of remaining items they were willing to admit to, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and closed. Mistake on my part - do NOT close with Highland until you are fully satisfied with the condition of your home! Getting them to finish everything else after they have your money is like pulling teeth. Once we finally arrived at the home, we were immediately shocked to see the walls were not painted with the color and quality of paint that was listed in our spec sheet. When we pointed this out to the builder representative, he just didn’t believe us and promised us that the paint was the right color and quality. Clearly, to anyone experienced with interior paint, you can tell from the feel that the paint is not correct. And it should be obvious to anyone that the color is wrong. He promised he would look into it anyway, and he has failed to follow-up after 2+ months. There has been a similar trend with many other items in the home (faulty dishwasher, grout repair n the master bath, replacing a piece of damaged ceiling where a can light was drilled in the wrong location, installing missing pieces of trim, repairing damage to the marble countertops, adjustments to cabinets and drawers, and much more!). After promising us they could easily and quickly fix these items in a matter of weeks, it took more than 2 weeks to even get them to repair one item. If I was to leave my representative alone to figure out everything that needs to be completed, nothing would be done! And often the only response I get from him is “we’ll get right on that, I’ll have someone come out tomorrow,” and three weeks later we’re still waiting for someone to come out. If you do go with Highland, you will HAVE to contact your builder rep multiple times a day for the first month or two, otherwise nothing will get done! And talking to his supervisor wasn’t much different. I was told by the supervisor that he wasn’t aware there were any issues and that we’ll just have to “hit reset” on everything, start fresh, and everything will get back on track. No surprise here - that was also a clever way to shut me up for a week or so and get me off their back. NOT good customer service. And that doesn’t even go into the poor build quality. It’s obviously one of those houses/communities that must be put up as quickly as possible without regard to quality (but you still pay a premium for it). In addition to a terrible paint job, the interior trim (baseboards, door and window casings) is absolutely terrible. For example - very rough joinery that is held together with caulk. It’s bad work and it’s in obvious locations throughout the home. The landscaping was clearly just thrown together in about an hour or two. It doesn’t seem they even prepared or leveled the land underneath the sod - it remains extremely lumpy and difficult to mow. There were even large gaps between sections of sod that were too large for the grass to fill-in naturally. I think we will one day be somewhat satisfied with our home, but it will take a lot of work and out-of-pocket expense on our end to get it there. If you choose Highland, be prepared for that, and stay on top of the builder daily to ensure things are completed correctly and on time. Without constant pressure, they will do it as cheaply as possible, probably still wrong, whenever they can get around to it. Good luck! ... More

Do not close without having your punch list addressed and completed. I was trusting that the punch list items would be addressed in a timely manner after closing and that was far from the case. I have emailed Highland Homes and have received no response to my issues. I am at the point where I am willing to pay out of pocket to fix my new home, Sad state of affairs.

Do not purchase a home without the actual homebuyer approving the overall process and closing.

Well there were many excuses. Change of builders, weather, rushing/more time, etc. They literally built my garage in the wrong spot and then messed up the island. Luckily we caught the island in time to fix it. But I now have a garage that is not functioning the way I needed it to be. The tile for backsplash was awful. There are holes and missing paint throughout the house. Fixtures were the wrong color. The quality assurance didn’t happen. Literally no one walked the house and tried to fix anything before we showed up they just built it and let us move in. We had a leak in the bathroom the first week. Not sure if they thought they could do a crap job because we weren’t in town to watch their every move but they are having to pay for it now. And it’s super frustrating to be living in construction, when it was supposed to be completed. Thea was knowledgeable and responsive and if she didn’t know she tried to find out asap. ... More

