Here are some links to other posts I have made regarding this:

http://www.homeowner-talk.com/showthread.php?t=383

The saga continues .......... more poor quality

Riverside still refuses to take care of ANY of their poor workmanship. We went through Mediation and of course that failed as they are unwilling to do anything. Now we are waiting to see if we have to go through forced arbitration as they had that nice little clause in our contract. If they fail to do so in a certain period of time, which I hope happens, then the CCB can take over the case and come out and look at this stuff. We have lived there over a year and still no resolution. This is the worst experience hands down I have ever had with any purchase (large or small).

We continue to find more problems and have to do fixes ourselves as its getting ridiculous to wait this long and not have the enjoyment of our first home and dream house.


Our garage floor is now breaking up (see below):

We also found that the pseudo shutters on the front of our house don't go up high enough and you can see the bare wood that they mount to behind them. The front of our house is mostly stone and they didn't cover this bare area with the stone either (It was only a $15,000 add on , so what the hell right?)

We have also recently noticed that in both of our upstairs bathroom, the paint is sagging / peeling off around the shower areas. Why? I have no idea. I'm sure it probably because of moisture, but you would think they would prep this area knowing that this is a high moisture area. I have never seen this in any other home or apartment we have rented so I know its not typical.

More updates to come............

Trying for a CCB dispute but forced to arbitration

We filed a CCB (Construction Contractors Board) dispute. This takes quite a bit of time. We had to inform Riverside of it, and give them 30 days notice. This did not spur them to action, which was not a suprise. Once the 30 days was over the CCB said they would take our case, of course for a $50 fee. After about 3 weeks we got correspondence from the CCB stating that Riverside had requested arbitration. The reason they can do this is they have put this language into their contract they have you sign when buying the house. Sneaky huh? This is Riverside's way of "stalling" and getting out of the CCB dispute. See, if the CCB finds in our favor, they have a record with the contractors board for any future buyer to see. So of course, they are trying to keep that from happening and put us through a bunch of red tape hoping we will go away.

So, at this point I have my Attorney involved. She is also getting in touch with other counsel that deals specifically with problems builders like this. So we will see what happens from here.

Here is our story........

First let me give you a bit of history here. I am a Home Loan Officer and work with many Realtors in the Portland Metro Area, Seattle, California and other areas. I have been in the Home Lending Business for 15 years. This was my family’s first home and we chose Riverside as the builder. This was based on talking to Riverside employees who stated Riverside was a smaller, quality builder, who took their time on their homes and delivered a superior product to other builders.

First, the building process was not very organized. We were a little surprised, overwhelmed and confused during this stage. The options appointment was very hurried and there were a lot of things that we were not offered or told about during that, that if we had know we would have chosen to do. We even took the advice of Riverside and went to the Options Center several times prior to picking our options so we thought we were getting all the information to make our decisions. There were not any standards presented to us on flooring, security systems, home theater systems, landscaping and a few others.

Next we had our flooring appointment. This was with Paulson’s Floor Coverings. They were very nice and good to deal with. However, this was a bit disorganized as there really wasn’t a clear idea of what came standard with the home so we knew what to upgrade and what to leave as is. Then to top it off we got the wrong color floor installed from what we initially picked. Paulson’s made it right to us, but still not fun to deal with. Another issue here was none of the desk areas (Tech desk upstairs and nook desk downstairs) had any cord holes to run wires under the desk (for computers, printers, etc). Paulson’s had a guy come out to do it (I had to pay extra) and almost completely destroyed our cabinets (pictures attached so you can see what we ended up with).


(9 pictures below) Damage to tech desk from chiseling for wire organization holes.










He used a chisel to make hose in the granite instead of doing properly with a hole saw. I had to hire another separate vendor to come out and fix the damage. They did it the right way it should have been done the first time. In this instance this is not Riverside’s fault, but it does add into the hassle we have experienced. I do recommend Paulson’s. They continue to stand behind their work as a few things have come up. But I have not received any hassle at all from them. That’s a business that I will do business with again. I just think the mesh between Riverside and Paulson’s could be much more organized.

