From: rajiv@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (Rajiv Arora)
Newsgroups: austin.general
Subject: Re: House builder recommendations/info wanted (esp. Russell Parker)
Date: 2 Sep 92 20:58:59 GMT
Distribution: austin
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <1992Sep2.140800.26214@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> marc@yogi.austin.ibm.com (Marc J. Stephenson) writes:
>Howdy,
>     I'm in the midst of house hunting, and I would like to know people's
>recommendations on builders in the $200-$250 range.  We've found a lot which
>meets our needs and most of our desires, and it belongs to Russell Parker.
>One couple down that street said that they were moving to Austin and didn't
>really care where the house was, as long as Russell Parker built it (a high
>recommendation in my mind).  I then hear (4th hand, actually) that there were
>three people here at IBM that had had there house built by some builder (and
>the 2nd hand person thought that it might have been Parker) and there were
>unspecified problems.  I am trying to verify that information now.
>    Does anybody out there have 1st hand (or 2nd hand) experience with Russell
>Parker that they would care to share?  Secondarily, how about any information
>on other custom builders in the area?
>
>    I would be grateful for any information.

I was recently in the same situation as you. While I ended up buying an existing
home, I did seriously consider building with Russell Parker. I too had gotten
several glowing endorsements of RP. However, my experience with one of their
salespeople (I forget her name) was less than satisfactory. She showed us a lot
in Winterberry Drive (in Jester) and even came up with a detailed bid on a plan
we had decided on. A few days later, she called us to say that the estimate she
had given us would have to be revised upwards by $25K because they had just
surveyed the lot and realized the slab would have to be deeper than expected.

I found it extraordinarily inept of her to not have their people do a detailed
survey of the lot prior to giving us a bid. My understanding from the people I
talked to who had recommended RP to me was that they had built with him when he
was a small custom builder. They claimed he worked with them personally at the
time. Now he has a sales staff and maybe we just got a bad one.

I must say the quality of construction on the few RP houses I did see looked
very good. However, I'm not an expert.

A builder I can recommend in your price range is Tom Pitt of Pitt Building Co.
We were going to go with him if the deal on our present house had not gone
through. He spent endless hours with us, showed us some of the houses he'd
built in the Bluegrass area of Great Hills, had us talk to previous clients of
his. All the people we talked to had only good things to say. I felt the
quality of his construction was a notch above the Doyle Wilson/Rado/Felder
level, but again, I am not an expert.

Contact me by email (or call) if you want to discuss this further.

-Rajiv

-- 
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* Rajiv Arora			Email: rajiv@bongo.cc.utexas.edu	     *
*				Phone: (512) 795-9015			     *
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