Our overall experience with Stepping Stone Homes was very positive. The entire process was smooth and well-organized, with clear communication at every stage. Our sales agent was knowledgeable, helpful, and a pleasure to work with. The warranty team has been exceptional in addressing questions and providing support. The closing process was also handled efficiently, making the experience stress-free.
The build quality in the home is very good and the individuals working on the construction were all great. The interactions with the office was far from a good experience. We needed to follow up constantly, rarely heard back without multiple inquiries, was not included in any updates regarding the house (as promised) until we escalated our complaints. The turnaround time for pricing and requested changes/additions was extremely long and it was clearly evident that the office was not communicating with the construction team and a number of items needed to be corrected or adjusted later because there was no internal communication. We lived out of state and it was very clear that our home was delayed compared to others because of a lack of attention and oversight by the office team and their communication with the construction team. Additionally, we were set to close on our home just after to the heavy rains in WI. We called early the following morning and wanted to see the home following the heavy rains to check the basement and were told we couldn’t have someone meet us here and it would need to wait a day. That’s fine but the following day my wife showed up and there were workers in the home finishing projects. She was able to go into the basement and see that there was some water that seeped in through a foundation crack in an unfinished section of the basement. Not a lot, but good to see and make sure we were aware any potential issues so we could address grading and water drainage as needed. As my wife continued to walk the basement looking, our contact showed up to the home and came downstairs without knowing my wife was in the home. She saw the water in the unfinished section and decided to close the door to that room and placed a paint can just outside of the door, we believe, in hopes of deterring my wife from checking the room. That just didn’t sit well with us and seemed like she was purposefully trying to hide that from us. That really left a bad taste in our mouths and just left us wondering what other things they may be trying to hide from us along the way. Additionally, we hired a separate electrician to install a generator on our home following our closing. He let us know that when he met out contact here to price the job, she complained to him about how “difficult we were to work with, especially the wife”. That is just totally unprofessional and given our home had more than $250K in upgrades, it seems they may be better suited to just building and selling spec homes instead of semi-custom homes. The final comment I have is that even when we expressed our concern over our contact attempting to hide the water at our pre closing inspection, we were told it would be escalated and someone would call us, needless to say we have never heard from the builder again. Many items on the pre-inspection checklist are still outstanding or we needed to submit again in the 30 day list to get someone to actually resolve. On a positive note, Scott, Pete and Bill from the construction side were all fantastic.