Mattamy Homes

I'm not sure if I have said this before, but I really respect my home builder, and so I am going to give them a little free PR to whomever reads this site.

First off my the builder of my home is Mattamy Homes. They have been around since about 1970, and if you want their canned history looked here. We got turned on to Mattamy by Erin's parents. The last two homes they have owned were both Mattamy's, and in both cases they have been extremely satisfied with the quality, and in the case of the latter house I strongly agree. I, of course, never saw the first, and Erin was too young to care or notice the finer details of home construction at that time. Suffice it to say that they were so satisfied it motivated a second purchase. So given our already high confidence in the builder they were the first place we looked. We did check out other builders, but were honestly frightened away by sketchiness which I will not enumerate here.

We started with Mattamy, and I am so glad we ended with Mattamy, but still they are not 100% rosy, so here is the negatives, and I am giving them first because they are few, and I want to get them out of the way. Really my only complaint was the 18 month timeline. Really its not the hugest complaint, it just says there are a whole lot of other people who agree with my belief that a Mattamy home is a good investment. So on the 18th of October, 2003 Erin an I put our stake in the ground, and our money on the table and put the down payment on the first big purchase of our relationship. We didn't do it alone I might add, being young an naive we brought our parents with us to get their approval. Sure I consider myself an adult, but I would consider myself a foolish adult if I did something as big as this without the support of people who have more experience in the matter then myself. We took care of the details, but it made us a whole lot more confident with the support of our families.

So young, excited, and with 18 seemingly endless months ahead of us, we tempered our enthusiasm and returned to our regularly scheduled lives. Since then I must say I have been taken by surprise. Where the sales pitch stopped the service began, and it has been phenomenal. We have received phone calls keeping us informed of the various things we needed to take care of like the design centre. The designed centre itself was a great experience, and the staff really helped us make good choices. They offered Mattamy University, which is a one evening program where you get introduced to all their support and building staff, as well as your neighbors. They take you through the details of the construction of your home, and answer any of your questions. Then through out the building processes they are completely open, you can schedule visits to your site (or covertly visit on the weekends.) They offer a guided inspection with your builder (he is the guy in charge of all the tradesmen who to the construction, he is usually an older skilled tradesman himself, with additional education. He oversees and inspects all the houses he is responsible for and assures that the highest quality is being maintained.) Our builder is Dave, and he was the one who called to book an appointment, if we wanted to come out and see the house with him, before the dry wall goes up. I thought GREAT! Now I can take my camera, and get an exact map of every wire and pipe in the house, in case I want to renovate later, I know where to find everything I am looking for. He will answer all our questions, and let us know how things are progressing, and where they go from here. At this point, he said, that our house is two months ahead of schedule. We actually can't afford it two months ahead, but we don't have to take it until our closing date, we are just happy to hear that it will be done on time! We have heard horror stories about other builders who are off by weeks, or even months, and with our wedding just around the corner from the house, we can't have those kind of delays.

So this is where we are now, and we still have a pre-delivery inspection, and a delivery inspection, and years of happy home ownership backed by Mattamy's warranty and quality. So I am very satisfied with Mattamy, and I recommend them to anyone looking at buying a new, or even used home! If anyone has any questions about my experience or details I would be happy to answer them.

Also you can look here and here for another recent Mattamy Purchaser from Hawthorne Village, and the Hawthorne Village forum respectively.

Geoff