Pulte Homes Reviews in Chicago, IL

My husband and I were so excited to build our perfect house with Pulte. At the beginning, we were sold a beautiful elevation with stone up the garage and house. AFTER we signed and put down our deposit our sales rep told us that this is actually not what we would be receiving and there was actually significantly less stone. Pulte shows the correct elevation for other communities, so why sell us the elevation and SWITCH it on us last minute? Communication throughout the building process was not the best. Throughout construction, there were many errors that we caught, such as wrong cabinets installed and crooked walls, however the sales rep told us to trust Pulte's work. At the time of our celebration walk through, we were shocked to see the number of errors Pulte did not catch: cracked window framing, CROOKED fireplace, cracked trim, incorrect shower tile in the math bath, chipped doors, cuts in floor, gashes in the wall and trim, kitchen island pendant lights installed in the WRONG location, duplicate and loose railing balusters, multiple cabinets needed to be replaced. These are just a few of the issues and we blue taped them. Three days after our celebration walk through we closed (which, per the contract the celebration is supposed to be at least 1 week prior to closing). We were shocked at our final walk through to see how many of these errors were completely ignored! People had just taken the blue tape off and called it a day. We also were only allowed to walk through the house during the final walk through for 30 minutes because the construction manager had to go to Michigan for a wedding.... I had a family member with me at the final walk through and it was embarrassing for him to see the state of the house that we paid so much for. Not to mention, the house was absolutely filthy when we purchased it. There was drywall dust caking the baseboards, workers urine in AND AROUND the toilet, personal trash inside of cabinets and the window sill, basement had not been cleaned since construction concluded. I was shocked, and when I expressed my concerns I was told that I should just hire my own processional cleaner if I’m a “neat-freak”. If I purchase a brand new house from Pulte, I don't expect to clean up after Pulte's contractors. Since closing, it has been a nightmare to get these issues fixed. It has been over a month since closing, and we still do not have a resolution to most of these issues. I also feel like Pulte does not care about us or our home after we closed. The electrician that was sent over to correct our pendant lights left our house absolutely trashed - drywall dust EVERYWHERE since he did NOT cover up anything in the house before he cut into the ceiling. In addition, he then used our brand new personal vacuum to attempt to clean up after him, which destroyed the vacuum due to the dry wall dust.... Thanks Pulte!!! The issue is that it seems Pulte finds as many cheap alternatives as possible. ALL of the "upgraded" trim, baseboards, and even our fireplace is MDF. This was not disclosed to us, instead our sales rep told us how great everything would be since we were paying so much to UPGRADE. In addition, the paint that is used is not of any quality - it chips and smudges so easily to the point where the Pulte workers couldn't put their work bag up against the wall without smudging it. It is also confusing how Pulte does not recommend for homeowners to paint for at least 1 year, however does not provide quality paint to withstand normal ware and tare in a home. Like I said, it has been over a month that we have closed on our home and these issues are still not addressed. It is so disappointing that this is what we are experiencing and it seems like there is no support from Pulte. My husband and I also have to take time off of work to be at the house to wait for a Pulte worker to come over, and many times they are late or do not show up at all. This is causing my husband and I to miss work and lose money. ... More

During the buying process, Pulte has been keep me well informed about the progress so I can get everything prepared ahead of the time. Buying house is a very stressful process , especially if you also have to sell your existing house. It takes a lot of carefully planning. Pulte delivered the house on time, even though there's still couple times not done by the time we moved in, but that all been taken care of within couple weeks. In terms of build quality, overall I would said it's very good, there's always some minor issues. But that's true regardless if you buying a condo or a mansion. Pulte didn't deliver everything perfectly (doubt anybody could), but if you keep your expectation within reasonable range, you will be a very happy home owner. ... More

Great home and Great quality. Builders did a great job. My only complaint would be the sales experience. Our sales rep Kristen was unprofessional. She did not explain our options thoroughly. Communication was poor. But at the end of the day we are happy with our new home.

Smooth process, good communication through different phases

OVERALL FROM BEGINNING THE WORST EXPERIENCE IN BUYING A HOME AND WE HAVE PURCHASED AND BUILT HOMES IN THE PAST FROM DIFFERENT BUILDERS.

