OWNER BUILDER NETWORK

Wow, What a Rip Off! If you ever wanted to throw your money away in an effort to get your home built, then run on over to Owner Builder Network and you'll be so disappointed. They are a scam- low to no Customer service at a cost of $1000; the first dollars that I have ever thrown given/away. Their custom budget is an excel spreadsheet with numbers and input from you, the home buyer. I could have done that myself; would a bank really accept that? They sell themselves as a top notch building company with 3 tiers of services which you could get better from your local handyman. Do stay away as this company should be deemed as unfit and unqualified by the BBB.

The designer was totally incompetent he couldn’t do anything I met with him and asked for . But said it would take 2 weeks . Over 3 weeks later he came back with something totally off the wall . Nothing we discussed it was like he was on drugs or not even listening. I then drew the plan I asked him for and he kept making off the wall changes to my drawing. He eliminated the front door made dangerous steps inside the house couldn’t do the outside stairs I drew and kept changing and leaving out windows adding half walls etc etc It was like I was dealing with a person who had never done design. Three months later I was fed up with his incompetence and didn’t recognize my plans so I took what he had and had to pay someone else to do it so I could turn it into the city for a permit. Next was their so-called construction manager . He wanted to get a manual j with out having the specs required to get one ( like window and door information ) . I asked for window bids to meet code . He said there was a delay in getting bids. So I called their suppliers and got some bids the same day . 2 months later he came back with bids that didn’t even meet code and wanted to get the manual j again. Again I said no and that these bids won’t work . He never personally came up with bids that meet code except to send me ones I got three months earlier. I was fed up with his lies and found my own trades even tho that’s what I paid them for . He couldn’t get some bids ones he did were from a thousand dollars more than I could find to almost double or were totally unusable ( it was like they didn’t know how to bid ) I paid 20,000 for incompetence and lies This company is totally worthless Avoid this company Nothing but a scam

We went with Owner Builder Network (OBN) because we knew others who had used them and were generally satisfied with their service. Overall, they were very friendly and generally helpful, but there were some problems. They wanted all of their payment before we began construction, which should have been a clue. (Even though they told us not to pay our subcontractors until we were happy with the work performed.) We used the architect they recommended, and who worked out of their office. (The architect we wanted to use was too busy to work on our project at the time.) The OBN architect was O.K., but did not check his work. He recommending things that did not meet the requirements that we had given him up front. Even though I had made a set of architectural drawings to give him (I am an engineer myself), he still left some items off the official set so that I had to go back and redline his drawings for use with the subs. The next thing was the soil survey. The company they sent us to (Intec of DFW) charged us almost twice as much, as we found out later, what other company?s would have. The soil survey report they gave us differed greatly, as we also later found out, from what another company had done for our neighborhood. When I inquired about the results, their ?professional engineer? said ?I, don?t know, I just put the numbers in the computer.? Not very professional. The whole kicker was, we didn?t have to do a soil survey at all because the neighborhood developer already had one available. OBN never told us to ask if one had been done. Money down the drain, plus about a six week delay in getting started while I straightened all this out myself. OBN was pretty much clueless about the bogus soil report results. The list of vendors and subcontractors they gave us were supposed to give discounts to OBN customers. Though they did give builder discounts, I often found I could beat their prices with others that were not on the list, or sometimes those on the list even though I didn?t always mention OBN. Many of the companies they listed never responded to my inquiries. OBN only visited my job site once during construction. Although in fairness, I never asked them to come, either, after the fiascos we had at the beginning. All in all, OBN would be helpful to someone with no technical or building skills, and who wants to build a low to medium priced house. We were building on the upper end of the housing scale, and I just don?t think we got very much value added by using OBN.

We are working with M.L. who has been very helpful throughout the entire process. He is very responsive to our phone calls and emails. We have not completed the house fully yet, but are over 80% through the process. The contractors they referred were good and easy to work with since they had worked with the program for quite some time. The manual that is included with the program explained the building process, supplied us with contracts and lien release forms and helped keep us on track with the build. They also did an initial construction budget, which helped with the bid process. This is not the first house we built, but we were new in Texas and this program helped tremendously in finding good contractors to work with. We could not have gotten the house built this quickly, on budget and with the quality of a custom built home without the network of contractors they referred and the advice along the way from M. L. It was worth the cost of the program. We saved money by not paying custom builder fees, having control over the process and choosing the materials that we wanted to install, thereby having a better constructed home.