First off I want to say that through all the delays and issues the construction manager Mark has been wonderful. I have not been made to feel like Highland homes won’t make an effort to fix issues as they are brought up. Another positive is that Highland Homes has a policy that makes sure that once you place a deposit you lock in the current “price” so your insulated from price hikes… idk how useful that will be as the housing market is priming for a cool down… so maybe that’s a moot point. With that being said, if I could sum up the construction of our home in one word, it would be “sloppy”. It’s truly embarrassing and I would like to think that if a C-level representative from Highland Homes cared to tour a finished product, that they would be dumbfounded at the lack of craftsmanship and attention to detail that went into our home. You’ll walk through the model and think your buying a near custom level quality home but make no mistake — the same worker that is building 100k-200k homes are the same building 800k-1M homes and it shows. Bottom line if you don’t have to buy a house right now- don’t. And if you do, strap in because once you have keys in hand it doesn’t mean your house is actually done. Until Highland either changes contracted service providers or holds the people doing the work to a higher standard with more QA/QC nothing will be “fixed”. ... More

We had numerous issues with Highland. Early on in the build, our 1st Superintendent went out on leave for 3 months and we were never notified. The absence of a Superintendent led to major delays of scheduling and no quality control oversight of the work being done. Because nobody was in charge of the build I hired an independent inspector, pre sheet rock, that identified 50+ items that needed to be corrected. Highland did make good correcting the identified items, but at the cost of significant delays. We also had a bad experience with our 2nd Superintendent. He lacked in communication, professionalism, and honesty. He provided no oversight while work was being done, which led to constant rework and delays. Our 2nd independent inspection identified 40+ items Highland corrected. Over the course of the build we were given 5 different close dates that resulted in a 3 month delay from our original close date. After we moved in a Highland representative stopped by the house as a follow up. I gave him a list of 6 items that needed to be corrected. It took 4 weeks for Highland to schedule the electrician to come out to my house. I have my door scheduled next week to be looked at, but I have not heard anything else on the remaining items. Buying a Highland Home was painful. Through my realtor I expressed my concerns to highlands leadership team, but I was never contacted by anyone other than a supervisor. ... More

Responsiveness to work orders is poor.

We should be compensated for having to manage the completion of our home, post closing. This is our third new home in four years and this is by far the worst experience. The build process, the attention to detail, the finished product upon delivery at closing was despicable. Had interest rate‘s not been rising we would have made them complete it but my gut is they’re impotent when it comes to fine detail and quality as they were known a few years ago. Three months in our kitchen is still unfinished, we are still pressing the construction team to complete items every day. We have been managing a spreadsheet of simple things. I understand that the tradesmen are a major issue but Highland should add more staff or employed directly to obtain the level of completion and detail that we expect on an $800,000 house. It is so bad in our new neighborhood that a group of Highland owners gathered in the street and talked about a class action lawsuit because of the quality, workmanship, and issues that we are finding in the property. Add to the mix all the homes under construction, the beer cans the trash, the trash, the trash and it’s obvious why our homes are not finished. When you walk a property in there are alcohol containers inside or on the outside such as our house and our neighbors house that is a clue. We feel like educated, experienced, reasonable buyers since we’ve done this with two companies over three new homes across for years. This process that is still unfinished three months after closing Has been the worst nine months in our marriage because we have argued in battles over should we stay or should we go and that continues on a daily basis and that is all due to Highland lack of attention to detail or respect for customers. We will never buy from them again and every person that I talk to I tell our experience and advise them to avoid Highland homes. I feel for their local sales reps and construction lead, the main organization should do more to help the employees serve the customer. I likened our experience to their previous manager when I said have you ever stood on the assembly line of your new dodge pick up and made sure that the corporation was putting every piece where it needed to go, every fit and finish with perfect? Do you get frustrated when you have to take your vehicle back for a recall? We have purchased something that is 14 times the value of your truck and yet on a daily basis we are having to manage the construction and completion of this home and you would never go for that for your new pick up. Overall a horrible experience, and I don’t get angry as I look at my kitchen countertop that is still incomplete, missing molding, while I make coffee Everywhere in this house to include barn doors that are 2 inches too small for the opening is a reminder that unless we argue, push, fight for what we paid for Island homes will do their best to take advantage of us. ... More

