Windmill Homes - Brookstone - Milliken, Colorado

Haley B. (. A. A.

I am a realtor and visited windmill homes with a client. So this review is from that perspective.

I have found the representatives to be communicative and get back quickly when we have questions. Although we have been waiting for the actual builder to get us a answer on something for over a week now which is why it is 4 stars.

I found the quality of what is included in the home to be higher than other builders in the area. The finishes were upgraded from other builders and the homes look well done inside.

We were in their Windsor neighborhood which is in a fabulous location just a few minutes from Windsor Lake and a quick drive into downtown Windsor. The neighborhood is still being built in so tricky to get a feel for it right now.

If my client chooses to build I will update again!

sonja B.

I have had numerous houses in my life but this house I bought in milliken colorado and it is the worst built house I have ever seen. The installation in this house is done so poorly we have walls that are cold and should not be the windows they put in here are the worst. This is the worst building company ever stay away from windmill homes

TxSeoul

Craftsmanship is horrible. Cracks in patio before year 1 of a brand new home. Claimed “settling” is the issue. Ok, how about proper compacting of foundation dirt. Erosion on one side of house, the step that was poured for garage door has moved over 3 inches along with gas pipe entering house on that same side. HVAC is way undersized for size of the house. They use Rheem for the ac units, 2nd rate at best, and no decent builder would use those ac’s for a brand new build. Also a 3-ton ac unit for a 3000 square foot home. Was told to leave door open on air handler and to leave the door open that goes to basement for more airflow. Gtfoh, if I have to leave the door open, that means the designed system is insufficient. Try lowering your ac 4-5 degrees, it takes an hour per degree to cool. Was told cooling is heat dependent, which is true, but with an undersized system you are handicapped anyway so it doesn’t matter. Proof is the multiple ac’s that have died and needed replacement within 3 years for ORIGINAL build.

Foundation issues all over a brand new subdivision, multiple houses dealing with same issues. Common drain areas between homes never finished with weed barrier and rock. Lastly was told by the company that there would be no HOA for this neighborhood just to have one a year after moving in. If you want to be lied to multiple times and regret your home purchase, then by all means. Buyer beware

Jason H.

We are about a month away from our one year move in day and I wanted to give an honest review of our experience with Windmill and its warranty department. First off the sales staff is wonderful. Tom and Shannon were awesome! They are extremely patient and very knowledgeable about their product and community. We had lots of questions during the build process including some engineering questions that were promptly forwarded and answered by Joe our home construction supervisor.

One thing you have to understand about building a new home is that every builder has subcontractors working on their homes and it doesn’t matter if you buy $1 million house or $100,000 house there will be mistakes and there will be small cosmetic blemishes and there will be issues that come up but the important thing to understand is that everything is fixable either by YOU the homeowner or by the builder.

Our warranty rep was Juan and he is amazing! He was always available to help troubleshoot any issues and was very prompt when we needed his help in solving issues. Any issues that we had with our home were mostly purely cosmetic. We did have a minor basement flood that was solved immediately and was caused by debris in the drain line going to the street, but Tom and the warranty department solved the problem within an hour on a cold and snowy weekend.

Thank you to the entire Windmill sales, build, and warranty teams for your continued support and for our lovely new home!

Casey V.

This is a difficult review. We love our house and our floor plan but working with Windmill and their employees was not a good experience. We purchased a new build from dirt with them. We had hoped for a quality experience but their customer service was lacking to nonexistent. Starting at our design center. We did this in January of 2020 and the customer service rep was very sick. So we did not get great assistance and we felt like we were making her be at work while sick. She didn't want to hand us things after she touched them, coughing, runny nose, etc. It was less than ideal. At the time we were appreciative that she made the effort to not reschedule but when we didn't get assistance on a few items and called the next day to address issues that we were immediately concerned about (namely paint colors), we were told we could change but had to pay $200.00.

Moving forward, we had questions about neighborhood items and items specific to our house and no one was able or willing to answer. We were directed to someone different multiple times and never received an answer.

Once we did our walk-thru, it was clear that the painter did a terrible job. Instead of having a different contractor come in and touch up the entire house, inside and out, we were told to tape every spot that looked off to us. There were scuff marks on the baseboards. We were told this was from the cleaners vacuums (as if this was acceptable). We had a broken light, a base board cut 2 inches too short, a hole in a bedroom carpet, door frames that were split, etc. The carpet was replaced immediately but the other items dragged out. Our "warranty specialist" actually wanted to caulk the baseboard and we had to push him to replace it.

After moving in we found a number of other issues (front yard has a large dead zone in sprinklers, gas line in utility room is not properly strapped and on the floor, mixing valve for master bathroom leaks, etc). Juan, our "warranty specialist" explained most of these items as "the way that these things are done", as if poor work and doing things incorrectly repeatedly is an excuse to continue. We never got these issues resolved. Juan pushed the items off. He eventually just stopped communicating. So we are at a point of is it worth it to pursue with legal assistance or just correct the items ourselves and not waste our time and money.

