Orton Homes

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Horrible! Orton homes has made this the worst experience that we have ever been through. With no Registrar of Contractors in Iowa you need to be ready to sue Orton Homes to do the right thing because that is what it will come to. To see there rating at a 4 is disturbing since we have learned first hand that they are the worst builder in Iowa. The top management is very professional but they should be since they are making millions. Any professionalism stops at the top. They sub out all there work to cheapest bidder and don't supervise the subs work. We were shocked to see that the builders (job site super's) that Orton uses are nothing like the management in the office. Very rude, incompetent at there positions and arrogant. This wouldn't matter if our house was built right but since it has all but fallen apart I feel vindicated in my judgement of them. I will list my complaints below.
1. Sent a registered sex offender from the area we live to do the touch up painting while my family was around. He came every day for a week and showed a high interest in going inside my house even though he was only doing touch up on the outside. My wife and daughter talked to him not knowing he was a repeat offender and they are now horrified that this guy was allowed to interact with us on behalf of Orton Homes.(this shows lack of character and supervision, furthermore he was not even a registered contractor w/ the state and was a handyman working on the side. Later when we hired a real painter we found out that all our backup paints that he left for us to do touchups where filled with water and he had taken any extra paint leaving us buckets of water)
2. They subbed out work to this same plumbing company and did not hook the drain tiles to our sump pump pit. We noticed standing water in basement before house was done and pointed out our concerns only to be told we didn't know what we were talking about. So we move in, first rain comes and our basement is a river. We called them and they assured us they would take care of any damaged items. They even came out and saw the amount of water ruining a basement full of our possessions. So in good faith I take them at there word. I got together a list of 4,000$ of stuff that had been damaged (a very low amount since everything that got wet developed mold since then and is ruined including keepsakes of my children, mattresses, carpet etc.) I sent them an invoice for the damage only have them 2 months later tell me to prove that stuff was damaged and that the guy who came out saw nothing. We were shocked at the character these people have. Literal scumbags.
Since then our basement has flooded 3 more times and we no longer involve orton homes because of their incompetence.
3. Sent a novice plumber to install equipment who told us that he was not allowed to work in Des Moines because of his novice position but since we lived out of Des Moines he could do our work.
4. They graded our house improperly. When Orton's junk ball bobcat operator was here he had nothing but attitude and treated us like a problem. I guess the problem was we gave Orton homes over 300K and expected a nice house. Little did we know we were supposed to just take what we got and like it. Anyhow, this rude guy hurried and packed clay all around our house so we can't plant anything, further more the soil around the house sank and when it rained it came right in our basement. Since then I have put 100's of hours into correcting the problem.
5. We have had dozens of other nuisance problems like dead tree's, trim missing on sections of our interior and more. Our experience overall has been a life changing nightmare and never imagined how disrespected we would be while giving someone 319,000$ Do not Hire Orton Homes! We have only had the home 6 months and have talked to countless people who had the same opinion as ours.