Well, we have been living in our Montorio built home since late December of '09 now and just past our 3-month checklist, which is when I promised Montorio I would write up a review, good or bad.
I'm happy to report that our home buying experience was a positive one this time around. We moved from Olds to Fort Saskatchewan and Montorio was a pleasure to deal with compared to our last home builder in Olds, who was Stevenson Homes. Stevenson Homes have left a wide swath of unhappy customers in their wake, but this is not a review about them so I will move on.....
My wife and I knew that my transfer was inevitable, so we started to look at houses in the Fort Sask area. We started looking at pre-owned homes, but did not find many of the sort of house we were looking for. Eventually we spotted a Montorio home that was pretty close to our desires: a bit more upscale perhaps than the average home, with ample garage / parking, and decent lot size. It had a small-ish MB, but Patty informed us that another home in Ft Sask was nearing completion and might suit us better. She was right; it was a lot closer to what we were looking for: large ensuite, bigger MB, large triple garage, and a larger-sized lot. After two months of hard looking, we wanted this house! It was also priced quite reasonably for its list of features, and I felt at the time was pretty good value. (I still do.)
Our sales rep from Montorio Homes name was Patty, who is a sharp-witted lady with red hair and a fiery sense of humor to match. She kept reminding us to "remember: keep smiling." I had several frustrating set-backs with HR and moving benefits. Trying to meet the date for removal of conditions on the offer to purchase that we had agreed on was not going to happen. No problem: Patty / Montorio were very understanding / accommodating. We ended pushing the date back a couple of times due to other delays beyond our control, but finally we were able to remove conditions.
By the time we were able to remove conditions, the house was almost 100% complete, and we really did not have any say in trim, color, etc. I wish I had been able to get all the paperwork done sooner and pick our finishing package. It's not that I did not like Montorio's standard lines of colors and finishing package, as they are pretty nice at the basic level, but I would go a little fancier with hardwood everywhere instead of carpet upstairs, and would have made the whole house a little more luxurious like their show home a block away. Still our home came with so many nice features, like the Montorio-trademark brick pillar out front with the back-lit glass blocks in it, the insulated concrete floor in the basement, granite counter tops in the kitchen, tile and hardwood on the main floor, the columns in the living room and feature wall / built in shelves around the gas fireplace. I couldn't believe my dream garage was attached to a spec-built house. And the ensuite was like a spa retreat to my wife with its double sinks, poly-block windows, large separate shower and jetted soaker tub.
We opted to have a heat recovery ventilator installed after we moved in (we paid Montorio an appropriate amount to arrange this to happen.) Still there are some things we will have changed, such as having a man-door on the garage, built-in windows on the overhead garage doors, completing the pull-through 3rd bay to the back yard, and building our custom deck. If the carpet gets too beat up (with small kids and a dog) then we will look at installing the hardwood / laminate that we wanted in the first place but carpet will do fine for now.
Quality has been much improved compared to our previous builder, whose tradespeople cut corners at virtually every opportunity. Montorio by contrast had superior work on finishing work throughout. A walk through the unfinished basement was where it became really obvious that this builder does quality work. Nice and neat plumbing and electrical work and framing. Good craftsmanship on the poly and insulating of the foundation walls.
Is our house perfect? No. (In my opinion one is pretty unrealistic to expect a house with NO deficiencies unless that person is willing to pay a premium for the same house, and even then it won't be perfect.) Our initial walk-through with Jorge (the construction superintendant) found several small finishing details that needed attention, but not too much that was of immediate concern other than a couple of moist patches in the ceiling of the bonus room upstairs, which were items of concern. Deficiencies were noted, and several have been addressed already. Most of the remaining ones are either seasonal dependant, or we wait for the one year checklist, so that all the normal shrinking and cracking has taken place before final touch-ups are done.
The ceiling moisture was a pretty large item of concern, which again surfaced a couple days later when Randy (A Closer Look Inspections) checked out our Montorio home with his FLIR infared camera: looking for insulation, electrical or plumbing issues. It was like having X-ray vision; you could "see" through the walls and look at every stud, etc. There were indeed two moist spots in the bonus room ceiling, plus a small thin spot in the insulation near a light fixture in the walk in closet. The inspection was conducted during the Edmonton area's record setting cold snap with -30 C temps. This cold snap was preceded by some very strong winds and the insulation and framing was otherwise OK. It is assumed that the strong wind managed to swirl the insulation in the attic and left a couple of bare spots which began to condense moisture (evidently finding pinhole to let moisture into the ceiling panel.) This was an easy fix for Montorio, who removed the moist insulation and filled in the holes at the last minute before we took possession of the home. It did make for a bit of tension on closing day because this all happened very late in the game before our purchase went through. We did not know confirmation of what had been found / fixed until closing day (two days after the home inspection that found the problem), but Montorio did not have much time to address the issue due to our late inspection, so the tension wasn't their fault. We just wanted assurances before closing that the issue had been taken care of. It had been addressed, and everything turned out fine. On a major purchase such as a home, one doesn't want to take chances.
So that's about all I have to say so far about our experience so far with Montorio. There's been a few bumps and ripples, and how well Montorio has handled them is what makes me more confident in saying that Montorio was a good builder to deal with so far, and I would strongly consider building a home with them again, should the need / desire arise.
I plan on updating this review in December of 2010 (or early in 2011) when we get to our one year checklist with Montorio and have our exterior touches / parging complete and lot is graded, etc.
So far, so good.
