Homebuyer wishing he were Toll-free (ie, Toll Brothers-free)

November 11th, 2009. By AbiK

You’ve gotta be way the hell pissed off to start your own website to vent about a company that’s done you wrong. Think about it—you’ve got to be pretty irate to not only want to publicize your situation, but then to actually create a website—complete with email domain and all—to go off on that company.

I came across one such man recently—his website is HowTollDestroyedOurLives.com. The “Toll” being Toll Brothers, of course. Ok, so he’s on a rant…a tear…a vent session. Maybe he’s a little OTT (he could use an editor). Maybe his situation is the outlier—not the norm. But he’s none the less out there publishing pictures (proof!) of things gone wrong with the Toll Brothers condo he and his wife purchased. A “luxury” condo, no less. And things have apparently gone so wrong, that he blames Toll Brothers for sending his wife into the hospital with an irregular heartbeat.

I don’t know the background and full details of this guy’s situation. And, given the industry I’m in, I certainly know that any Tom, Dick or Harry can go and set up their own website and publish “the truth”. We get a lot of that “truth” sent to us here and it never sees the light of day on LawyersAndSettlements.com. Be that as it may, I started to do a little digging on two of our nation’s biggest home builders: Toll Brothers and K Hovnanian.

No surprise that you constantly hear both companies being quoted—and closely followed—in the financial news. Case in point, today on Reuters reports indicated Toll Brothers stock is up over 10%, Hovnanian is up 6%, and while we’re at it, Pulte Homes is up 5% and so is Lennar. It’s the harbinger we’ve all come to take heed of: as Toll Brothers goes, so goes the economy. If, however, if you do a quick Google search on complaints for either Toll Brothers or Hovnanian, you’ll find there’s quite a bit of virtual fodder out there—ranging from local news reports to full-blown blog sites.

Some of the reports of complaints seem quite legitimate—heck, if a sprinkler head in my brand new (luxury!) home broke off and resulted in some serious flooding, I’d be pretty ticked off, too. But see, I live in a house that was built well before the Toll brothers were crawling around in diapers—and I sit and dream sometimes of having a house built so I won’t have to deal with “this old house” problems. But sites like HowTollDestroyedOurLives.com—whether they’re merely a lunatic’s tirade or they’re actually presenting some credible information—certainly give my roll-out-that-blueprint desires a bit of pause.

Tags: Hovnanian, Toll Brothers

This was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.