April McCune
1/5
We debated about posting a review, but decided that it was important for others to see how we have been treated as new homeowners. I'll start with saying we paid almost $460,000 for our new home in Ione. Our biggest issue to date has been the backyard which was added in to our mortgage at a "discounted rate" of around $7,000. They advertise it as a $15,000 backyard. To start, we did a walk through of this home when we were looking to buy and the backyard had already been graded by their engineer. We walked through the home in November, and the backyard was added around January/February with a patio. During the initial walk through, it was graded very nicely and seemed to have good drainage, all prior to a patio and grass/bark being put in. Long story ahead-The backyard was poorly done. 1. Sprinklers are not installed correctly. The landscaper has now been out twice and we still have dying areas of grass. His second time out, he actually completely killed a section of grass. Half the sprinklers are not straight and spray straight in to the ground, not watering any area around them. We have to hand water our grass in order to keep it alive. Our lawn also has a hill in the center that runs off towards the patio, to our back fence (with no drainage) and also off to the left and right side of the yard. We thought this was odd since when we looked at it without a yard, there was no "hill". Come to find out, When the patio was put in, instead of removing the dirt, the warranty manager agreed that they most likely put all the extra dirt in the surrounding area-hence why we have a hill. The backyard has poor drainage and we know it is due to this-half of the grass ends up mushy each time we water, while some areas are bone dry. When we asked why it wasn't fixed before the grass was put in, the warranty manager claimed the landscape company is not allowed to do any grading-only the engineer. Instead, the company just threw grass on this hill and called it good. We attached pictures for others to see what we mean. The warranty manager said they would not fix the hill but could add top soil with some seed if we would like. Obviously, this will only make the problem worse if you are just raising other areas instead of fixing the problem. Another offer was to possibly extend the grass since we were so unhappy so we could at least do away with the outrageous amount of bark in the backyard. That offer was never legitimate as the manager was unsure if that was even something they were willing to do. We tried reaching out to Riverland personally (as in builders/owners) and never received any response. Our request was that one of them come out and look at the backyard and see what we were complaining about, but they refused and instead were going off of poorly taken pictures. We never heard back from anyone except for the warranty manager saying they wont do anything except add seed, and this was only an option because they had already mentioned it, making it sound like they really would have done nothing.
We really tried to have patience through all of this, but it has been more than frustrating to not be taken seriously and have a company be so firm on their stance when they personally have not come to the property to see what our concerns are, even after being contacted directly. It is also upsetting that we now have to begin searching/getting quotes from landscapers to fix a backyard we already paid for because Riverland refuses to do it correctly. We really wanted to work with them on this and just be heard by someone other than the warranty manager who returns our phone calls about 1% of the time anyways, but most of the time not at all. If you are looking in to Riverland homes, I just hope you don't have the same issues as us, or similar ones involving your home. We are not the only ones to complain about this, but we are the first to do it publicly. If any buyers have more questions, we will be glad to answer them-we just wanted to put the sparknotes version out there. neighbors have same issues.
