As part of the process of shopping for a new home, you’ll undoubtedly read through customer reviews that people leave for builders. These reviews can give you valuable insight into what your experience with a particular builder will be like, and they can help you make your final decision.
Of course, you need to take reviews with a grain of salt. Some types of reviews are better than others.
Let's break down some of the things you should know as you read builder reviews.
Disgruntled People Leave More Reviews
Most of the time, when a product or service meets our expectations, we don’t feel motivated enough to leave a review. Surely you’ve experienced this yourself when you bought something online or went to a restaurant. If you had a decent experience, you simply go about your merry way.
If something goes wrong, though, you feel differently. You’re angry and you want to let others know. Leaving a bad review almost becomes a duty because you want to warn other people about the business.
As you look through a builder’s reviews, you might find a few especially negative ones. For whatever reason, that person was really unhappy with what they received, and they felt it was important to leave a bad review.
What isn’t always obvious, though, is that the negative review is one person out of hundreds or thousands, and that review is only one part of the story.
Other customers are likely satisfied, so they don’t feel like they need to write a review.
Builder Site Reviews Are Exceptionally Gushing
If a builder publishes a review on their website, you can bet that it’s going to be a good one. They’re going to find someone who was extremely happy with their home and the building experience and have that person leave them a detailed review.
Sometimes, they’ll only pick out a few quotes from the full review, which can give a skewed perceptive of what the person’s experience was like. For instance, they might quote the customer as saying, “The Area Manager was great to work with. She was knowledgeable and helped us make an informed decision about what we wanted to add to the home.” That review might have gone on to detail some negative aspects of the experience, such as a delay in the timeline, that the builder isn’t putting on their website.
Key thing - take these type of reviews with a grain of salt.
“Stars” Are Subjective
Be careful about interpreting anything that uses a “star” or number rating system. At first glance, they seem like a good solution because you can quickly see that a company is “4.5 out of 5 stars”.
However, it’s not as easy to interpret those scores as it seems.
For instance, if you don’t have a lot of data points, one bad rating can have a huge effect. You should also note that people have different ideas of what the star rating could mean. Two people could be equally satisfied with their purchase, yet give different star ratings because one person believes that the 5-star rating should only be given if a company went above and beyond the usual level of service.
It’s just not standard, so you can’t blindly trust the numbers.
Companies Encourage Customers to Delete Negative Reviews
Did you ever write a negative review about a company? In many cases, after you write your negative review, the company gets in touch with an offer to fix the problems you had with them. In exchange, they usually want you to remove the negative review - or you may just feel self-pressure to change it after they’ve offered you something good.
This can mean that you rarely see the negative reviews a company has. There’s no way to tell how often this happens, but you might want to keep it in mind, especially if you see nothing but glowing reviews.
Your Experiences May Differ
Remember that anyone writing a review - especially a bad one - is talking about their particular experience, usually involving one particular person in the company.
Sometimes, people just rub each other the wrong way. A bad review doesn’t mean you’re going to have the same experience!
For instance, the customer complaining about delays in their home build may have had those delays because they couldn’t choose their design options in a timely manner. If you already know what you want, you won’t experience those same delays.
Homebuilder reviews can help you make a decision, but they shouldn’t play a major role. It’s more important to make judgements based on your own experiences. Does the builder seem to offer the things you want in a home? Do they treat you well when you’re interacting with them? These are the types of things that will determine how good your experience is.
