K. Hovnanian® Homes Reviews in Santa Cruz, CA

The layout and efficiency of the house is outstanding. The attention to detailAnd the little thingsOr what stand out with me.

High quality homes with attention to detail with great service!

Check all the little things.

The beauty of these home is far superior to other home builders.

The fire alarms do not have good qualities and the support team is very reluctant to fix this issues!

Overall, the experience was fair - we were faced with a few challenges along the way, which we felt could have been handled with a bit more care and empathy, but understand that timing is a crucial aspect for transactions like this. After closing, responsiveness to questions and issues seem to have stalled, with a handful of open items never followed up on despite multiple attempts to connect. The staff are all very friendly and welcoming, but there is a breakdown in communication between sales, construction, design, and the homeowners which makes getting answers and information difficult at times. ... More

Be prepared for a rough ride, missed meetings and a lack of service

Overall, i'm not so happy with the outcome. There some defects ie heater, garage control and the builder home warranty is not responding to address this . I emailed twice and No response.

This builder cuts corners and uses the cheapest subcontractors. It shows in the finished product. Plastic push-pull shut-off valves? C'mon, that's substandard. We also have gaps in recessed lighting and cabinets and poorly hung doors. Even our A/C unit was installed incorrectly.

While the builder tries to position itself in the above average, or even premium, segment, the reality of what the buyer gets is far from it. We bought our house during the "seller's market", at a time when lots of people were moving out of cities into suburbs (demand high, supply low). So, we essentially had to suck it up, and make the best of the situation, to get a reasonable size house at a price we could afford. If the market were more balanced, this would likely be a non-starter. The sales agent that we got ended up being poorly informed on some issues at the beginning of the process. Towards the end of the process (when it got to the actual construction wrap up, setting the move in dates, closing, etc.) he was pretty much MIA. Our move-in date was pushed out 4 or 5 times, the last couple of times after the builder reassured us that there would be no more changes. I made a mistake of arranging my move logistics based on these promises. At the end, we barely escaped having to Air-B-n-B for a couple of weeks, because things weren't done on time. Lots of sad tales to tell (including the builder completely blowing the "gold key orientation", for which we showed up and the house was nowhere to being finalized, and ended up having to reschedule). If it weren't for me escalating issues repeatedly, we'd probably have to wait another month or more. Which would probably be OK, except no one proactively managed our expectation, and I was getting almost last minute notifications that the completion is pushed out. For instance, about 3 hours before I was scheduled to sign all the closing documents, I was notified that the actual move in date is getting pushed out by another week. And I hate getting confrontational in general, which is what I pretty much had to do to get people to respond to me and get things moving. Not something you want to do if you shop closer to the “premium” range. We are now one month into having moved in. Our AC does not work (particularly unpleasant during the heatwave that rolled on after we moved in) - someone came to look at it a week ago or so, spent a couple of hours poking around, left a bunch of dirty stains on our white ceiling, and essentially fixed nothing, we're still waiting for a follow-up visit to get things fixed; one of the "gourmet kitchen" cabinets (yes, we paid a good chunk of extra money for the "gourmet kitchen" option) is coming undone - i called that in a couple of days ago, no response so far; we had to call in non-working garbage disposal; a handful of electrical outlets (improperly installed and noted during the "orientation" walkthroughs) are still not fixed; we have a couple of cracks in the concrete on our covered patio; one of the windows installed is defective (a divider inside it fell off, and we were told that they will have to actually replace the entire window); a few windows around the house don't actually close all the way; one window does not open; another electrical item - all garage outlets are for some reason configured in such a way that they can't handle a fridge being plugged in (we were told that this is a standard configuration for this house model, which is really strange as you'd expect the outlets in the garage to be able to handle devices that are at least as powerful as something you'd plug in inside the house... to say nothing of power tools, for example); here an there throughout the second floor it feels like the builder left something on the hard floor before laying down the carpet (feels like pebbles or something like that) - things stick into your feet as you step on it. There's lots of other things that just show either poor materials quality, or poor workmanship. These are the things that we can see/touch - so I truly hope that whatever is inside the walls and under the carpet is at least reliable enough. One final interesting thing - our lot is positioned up against a hill, such that we don't have neighbors in the back, and the view from the back is quite nice. I think these lots were marketed as "premium" lots, for which a premium was included int he price of the house. We were actually really happy to get this lot. The fence in the back was originally promised to be a hard wood fence (even though we inquired about the possibility of having a more see-through metal fence, to take advantage of the view). Turns out, there was a reason for why the original plan called for the solid wood fence (i.e. squirrels, snakes and other creatures inhabiting the hill). At the time of the purchase we did not know or think about this, hence asked for the option to have the transparent fence in the back. Our sales agent very definitively said that this is not an option, and that we are getting the wood fence. Fast forward to a few weeks before the end of construction, we find out that the wood fence actually turned into the see-through metal fence (no warning, no heads-up from anyone). Same for all the houses on the hillside. Now just about everyone needs to somehow improvise around it for the proper protection against the wildlife (from putting up tarps, to building retaining walls, to building additional fences on their own). We’re happy and thankful to have been able to buy the place, albeit annoyed at the things that are still not fixed. But going back to the title of my review – very much average quality trying to position itself as premium product. In a more balance market we’d definitely go with other premium brands. Guess this time around it just wasn’t in the stars. ... More

Wish KHov was more responsive and also used a different title company.

Didn’t get good service from these people. I wouldn’t buy a KHov home again. Only the construction manager and warranty have been honest with me. Besides that didn’t feel that I got a honest and true buying experience with good morals.

If you use KHov, make sure you buy a home that's already built / that you can see the workmanship. They "churned and burned" our home and didn't even completely finish it before moving on. Such a terrible experience with this builder, I would never use them again in a million years.

Inspect homes thoroughly before move in. High chance home contains workmanship issues.