CLAY COUNTY, Fla. — One Dream Finders Homes homeowner is taking Action News Jax through her home, showing examples of what she calls poor craftsmanship, work left undone, and repairs that could cost thousands of dollars.
And she’s not alone.
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Some homeowners tell Action News Jax’s Deja Mayfield that they feel like they’ve been robbed.
Back in April, a Dream Finders home in one of the company’s natural gas communities exploded because of a gas leak. We later found that those homes in that Clay County community were built with smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, but not with gas detectors.
One owner told Mayfield she still can’t get the repairs she’s been asking for since 2021.
We saw up close the problems she’s been living with and we did some digging to find that she isn’t the only one.
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Dream Finders Homes communities can be found across Duval, Clay and St. Johns counties. The home builder community has even expanded to neighboring states in the Southeast. Now, some of their homes stretch across the western U.S.
This year, Builder Magazine named the company “National Builder of the Year.”
But locals we’ve talked to say their experience has been anything but a dream.
“We invested a lot of money in this house,” Robin Barrett said.
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Barrett purchased her brand-new $420,000 home in Clay County four years ago, and she took us through her home, pointing out problem after problem.
She said during her walkthrough, she found an essentially incomplete home.
It starts outside with cracks in her cement and a driveway built without any elevation.
She said that because of that, it floods constantly.
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Estimates from landscapers to redo the driveway and install a new drainage system range between $10,000 and $15,000.
“They never finished. They never finished the trim,” Barrett said.
Throughout the house, we found unfinished trim at the base of her doors.
“Besides having bad grout, you have your transition strip missing there too,” she said.
The plumbing in her bathroom hadn’t been sealed.
“They didn’t even finish,” she said.
And a fireplace left unfinished.
“They thought that they would spackle it here, and they never finished,” she said.
One of the bigger, more noticeable errors is in the center of her kitchen: paint that was left unfinished behind her exhaust fan.
“I would call my realtor, who would call them and go, ‘Listen, this is unacceptable,’ and they’re like ‘Oh well. If you want to back out, we’re going to keep your deposit,’” Barrett said. " ... I’ve talked to other neighbors who said basically they did that to them too. ‘Hey, you can walk away, we’ll just keep your money."
When we reached out to the company with Barrett’s list of complaints, the builder responded with the following statement:
“Dream Finders Homes is committed to customer satisfaction and holds itself to high standards of excellence and quality in every home we build. We are aware of this homeowner’s concerns and made every good faith effort to address the requested items despite the home being well past the expiration of the home’s warranty period in 2022, including sending over a dozen work orders to our multiple vendors and subcontractors in 2023 alone.
“Despite Dream Finders Homes’ attempts and efforts, progress was complicated by repeated scheduling challenges and missed or cancelled appointments by the homeowner. Our last contact from the homeowner was almost two years ago, and no new requests or communications have been received since then.
“Dream Finders Homes remains dedicated to working with all homeowners and encourages anyone with outstanding issues to reach out so we can assist in resolving them.”
Barrett and her husband refute the builder’s claims.
Online, we found hundreds of court records that show Dream Finders Homes listed as the defendant. Some of the complaints call out “design and construction deficiencies,” violations of local and state building codes, and accusations that the company hides defects.
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A Better Business Bureau profile lists the company as not accredited with the BBB and of the 71 customer complaints in the past three years, only nine had been resolved.
There’s even a Facebook group dubbed “Dream Finders Horror Stories” that has over 4,000 members sharing their own accounts of the builder company.
Barrett said she and her husband are still left feeling helpless, having to make these repairs on their own.
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“We didn’t expect to have to fork another 30, 40, $50,000 to fix what they didn’t finish,” she said.
Barrett is still getting estimates from repair companies to fix the mistakes around her house.
The company said founder and CEO Patrick Zalupski was unavailable for a one-on-one interview.
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