House took over a year to complete! Standard Ascend model, no basement or upstairs. We were rushed to get all our options picked. Contract signed 8/21 but foundation wasn’t laid until 4/22. Overall options were not properly conveyed. Insulation in a garage in the Chicagoland is an option! Didn’t realize this until a walk through but was relieved that the drywall wasn’t up yet in the garage. I asked to put insulation in at that point, I’ll pay, too late. Nothing was ever Pulte’s fault, shortage of workers, the county inspectors, weather. Those problems turned into my problems. I feel no issue was ever escalated to senior management. Homes were completed well before ours even though they signed their contract after us. My biggest frustration is that Pulte never took responsibility for any delay! ... More

We were lucky enough to get a great salesperson to start the process! Gina was amazing! She helped guide us through the whole process, answered our questions, and the result was a home we enjoy! The design center experience was wonderful. Pulte kept us informed the entire time during the building process and we closed in a timely manner. Look forward to many happy years in our new home!

The finishing of the inside doors and the dry wall in the corners is very bad. (Very sloppy, not good quality workmanship. Obviously whoever did it didn’t take pride in their work.

Some of the products are not of high quality, such as the paint and hardwood floors. There are some slight dents in the cabinets as well. The ComEd service cannot be switched to my account, and I have to track it with a Comed representative for days to get it resolved. Normally, the builder should talk to Comed first to provide all the meter details and everything else setup before I call them for my account activation

Overall a good experience, a lot of little details we over looked that I wish we paid more attention to. Everything we asked for they did. If I could do it again I would but I would be more involved and went and inspected the house more through out the building process.

The entire experience was positive every step of the way, from the initial sales crew to the construction liaison and through to the final sale

This was not a great experience. My first review was very in depth but it ‘drew business away’ but new home source wouldn’t post it because they are paid by the builders to host their information - just to be transparent. This was bad from start to finish it has been months since closing and many items are still not completed on our punch list. We do not have final occupancy from the village. It has been a struggle every moment of the way. Good Luck!

I am experiencing multiple heater issues in my new house 1) getting big noise while running heater multiple times in a day in Flex room as well as powder room. Pulte management saying it's as per quality, I did check with multiple Willwood house owners and they are not getting any noise. 2) we need to wait 3 to 4 minutes every time to get hot water in master bathroom so we are wasting 15 to 20 minutes of water every day before shower.

First off, we love our new Pulte home. For the most part, we are very happy with the home, our upgrades, and the quality. During the process of working with Diane (sales office) and Jake (construction manager), we have been impressed with the time taken to provide details and inform us of the construction process along the way. Unfortunately, at the end of the process and now, 1.5 months of ownership, we most certainly do not feel like a priority any longer, nor do neighbors that we have spoken to. Jake the construction manager turned over the responsibilities for closing out our home to his assistant, Kyle. First, Kyle changed our closing date without informing the Title Company or me and my wife. During the walkthrough he did a good job walking the house and his crews followed up on most needed quick fixes. However, when pointing out stains in the carpet upstairs, he said he would send a carpet cleaner. That never happened. We decided to live with the stains and will work to remove the stains ourselves. The next item, which is major to me and my wife is that our kitchen cabinets are still not fixed. There are several molding pieces missing, a cabinet side missing, self-closing drawers that do not close, and the nail holes/scratches have not been covered. Kyle indicated that he ordered the parts and that they should be received within a week or so. The cabinet parts have still not been received 1.5 months in and Kyle is extremely slow to reply or give adequate updates when he does respond. When reaching out to Jake to obtain an update he pushes the responsibility onto Kyle. We paid an awful lot for this chef's kitchen and we want to fully enjoy it. Lastly, we still do not have our smart lock for the front door. When the smart home installer called Kyle about the lock, Kyle indicated it was on backorder after checking around. Kyle never informed us it was on backorder. 1.5 months in and no smart lock. Is the problem the two different companies not being responsive, or is the problem our construction management? To us, it doesn't matter...we just want our home to be finished and have what we paid for. Overall, like I said, we love our home. But, as soon as Pulte received our money, we certainly do not feel like a priority to Pulte Chasewood's team. That is very disappointing! ... More

Now that we’ve lived in our new house for close to two months we are settling in and are happy with the finished product. Pulte completed some of the punch list items and a few are outstanding, however we are optimistic they will be completed. After a two year search of new and existing homes we found Trillium Farm. The home designs and proximity to Blackwell Forest Preserve were the main selling features for us, Going into the purchase we had read other reviews so we had a sense of what to expect and this was helpful information. As others mentioned, Pulte rushes you through the various phases but is slow in other phases. Our contract signing day was close to the end of the day near the end of August 2021. On that day we had to select all the options and the exterior color scheme or our place in line would go to someone else. It felt incredibly rushed considering the size of the purchase we were about to commit to. Pulte has pre-set color packages. It would have been helpful if they had generic exterior color renderings to see what the combination of finishes look like if they expected us to make such a quick decision. The design studio experience could also be improved. Pulte emails out an electronic design book with small images of the available selections a month in advance of the appointment. Pulte could provide some aids to prospective buyers narrow down selections in advance. Links to manufacturer websites could help. Also, an opportunity to visit the design center on a weekend in advance just to look around and not be pressured by a salesperson would have made the selection day (time constrained) 3-hour design experience so much easier. Once we were in the construction phase, we did not receive the regular communication promised by Pulte. Since we lived in the area, we started making weekly visits to check on the progress directly, and this gave us some peace of mind that work was progressing. The completion deadline shifted several times. We were trying to time the sale of our existing house with the completion of the new one. This is where things became very expensive because we trusted their “firm date”. Instead, we had to rent back our house for a month, then move to a hotel for three weeks, put all of our belongings in storage and compensate a moving company for two moves. ... More