Technocom, who did our security system and home theater, was also very good. I recommend them and will continue to do business with them. However, again, the mesh between them and Riverside was confusing and hard to know what you were getting. Not to mention placements of additional outlets, Ethernet jacks, and cable jacks was not explained to us at all. It was a lot of guesswork on our part as the options center didn’t really advise us of where all the outlets were and places were they weren’t that we might need them. A prime example of this is we opted for the tech center upstairs. “Tech center” implies this is used for computers/electronics. Oddly enough we found late into the build that there was not one cable, Ethernet or electrical outlet there at all. What is the purpose of a “Tech desk” if you cant plug anything in? After complaining Riverside did have them installed, but because of the stage of the build, they had to be put in a very conspicuous location that is not very useful or aesthetic. They should have initially been placed under the desk where the chair goes.

Then we met Mary, the Title Officer at Lawyers Title. She was absolutely the rudest person I have dealt with in a title office. She was very curt with us from the beginning and made several errors during the process, which a good title officer would have caught early on in the process. At the very end before our signing she discovered a judgment for my wife (actually was her ex-husbands, so she had no clue about it). I personally asked her several times if there was anything like this outstanding early on to prevent scrambling at the end. She assured there wasn’t. This almost blew the whole deal for us as we had to borrower money from family to pay it off and make our loan for the house work. She also missed out close date, due to her lack of concern or urgency to get our signing handled properly. My wife and I had to be out of our old residence and had to pack all of our belongings in a U-Haul and wait over the weekend. I finally had to go to the manager of the office, who wasn’t that great either, to get the deal completed.

So after all this, we finally made it and had our walk through. We thought we were finally over the hurdles but we were wrong. We pulled up for our walk through and there was about 5 Riverside employees scrambling all over the home finishing things up. We sat in our car for about 15 minutes, while they cleaned and touched things up. Not a good first impression.

On our walk through we only had a short time and had numerous items that needed fixing. Obviously we didn’t have enough time to look at every little nook and cranny.

Here is a list of things (that I can remember, there are more than this though) that had to be fixed (either by Riverside or myself) in the house. For a quality builder, most of this should have not even come up.


Trim on front of house entryway looked terrible when we did our walk through. You could see all the patching/ spackling through the paint. We were told this was normal as we have been with just about everything. This was fixed after complaining about it. Riverside told us this would be replaced. The entryway seems to be fine at this point.

Sprinkler shutoff case on the side of the house was cracked. Requested to be fixed. Came out and did another shoddy job. The cap wasn't even meant for the case and the case wasn't really in the ground, they just put bark around it to make it "appear" that it was done.

Gaps around baseboard above hardwood floor. Had to complain and request 1/4 trim be added to give it the proper finished look.

Tech Desk drawers rubbed against each other. Had to be adjusted.

Gas line on back of house for BBQ was completely rusted metal. Looked like crap. Had to complain to get that replaced.

Shutters on front of house were crooked. You could see the bare wood underneath. Had to be fixed.

Our nice craftsman door we opted for had scratches/cracks in the glass panels. Had to be replaced.

Gutter above rear porch was missing paint. Had to be painted.

Almost every plug and receptacle outlet in the house was crooked. Had to have most of those adjusted.

The "Tech Desk" we opted for had no outlets of any kind. How can you use this for a tech desk if there is no plug in, Ethernet jack, etc...? We had to have these added and because it was discovered late in the build, they could not be placed where we would have liked them.

Master bedroom door had bubbles in the material/paint and had to be replaced.

No skeleton keys for the door locks.

The garage door lock did not have the correct lock and had to be switched out as we had no key to access it.

Flashing and roofing coming loose on back porch. Had to have fixed.

Gutter had left over garbage/debris from construction in it and wasn't draining.

The plastic pieces in our garage windows were all cracked and falling apart. They had to be replaced.

Painters tape left on light fixture at the highest point in our house. We had to have somebody come that could get up there to remove that.

Sprinkler head was missing in our backyard coverage. Per our Landscaper, we would have had a large patch of dead grass in the backyard as the coverage was inadequate. Had to have another head installed.

We also can not figure out what’s going on with the nice streetlights we have on the street. Only two of them work, and the rest don’t. When we relayed this to Niki the response we got was “call PGE, we don’t deal with those”. Is this the type of service we can expect from Riverside?


Below are more issues that they will not take care of, which I find unacceptable. They don’t seem like very hard things to fix, but Todd Boyce has made it very clear they will not do anything to rectify them. What’s laughable is he hasn’t even taken the time to look at them.

