Pulte Homes Reviews in Chicago, IL

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.

The entire process was stress free from start to finish. All of the people mentioned in the title have been amazing. My husband and I shopped around before deciding on Pulte and we are confident we made the right choice.

Saleswoman, Britta, is excellent. Helped us through the process. After that, dealing with the various subcontractors Pulte uses has been bad. Subcontractors next door leave garbage that blows onto our property. Mortgage company, cable tv company two examples. Numerous emails to staff not responded to. Pulte and cable company blamed each other for problems. Some strange design choices. One of our two outdoor water faucets is in the garage. No watering of seeded back yard or river birch trees since being installed. I am watering Pulte's property right now. The Pulte people onsite are working hard to help us, but I think they are shortstaffed. Nobody knows what is going to happen with landscaping on the south side of Josiah. Who is in charge here? ... More

Honestly i wasn’t too happy with the process. Started off with a sales consultant who didn’t follow up with the process of the bidding. Then because of lack of communication, we had to change the model of the house we wanted and the colors for the exterior. We were told dates of work to be done and no calls or emails to inform us of delays. We understand labor shortages and supply shortage but a simple email or call would help the buyer know estimated times. Then upon closing the title rep gave us the run around. The lawyer that represented us was even frustrated and he’s been doing this for many years and dealt with many new builds. The construction on the home is great the only issue is they didn’t clean up the leftover materials and scraps. I’ve been finding wood boards and small metal gutter pieces that are dangerous in the yard. The front door was dented when being painted and that wasn’t repaired and now I would need to file a claim for the door because we didn’t notice it sooner. We were told we would have something down in the yard for our dogs because the sod cannot be installed until a later date and that hasn’t been done either. We have nothing but a dirt pile and mud. ... More

Having a new home built can be exciting and stressful. Future home owners need to separate the supply chain and work force factors from the team who is on site building a new home. During construction we had changes in subcontractors, as well as, Pulte representatives. The ONE constant Pulte representative for us was Gina. She was there when we signed our papers and supported us when days were uncertain. She was always honest with us and painted a realistic picture of what to expect during the building process. Gina was also there after we closed to celebrate with us. Things go right and things go wrong during the construction of a new home. We had crews that were very professional and some crews that rushed their work. We had a site manager who promised more than he could deliver and then we had unbelievable Pulte representatives that cleaned up the mess that others created.. In the end we had a team that rallied behind us and got us in our home so we could start the next chapter of our lives. We are buying new things for our home and creating a new neighborhood with our new neighbors. I believe that Pulte wants to build a great home for every family that comes to them. When things went wrong eventually a top notch rep stepped in to get the standard of our Pulte home to where it is supposed to be. Those reps were always honest and hard working. And then there was one who was ALWAYS there, Gina. ... More

Brandon and Becki at Prairie Woods are very helpful, responsive, professional and made our build a pleasant experience. They are a great asset to Pulte Homes. We would build again with Pulte

The purchase process was complicated by inaccurate option descriptions. Finishes were rushed (poor taping & drywalling, cabinetry misalignments, exposed electrical outlets, a number of electrical wasn't grounded, front door painting incomplete and interior doors misaligned, ripped carpeting, incorrect height on up[graded/deep-pour basement) and are very visible. Some of these items were raised before closing and we were told nothing would be done. Do not recommend.

Code minimum builder. Need to improve customer experience

At Trails of Woods Creek in Algonquin, homebuyers are passed along from sales rep Kristen or Christine, to Celeste at the design center, to construction manager Anthony, to Brandon for pre-drywall review, to Alex for pre-closing review, to Kerie for after-sale support. It would be helpful to have a single advocate homebuyers could turn to at any stage for support or to have their questions answered. It is difficult to find out what is included in the base price, because the models include so many options. This is especially true for lighting and electrical outlets. Be persistent and keep asking. Ask to see the base plans. You may be surprised to find that there are no overhead lights in the bedrooms, or that no mirrors are included in the master bathroom. While the base price might be competitive, options are often significantly overpriced. For example, for $734, Pulte will not install the two standard toilets included in the base price of the home, which can be bought for $114.80 each, and instead install tall height toilets which can be bought for $167.30 each. No additional labor and $105 additional parts costs, and for this they charge $734. It is best to avoid options which can be easily changed out after closing at less cost. ... More

The house is very nice at a reasonable price.