Building a home with Pulte was one of the worst experiences of our life. We had previously built two homes with smaller builders and had a positive experience with both. The other builders made every effort to meet our needs, with Pulte it was take it or leave it. We met with the Design Center and after making our selections were later told our wood flooring, wall tile and countertops were not available no effort would be made to provide them. Later while we were in Florida we learned the applince package was no longer available. Our predrywall meeting was another issue. It was scheduled on a date when I was out of town on a trip that had been planned for a year. When we asked to move it back a day we were told that was impossible. My wife went by herself and was left with the impression we would get a key and have access to the house during construction as we did with the previous two houses we built. We found out this wasn't true and we had to make arrangement with our sales rep to go in and see the progress on the house. We had no input into the closing date even within the two week window which was all we heard throughout the construction progress. Finally, the landscaping was down in a very hapharzd manner. We had no input and the landscapers gave no consideration to which plants did well in shade versus sunshine. It seemed like they grabbed whatever was available when they left the nursery and planted them. ... More

Overall experience was terrible. It starts with Sales doing a poor job helping you through the many options. Then it continues with promises from both Sales and the Construction making promises that are never kept. The contracts are written to steer you to use Pulte Mortgage, who is non-responsive unless they want something. Communication is very poor throughout the process. Then to top it off, when you finally get to the ‘Celebration’ phase of the process, the quality of the house they built is not very good. In true Pulte fashion, the final walk through is setup 90 minutes before closing, so you get rushed and miss many of the shoddy items until later. They got our money, but do yourself a favor and avoid any Pulte built homes. ... More

The construction side for the most part went great however the contract/sales side was a total nightmare. We gave our sales rep our check for our earnest money for our lot in November 2021 and despite being told we would have our contract in a week we didn’t get it until March 2022. We asked weekly when we would get our contract and it wasn’t until my husband went to corporate directly we finally got one. They tried to play games and raise the overall price $20K during the process which thankfully didn’t happen. There was total lake of communication and sometimes no response at all to questions from our sales rep. The mortgage side was a total joke as well. We used our own mortgage company because no one at Pulte mortgage seemed to be able to communicate and share the same information. We got several conflicting answers to the same question if we got answers back at all. We are incredibly happy to be in our home but the process of getting there was incredibly frustrating. ... More

Working with the sales consultant was great for the most part, until the very end when communication basically stopped. For your sake, I hope you don't have any issues because getting them addressed is time consuming and getting someone to actually help you is difficult. You pay a lot of money for not great service. I continue to notice poor craftmanship in my home and the interior paint job has tons of issues. It simply wasn't possible to catch everything during our walk through and now what was missed we are stuck with. My floor creaks all over my bedroom. Overall, I love the look and design of my home, but for the money I paid, I would have expected better work. ... More

still we are waiting for fix backyard door and backyard groung not fixed well (not safe for kids)so i want that fix it as soon as possible

Overall experience is ok and quality of the house isn’t great.

Great Brand New Home! The builder kept us informed during the building process.

Huge turnaround with employees; had 3 different sales people in less than a year; 2 different construction managers. The sales people and construction manager not on the same page about what is needed in the house; we were told we only needed 1 garage door opener for a 3 car garage since we purchased the smart home package when in fact we needed to add another one for the 3rd car. Now we have moved in and are only able to use one side until we hire someone to come and put the other one in. They are unwilling to work with you on issues and Very slow responsiveness in regards to issues (you email them and they email you back 2 weeks later if you’re lucky) Poor quality of things that were upgraded such as cabinets and floors. They give you 30min to 1 hr for final walk through to find issues and if you email them the next day about something found such as chips in floor they won’t fix them since that’s not covered. Rushed closing due to them wanting to meet end of quarter quota. Overall we like the house but would never build with Pulte again. We built with 3 other families in the same subdivision and we all had the same issues. ... More

love my house and experience was great

From our first encounter with our sales representative through the final walk through and beyond, a totally awesome experience.