I recently received an email from Suzanne M. about her experience with when buying a home from Mattamy and how some of the information in some blogs (including mine) helped her in the buying process.

I am glad to hear that this is the case, since this is the main reason why I added this section to the site. In addition to sharing the information with my friends, I wanted to share the information with other home buyers that might be researching builders. I was rather disappointed when I hardly found any information on Mattamy other than their own site. Luckily enough, this is different today.

Now back to Suzanne's email - she was so kind to permit me to quote it here - with my comments inserted into the text:

Hi Frank,
                                                                               
I visit your blog often and enjoy reading your posts.  You posted on TechnoMagician's Weblog (and so did I) so that's how I found your site!

Thanks!

We also bought a Mattamy home (in Milton) and moved in this year in March. We were fortunate to not have a lot of problems, but it's still early yet, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Your comments on the sod in the front and back of your house were helpful, and I'm keeping an eye on it right now, as they are putting in our sod.

Congratulations - I wish you all the best. Actually Mattamy is re-doing part of our sodding this week, so they do seem to try their best to get things in shape. My one year visit is on Monday, so I will probably have more information to post in my blog soon.
                                                                             
I just wanted to comment on your recent entry about the windows.  Did your Design Consultant show you your site plan for your house at your structural meeting?  Because if she did, you would have seen the windows in each room, with a notation on each window pane that opens.  We have a bow window in our family room that has five panes, and the panes on each end opens.  This site plan was where I found out I was getting a high window in our dining room.
At first I wasn't too happy about it (I guess it's there to accommodate a server underneath) and they were going to charge me $680 to give me a bigger window.  I changed my mind when I saw a model of my home being built, and the window ended up looking fine.

I don't think that she showed the site plan to us, we only saw the floor plans, which did not show the opening windows as far as I remember.
                                                                               
Also I noticed that even some of the other same model town houses have slight differences in how they were built - despite being the same elevation. It always depends on the people working on your home.

Hope this helps for when you purchase your next house.  And I agree with you about expecting "perfection" with a home that costs so much, and yet settling for just plain "very good".  Our site guys have been very good to us, but I know it's not the case with every development.
                                                                               
I think everybody is trying really hard to do their best, but the resources are just not enough. Plus they seem to have a high staff turn over rate - especially in customer service.

[...]
                                                                             
Thanks for your email, and good luck with your new home - I am sure that everything is going to work out fine in the end.


Keep up the great blogs,
                                                                               
Kind regards,
                                                                               
Suzanne M.
Milton, Ontario