Oakland Hunt by MJC Companies

Overall service has been excellent, anything needing attention has been done quickly

MJC made an exciting time stressful. Starting with the initial meeting we had, we were given false information by Grace, which led us to sign a contract with MJC to build a home. Grace showed us an actual house with the layout we were purchasing (Logan floor plan), and led us to believe we could make changes to the floor plan of our new house. The house we saw had been modified to include a bonus space on the second floor. When we later had signed a contract to build a new home and tried to add a bonus space on the second floor, we were told we could not. We also wanted to relocate the fireplace (as the Logan floor plan shows two options), but were told we could not. Had we known these were not possible up front we would not have built this house. Along the way, Grace was unclear or incorrect about other things as well. She did not make it clear from the start that we would have to pay for appliances and lights out of pocket. These are huge expenses that we thought we could include in the home price and pay as part of our mortgage. We ended up putting less money down for the house because of these unexpected large out of pocket expenses. This should have been made abundantly clear from our first meeting. In addition, we had a certain amount of money we could use towards upgrades. The process of selecting upgrades takes place over several months, and I kept asking Grace for help with budgeting for certain things. She was not helpful and in the end we ran out of upgrade money and had no upgrade money left for things like flooring, adding solid doors, more tile work and a mud room built-in. There were many, many other things that happened along the way that made our overall experience bad. Another example is our mortgage banker we were trying to use for the construction loan did not get the necessary addendums he needed in order to complete the loan application. He asked MJC for these and was not given them. Barb started calling me and my husband and leaving threatening voicemails saying if we didn't use their preferred mortgage lender, we would have to start paying MJC a daily fee for closing late. We ended up not being able to use our trusted friend and had to use LMCU for our loan. These are just a few examples of the terrible experience we had with MJC.

Grace was good, although sometimes slow to respond. Suspect this is because she's overburdened with only part-time help to assist (Maggie, who is also good). The process during the build was confusing at times, and there were several instances where we were expected to know things we couldn't have known, especially as first-time home builders. It also felt like we were constantly having to go back to the site and correct things done wrong, either because of MJC's miscommunication with the contractor (as it was explained to us), or missed items in the plethora of addendums. MJC could have been more attentive and helpful, beyond Grace, during the build process and needs to tidy it up. And for Grace's sake and your customers' sake, MJC needs to ditch the connection with Colleen at Lafata. She is awful. Rude, pedantic and very slow to respond. She doesn't listen to what she's told by the homebuyer and despite the lengthy back-and-forth with her to get the kitchen configuration right, she still got it wrong and it was not what we wanted. It was clear she did what was easiest for her, not what we wanted (we asked for nothing out of the ordinary). MJC needs to understand this is as much on the builder as it is on the cabinet contractor. Lafata is MJC's contractor, not ours. Continue to use them if you like, but MJC has to get a rep other than Colleen. Marty was OK. Helpful when he could be but obviously has to toe the company line. Was nice to talk to and easy to work with, although there wasn't much we had to do with him. Sonny is relatively useful, and can be responsive, but otherwise is a bit disorganized and while he ADDRESSES issues quickly, it takes him a long time to RESOLVE. Sonny would find it a lot easier to work with homeowners if he wasn't so dismissive about just about every problem he sees. Barb is absolutely useless. First answer to everything is "no." Obviously an obligatory response and part of her job. No ability to use common sense to solve a problem. We have a stain on our loggia floor, obviously caused by a contractor, and rather than considering the circumstances, her response was a simply "not covered," and when I pushed back on the first excuse (exterior cement not connected to house), she gave me another one (not captured on the orientation sheet, which I believe was an error on Sonny's part). Terrible customer service for a company at the level MJC purports to be. At the end of the day, I bought a 1.3m house and it feels like there were a lot of things overlooked, and the response from service has been less than satisfying. People keep telling me I will love my home, but it's hard to see when that time will come when we're dealing with a company who missed many things (our island is obviously crooked, door handles put on crooked, sconces hung incorrectly with no input asked from us, for example) and now seems to be washing it's hands of us. I am not a complainer by nature, but it's been too much at this point, so I intend to put this feedback on other sites, to be fair to other homebuyers looking to build in Oakland Hunt. Will I love my house? I hope so. Would I recommend MJC as a company who does good work and is customer friendly? No, I wouldn't.