(10 Pictures Below) We paid as an upgrade for our garage to be “finished”. The drywall in garage had HUGE gaps between it and the cement base. We had to complain and they attempted to fix. A little better, but still not acceptable. Still not straight and even. Not sure why that is so hard to do. A finished garage means a "finished" garage to me. Meaning it’s like finishing the inside of the house. This is how it was explained to us when we chose to pay for this option. Then I discovered that all around the garage door didn’t get finished. There are enormous holes in the drywall and shoddy patching all the way around. Per Niki, “that’s normal and OK by our standards; we will not be doing anything for you on this”. I again fought and fought to have this done to the quality that is expected. They came out again and what we got was the shoddy job shown in the pictures below. They also didn’t even clean up after themselves. When Riverside was approached about this poor job, they blamed us saying we didn’t leave the garage door open long enough to let it dry. First of all, they did not communicate this to us. Second, the garage door does not even come close to touching the affected area. Riverside is just trying to scam us and pass the blame for their poor workmanship. I have attached email correspondence showing Riverside trying to pass the buck.












(14 Pictures below) We paid for a larger, nice brushed section of concrete to be laid for our patio. Again this was a paid upgrade. The patio was stained as was the driveway and sidewalk from date of occupancy. We made not of this at our walk through and were promised by Riverside that this would be fixed. I came home from work early in August and noticed that Riverside has painted our patio with grey paint. They didn’t even finish the sides, it was all over our grass/bark and they painted one of our sprinkler heads.
















(2 pictures below) Several of our ceilings/walls are sagging and warped. This is a terrible drywall job. We have noticed this in multiple areas. Two of the areas shown below. One is our Den and the other is our Master bath. Riverside sent correspondence that is attached stating that these are acceptable and not out of their standards.





(1 picture below) Hall way wall out of plumb/warped/crooked.




(4 pictures below) Master bath caulking decaying/falling off. The first picture shows it cleaned. Riverside would not take proper care of this and we were concerned that water would get in the walls and make the problem worse. The old caulking had to be removed and redone. As you can see by the pictures, the caulking job done was of severely poor quality.







(2 pictures below) We paid $15,000 for the rock fascia/elevation on our house. We had one rock near the garage that was a totally different color that the rest of the scheme. Had to have that fixed. But only after complaining. Mortar on house fascia falling off / cracking in several locations. Mortar missing all the way down (large gap) on right side of garage between trim and rock fascia. This presents a major problem as moisture can get into this gap causing long term problems.




(7 pictures below) Numerous nails and cracks have appeared coming through in the drywall of the house. This is extremely excessive. Not are they showing, but most of them are now all the way through the drywall exposed. Also, numerous areas of the house have cracks and plaster is falling off. Very excessive.









(2 pictures below) Creaking threshold. The threshold plastic plate to the garage entrance door has a super annoying loud wood on wood squeak noise when stepped on. When brought up to Niki, she said “you need to wait a year to have that fixed”. After complaining, they came out to fix. Not only did they not fix the creaking sound, but they cracked the support board underneath it.




(3 pictures below) Several interior doors have sap leakage and paint is bubbling on the closing edge. Riverside has already been out once and “fixed” it. Now it has sap leaking out of it once again.





(2 pictures below) Skylight has scratches/marring all over it from installation. We were not able to tell this on walkthrough as it was overcast.




(2 pictures below) The high window in front of our house that we cannot reach was completely filthy inside from date of occupancy. Again, we could not tell this as it was overcast, but it’s apparent this was not cleaned at all prior to our occupancy. Riverside would not take care of this. Per Niki “we won’t cover that”.




(2 pictures below) Xmas light fixtures on both sides of house have cracked wood foundations. Riverside “fixed” the left side, but as you can see in the picture, they merely painted over it. It was not replaced or fixed right. You can still see the crack; it just has paint over the top of it.




(2 pictures below) Chandelier is hanging by carabineer clip? Is this standard in the industry? We also noticed both our bar lights are arranged the same way. Also, the chandelier is about to come apart and fall on top of our glass table or even worse on top of somebody.




Window ledge in bathroom has poor finish job.

(1 picture below) Paint bubbling in master bath.