We purchased our home three months ago, and have had severe plumbing issues ever since. Our construction manager has been great, but they had to dig a hole in our guest bedroom, they pumped a brick out of the upstairs plumbing and removed wood and debris from our downstairs plumbing. We were without adequate plumbing for nearly 2 months. And had construction workers in and out for nearly a month. We had to stay in a hotel for several days and were displaced for quite some time. We also have not been offered any compensation other than them fixing their mistakes. I have called the office, and left messages via their contact us links on the website. No one has called back. When you are buying a house at this price point you definitely should not be having these types of issues. ... More

In an effort to keep this review brief, I will only list our general experience. Communication with our construction manager was poor throughout our build process. Our home inspector identified enough items to complete a 30-page report and we nearly walked away due to the severity of some of the issues. A mere two months after closing we have had 18 (yes 18 and counting-with at least 5 more visits pending) repair visits to address/rectify the multitude of problems with the home. Highland has the potential to be one of the, if not the best, builders in the area, however, the quality and workmanship fall short on nearly every level. We fell in love with what this home could be; definitely not what it turned out to be. ... More

Highland seems to be resting on a reputation they should no longer have. They were perfectly nice & accommodating when it came to selecting our house and the optional finishes that would drive the price of the home up. When it came to the execution of actually building the home, that is where they did not hold up their end of the deal. Countless issues of just poor and sloppy work occurred leading up to the close of the house. When a home inspector challenged their work, they proceeded to discredit the inspector, rather than fix issues. The only time I saw them work hard on our house was to get us to close on the agreed upon date when the house was clearly in no shape to be moved into. During our final walkthrough, there was still no grass, no A/C, and a 20+ foot hole in the front yard due to some plumbing issues when we were told it would be move in ready. Between the mistruths of the status of the house, their reactions to fix their issues, the lack of quality and attentiveness of the vendors they use, and the fact that at the time of this review, there are items that are still not fixed that contractually they are supposed to have been done over two months ago, I would think long and hard about selecting Highland Homes to build your house. ... More

Almost every issue you could have with a new build. We have had. Having to kick and screen to get issues corrected

DO NOT buy Highland. I've built 5 homes (KB, Eagle Valley, Meritage, Chesmar, and Highland). Highland Construction/Sales Management Team at Fronterra at WestPointe is by far the worst one. They will not correct poor workmanship unless asked by customer, then will try to convince customer work is within tolerances. Warranty work is nonexistent. Communication is nonexistent. Follow up is nonexistent. Will blatantly lie. I DO NOT recommend purchasing a Highland Home.

Contractor's building the home abused the cabinets, bath tubs, plumbing and many others fixtures. Roof in the front was not completed properly. Open holes under gables lack proper sealing. Roof leaks in front under eve. Exterior pieces were not completed properly (sealed on exterior properly). Many items identified in final walk through to be completed as part of the sale, remain uncompleted after 2 months. Lack of response by builder to rectify. Hire your own inspector prior to closing for a new home by this builder. Home lacks insulation over rooms in the attic (it is visible). Demand all items be completed before closing! Having purchased several homes in my life, new and used, I have purchased used homes that require less fixing to repair the household than new on this one. ... More

Recommend you go with a different builder. Our experience = we are the quality control for Highland Homes. When we bring up the too many to list issues on this forum with our home, we are told it will be fixed & then ignored. It appears to us that they are building to many homes simultaneously & ignoring the poor craftsmanship of their subcontractors after the paperwork is signed.

Cheap materials, extremely high prices not suitable for the final product. We bought almost 2 months ago and we are still dealing with the same walkthroughs issues from before closing time.

Make sure you get a home inspection and do not sign for the home until everything...And I mean EVERYTHING...is fixed no matter what they say or how bad you want the house. Quality of craftsmanship is pretty bad. Work is sloppy. You won't be able to tell until you clean the home really well. A lot of things were broken or broke quickly after moving in. Warranty work is shoddy. It's all patch work to get you to sign for the home, no quality repairs or quality work throughout the house. Unfortunately, all of my neighbors are saying the same thing. Very sad to see.

My highland home that I thought would be my dream home, not so much. The home as so many issues and still currently trying to get fixed almost 2 months later. Half million dollar home should of went for a lesser home and got better quality. Very disappointed