I would also note that most of the driveways in the neighborhood are not installed to the correct width as shown on the plot plan. Two of our neighbors had to get lawyers and got theirs fixed but even ours is 2 feet short in width (based on the plot plan). I had hoped that Windmill Homes would address these issues and correct them. I would want to know about poor contractors if I were them but they seem more inclined to use poor contractors as an excuse to not correct issues and they continue to use them on their projects.

I am reviewing Windmill Home's customer service and care, the 2 stars are because we love our house and the floor plan.

Jason V.

I am somewhat biased because my company has been the sole electrical contractor for Windmill Homes since 2011. You are probably seeing some one star reviews from homeowners, and I can understand their frustration, and judging from what I've read, the one star reviews are justified for their specific problem they are having. I wanted to share my experience with Windmill Homes. They have always been excellent to our company (Limelight Electric) as a general contractor. We regularly have warranty items to take care of (like any electrical contractor), and we strive to be punctual, thorough, and proactive for the customers of Windmill Homes. As far as I know, none of these one-star issues are related to electrical, but I will freely admit that there are sometimes communication breakdowns that are our fault- there are times that the warranty department has reached out to us about a problem, and we have taken a few days to respond back. We are striving to be excellent about this, but we are not perfect. My guess is that there are 30 or so different subcontractors on each house, and many are overwhelmed with work, and I suspect are not able to get back to the warranty department as quickly as they would like to. In my experience, the warranty department is quick to notify us of any problems, and they are patient and understanding with us as we work to make room in our schedule for the homeowners. The subcontractors that I know that work on Windmill Homes are good people that are doing their best, and I believe that if certain trades are not holding up their end of the bargain, new subcontractors will be brought in so that the problems do not continue. I have seen a commitment from Windmill Homes to devote good people to the warranty department, as well as the construction side. I genuinely believe they are committed to producing a quality home every single time.

Linda H.

I am a Realtor in northern Colorado and while I've worked with many builders, this was my first experience with Windmill. Windmill's team had excellent communication with me, and with each other. They were very reasonable and understanding overall, but especially with regards to the contingent property that we had to sell. While the snow delayed the home orientation walk through, it did not delay the completion of the new home or the closing. The items that were of concern to the homebuyers were completed in 24 hours. I'm hopeful that the few things that need to get done after closing will also be done in a timely manner. Jared was our main contact sales rep and was personable, professional, honest and excellent in helping us to get started and choosing a lot, and his suggestion was perfect! They have an amazing view and location, and overall a really great house with 6 bedrooms, a loft and an office, which this family definitely needed! Very reasonably priced as well. I hope to work with Windmill Homes in the near future.

Sheilah B.

What a nightmare from the beginning!!! Our home needed work done on it before we moved in that was promised by closing in March 2018. It was not done! The exhaust fan in our kitchen was supposed to be fixed before we moved in and wasn’t even touched. We continued to report issues with our house including the exhaust fan. The workers that were sent were extremely inexperienced and the “fixes” ended up looking worse than the problems that were being fixed. These issues ranged from door jams needing replaced because of flaws to serious flaws in a bathtub. The Workman were late getting to the appointments made to fix issues and consistently asked to reschedule at the time of the appointment because another job on a new build was more important than our issues. We had to set appointments or adjust our schedules more than 20 times to fix issues in our house to accommodate their schedules. There were several issues with all the flooring in our house. The flooring company they used ended up being horrible to work with. The exhaust fan went through the person we were reporting issues to in the warranty department to the supervisor, who was extremely rude and unprofessional, to the owner. All made promises that my kitchen would be intact by the holidays. At that point the workers had tried to fix it and were unsuccessful. I was offered a new fan and accepted it. Then there were more attempts to fix the old one even after I agreed to the new model. After complaining about there being a hole in my kitchen for several months because the exhaust fan removed and was not taken care, we were ignored and brushed off. After persisting on getting it fixed someone other than the warranty department (Joe Shipman) stepped up and helped us because he felt bad about the treatment we were getting and how long things were taking to get done. Our fan was finally replaced a year after closing on our house. We hosted the holidays at our house during this fiasco and had out of town guests staying with us. We were extremely embarrassed. We should have been showing off our brand new home. Not being ashamed of how it looked. It’s been a year and 1/2 now and we are still waiting on warranty issues to be taken care of that were reported a year ago.
We are very thankful to Joe for stepping up and taking care of the fan issue and other issues when he came in behind the inexperienced workers and corrected their mistakes and finished the jobs for us.
The feeling we are left with from Windmill Homes is that they care very little about the families that buy their homes after they receive payment! We will never recommend this company and we will continue to tell people about how we were treated in hopes that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.