Their new homes may be stunning. Their salespeople may have just the right amount of personality, sparkle and a great no-hard-sell approach. Their advertising may jump out at you in the weekend newspaper, and their slick, beautifully-illustrated brochures may find you gazing longingly at their floor plans.

But how do homebuilders treat their customers once they have signed on the dotted line?

Good customer service is important in every industry, but especially making a huge investment such as a new home. Listening to your concerns, finding ways to resolve worries as a home is being built, and following-up after the sale are all goals that should be put in writing by your potential homebuilder.

According to a poll of 400 members by the National Association of Homebuilders, "Builders without written customer service policies tend to spend lots of time putting out fires, keeping unhappy customers at bay, and achieving less than superior profits."

Imagine, says NAHB, if the building superintendent receives a call from an irate homebuyer at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, wanting to know why the optional "morning room" they ordered was missing.

Panicking and rifling through paperwork, the builder does indeed find that the customer chose the morning room. How expensive, wonders the builder, will this be after excavator's fees, labor, materials, re-permitting fees and engineer certifications for re-pouring concrete to add the expanded foundation, and other costs?

In effect, NAHB tells members, "you're building this home for practice" and you've lost the customer's confidence.

How do you avoid such problems? NAHB advises three key meetings:

1. Pre-groundbreaking

Some of mostly-costly and frustrating mistakes can take place during the first few days of construction. Oftentimes several months go by with the home site remaining untouched, while you are selecting options, changing your mind, and finally settling on some specific preferences for your new home. A pre-groundbreaking meeting with the builder is probably the most important meeting of them all, enabling you to review your final decisions with the superintendent.

By the time this meeting takes place, the homebuilder should have staked off the home's placement for you to check out, offering you the approved plot plan for the home site. This plot plan illustrates setbacks for the home's front, back, and sides from the site's property lines. Any applicable easements should be discussed at this point. If the homebuilder takes a great deal of pride in this meeting, all unsightly trash and debris should have already been removed, enabling you to get a clean picture of what is about to take place.

The contract, addenda, construction order changes -- anything pertaining to how the home was ordered, should be on hand for review and explanation. The superintendent should be able to "walk you through" the selections you've elected, giving you time to compare your own notes and paperwork. After agreeing that the details are accurate, you will then be asked to sign off on your paperwork

2. Pre-sheetrock

The biggest reason to insist on an inspection at the pre-drywall stage is that this is the last best opportunity to fix mistakes that may have been made on the builder's part. It's much easier at this juncture to point out the closet you decided to added to the downstairs office, making it someday usable as a guest bedroom than after the drywall, trim, paint and carpeting are in place.

All of the plumbing and electrical options your chose, or chose not to re-locate should be in place at this point. If they are not, or if they are in the wrong location, now is the time to speak up. You'll be asked to sign off again, practically signing away your rights to make any changes to anything else at this point, so be careful here. Overlooked items you notice later on may be correctable -- but often not without non-refundable deposits and considerable costs, in addition to the possibility of adding more days of construction time.

3. Pre-closing

This is the last opportunity for you to be wowed by your builder. The completed home you are about to make your own is now at the no-turning back point for both you and the homebuilder. The pride they take in this important presentation is demonstrated by a spotless house, clean driveway and walkways surfaces, and a home site that appears next to perfection, with no plastic water bottles, gum wrappers, or construction debris anywhere in sight.

Before you arrive, your builder should have already tested all of your appliances, home automation systems, lights, thermostats, and plumbing -- anything that could potentially become an embarrassing demonstration during the walk-through or create headaches during the first few weeks of occupancy.

Some builders go so far as stocking the home with toilet paper, paper towels, liquid soap, dishwasher detergent, paper cups, paper plates and plastic utensils; a small, but caring gesture to establish goodwill as a precursor to great customer service.

During the orientation, the customer service or building superintendent should provide you with warranty and care information for all systems and appliances and contact information for customer service calls. He or she should explain the difference between a true emergency and a routine customer service call, offer to notify you when important milestone timeframes in customer service will take place, and make a punch list of any imperfections in the home that can't be fixed before the keys to the home become yours.

An appointment to fix remaining items can be made on the spot or you can give yourself a chance to settle in before making the appointment yourself.

Two important points about the final walk-through: If the water, electricity or other services are not turned on you have no way of knowing if various systems work. Also, make sure to keep your own punch-list so that nothing which is to be repaired is left off the builder's list. Compare lists before you leave.

Interestingly, the three stages when meetings at the home are recommended are also the three points where you may want to have a professional home inspector present. The advantage of a home inspector is that he or she is familiar with building and not emotionally involved with the property.

For more articles by Dena Amoruso, please press here.

Published: February 7, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

A veteran of the real estate and homebuilding industries since 1986, Dena Kouremetis first joined Realty Times as a new homes writer in 1998. Since then, she has authored four books, written consumer columns on new homes issues for websites and newspapers all across the country, contributed to builder trade magazines, appeared as a guest expert on several radio shows and even created a ten-chapter podcast for LendingTree.com’s homebuilder website, iNest.com, now available on iTunes, entitled Uncharted Waters; Navigating the Purchase of a New Production Home. Kouremetis recently joined her local Folsom, CA Coldwell Banker office as a broker associate while continuing to write for the real estate industry. For the past three years, she has been training real estate agents for both the resale and new homes industries, putting her experience, research expertise and gift of expression to work to help others entering the business.