Marie H Henderson Sousa

Horrible horrible horrible is all I can say about Nick Stuart (M.H. Sousa). He was great until you sign the papers, then he starts cutting corners and telling you that you won't get windows and other features you were promised before you signed the contract. He framed in the 2 garage windows then after the contract was signed, he went back and covered them up saying we didn't get them now. You better have every little detail in writing if you expect to actually get what he promises you... and I mean EVERY detail.

Once we made a payment to Nick, it only got worse. First he started out by pouring the slab wrong and said it was the plumbers fault. He refused to answer our calls or talk to us. The few times we were able to get him to talk he would say all you want to do is argue and ignore your questions, or say we will deal with that later. Later never seems to come with him. He refused to give me a receipt for payment made to him. When I asked for a receipt or followed up to other things such as picking out the tile color as mentioned below, he just kept saying take it to arbitration over and over and over. He said we would get to pick the features. We called him for almost 2 weeks to try and setup an appointment to chose the tile. After 2 weeks of not calling us back, he started installing the tile before we could even choose it. Again, refused to answer why he didn't let us choose as per the contract.

The contractors are just as bad. The trash was left everywhere. Broken and unbroken beer bottles. The concrete left over from the slab was left in the front yard, Sheetrock and other trash was just buried in the side yard, I had to clean up most of it myself.

Stay away from this builder. He goes by many names as we have since found out. He probably does it to make it easier to scam people like he did us. He uses "New Brick Homes", "Best Way Homes" and "Windmill Inc." He also goes by Nick Stuart and M. H. Sousa. Listed under 5930 Hawkinsville Rd STE B, Macon, GA 31216-5861, 4787888128 and 4789548544.

I purchased a house from Windmill Inc in June 2011. The construction is good and the price was very attractive. You can tell they cut corners to keep their prices low though. I had to hire an electrician with the first three days of living here. If I turned on too many lights and had the TV w/surround sound on, the smoke detectors would sound. The breaker wouldn't flip though. The electrician said everything was built to code but towards the low end of code - e.g. there would be 10 amps on a 15 amp circuit before I plugged the first thing in. He added additional circuits and reinstalled all of the outlets more professionally (they were "backstabbed" and he "wrapped" them). Note: "backstabbing" outlets is within code but creates lower connectivity and increases the chances of the outlet simply not working.

One room with a hardwood floor is not level. It's not badly off but my furniture sits at an angle and a ball will roll across the floor. My chairs also wobble in this room. There is also something "weird" with the paint in the house. If someone touches a wall with wet hands, the resulting prints stay there. I don't mean for just a few minutes, hours or even days. Just don't get the walls wet...

My kitchen and three bathrooms have laminate flooring that looks like real tile. However, this flooring was only glued at the edges (where it meets the wall) and not glued throughout. The kitchen floor tore when I was adjusting a table on it and one of the bathroom floors has a bubble affect whereas you can feel air pockets pushing down when you step on it. The lights also dim the moment the a/c turns on and there were two dead trees in the front yard I didn’t notice (the inspector missed them too).

They constructed a wooden privacy fence as part of the deal too. It's of decent enough quality; however, it was built with only one single 5' gate. I deliberately drove by exactly 100 houses with fenced backyards. 100% of them had a double gate. They wouldn’t accept this as proof they made a mistake and refused to build a double gate. It merely took an act of congress to get windmill Inc to finally agree to put a double gate on the fence. I actually had to give up other things they had agreed to in the contract.

Over the course of the next three months I have noted that the 2nd half of this gate now leans towards the driveway. It occurred to me that they simply neglected to put a frame on that single 5' section of the fence. Every other section of the fence has a frame. This section does not.

I talked to Nick (who according to the BBB site is the head builder) and he stated that the fence is not covered under their warranty. He said that the gate had a frame but refused to come out and inspect it. While I missed the deficiency upon my final walkthrough, I am smart enough to note that the other 20 or so sections of the fence all have something (probably called a frame) that holds them upright and this one section does not. Note: the 2nd half of the gate was built between the inspector and the closing date. Nick suggested that I hire a fence company to finish the job he started three months ago.

So I just had a fence contractor here. He stated the fence was “okay” overall but looked like “a couple of guys” got together and built it. He was rather annoyed at how the gate was unfinished and unframed. He also confirmed that the section of the fence had no frame on it and is clearly on the verge of falling over.

Strangely, this is about what I expected with the home purchase. So I can't say that I am overly upset with the company or the manager. Basically, if you hire Windmill INC make sure that you are getting a VERY GOOD price. From my perspective, that is their major advantage over other builders. If you are looking for a builder with service after the sale, look elsewhere. However, if you are mostly loyal to your wallet and don't mind some hassle, then this is probably the place for you.

Overall, I’d rate everything as 3.0 out of 5.0. The price was definitely a 5, quality a 3 and service a 1. I figure for the price savings I can afford to pay contractors. After the fence, I will have spent $1,300 on correcting things here. The floors and paint I will just live with. I would buy from them again as long as their price was unbeatable.

Oh and if you like doing things with email, text messaging and/or fax machines… well they don’t seem to have those. They do have large, energy efficient houses at very good prices though. When they say “home warranty” I would just count on things you think are wrong not being covered by that. A flooring contractor told me there is nothing wrong with only gluing the edges on laminate… it’s just the “cheap” way of doing it. As previously stated – the electrician said everything was built to code – just the cheaper end of the code.

Again... would I purchase again = yes, would I advise others to purchase = depends on the person. If you drive past the mall at Eisenhower to get to the "new mall" because you appreciate the niceness of it, then Windmill probably isn't for you. However, if you are perfectly fine with going to the Eisenhower Wal-mart at 2 AM, then I think you just found your builder.