(1 picture below) Cabinet drawers not of very good quality. Have had to replace the drawer guides several times on several drawers as they cant withstand the weight of items in them (normal, not even close to excessive either). The guides bend and the drawers bind and will not slide.



(1 picture below) Excessive sap leakage from wood above garage. Riverside has stated they will not fix as this is not excessive.



(2 pictures below) Nails protruding under eave around the house.




(2 pictures below) Our fence is warped and the gate latch assembly is falling off. Won’t even latch. As you can see due to the poor quality, the wood is cracked where the latch is mounted.




(2 pictures below) On our walkthrough we noticed the garage door had a hole puncture in the back of one of the panels. This panel was replaced and the new panel has material defects in the surface that appear as dents/dings. I have walked around the neighborhood and none of the other garage doors appear to have this defect. It’s unacceptable and Riverside has stated they won’t take care of that. Per Niki, “you will have to contact the contractor for that”.




(1 picture below) Trim above garage looked terrible when we did our walk through. You could see all the patching/ spackling through the paint. We were told this was normal as we have been with just about everything. This was fixed after complaining about it. Riverside told us this would be replaced. It is now apparent that this was not replaced as we were told, but patched and covered up. The patching job is coming apart as you can see from the pictures.



(1 picture below) We did not opt for the A/C unit, but did have the home pre-wired for A/C when built. I just had a unit installed by All Metro Heating and Cooling. They do Riverside’s A/C units. When they came out, they were surprised to see that the A/C hookup was on the side of the house. They advised me that they could not have the A/C unit put on the side of the house as due to code the A/C unit has to be so many feet away from the other houses’ property line or we would be made to remove it. This being the case, they had to install the A/C unit in our backyard and wrap the cord all the way around the corner of the house. Either the property needs to be a couple feet wider where the A/C will eventually go, or install the prewire on the back of the house where it belongs. We got the worst of both deals. A big A/C unit in our small backyard, and the cord wrapped around since the outlet was put in the wrong area. There is nothing that can be done to fix this, but I state this just to show the type of stuff that’s going on here.



(1 picture below) Stripped bolt on rear patio door lock catch. The bolt is only about 1/4 of the way screwed in, was stripped by the installer and left that way. Again, indicative of the quality job done here.



(2 pictures below) Garage side trim cracked and falling off. Due to concerns about moisture, I had to have this fixed. It had to be screwed to attach it firmly, spackled and repainted. Again, poor quality from Riverside.




(1 picture below) Cracked cabinet trim in kitchen.



(1 picture below) Caulking falling off decaying on front window.



(2 pictures below) Garage floor. Expansion joints look terrible. Not straight… also middle has large chunk chipping/coming out of it.




(1 picture below) Floor chips. $20,000 wood floor upgrade. We have noticed in multiple areas there are spots that are chipping. The only solution we have been offered is to use a putty filler. This cant be normal. There should be no reason for this except years of use. We have been in this house 8 months.



(1 picture below) Cracked board above garage.



(3 pictures below) Bar cracked and unfinished underneath. The crack runs all the way around the bar. Also, the bar is high enough you can see that it us unfinished underneath. Should have been painted to match paint below. Poor quality and workmanship.





Loud Gutters. The gutters are so loud is literally sounds like a woodpecker outside our upstairs windows when it’s raining. I have never in my life had a gutter keep me up all night. I mean, they are LOUD. Riverside sent the gutter contractors out and they found the gutters were plugged with garbage from Riverside when they built the home. Still continued to be extremely and unacceptably loud. Gutter contractor said that a couple items (lengthen gutter spouts) could be repaired to correct the problem, but there would be a charge to us for the work. Why wasn’t it done right in the first place?

Garage interior door does not lock or engage.

Cracked door frame in laundry room. Door was coming off hinges.

Ok, so you have heard all the problems we have had, and the things that Riverside will not stand behind in their craftsmanship. Whether it is due to there work or their contractors work, it all reflects on Riverside and they should facilitate getting it taken care of.

Now, we come down to "After the construction" problems. We have constantly had Riverside’s workers and contractors parking their vehicles in front of our driveway. My wife has had several times she has not been able to get out of the driveway to get to work and they just sit there and stare at her. One time it was so bad, she couldn’t get out, she had to walk our daughters to school. It also was the cause of damage to our Cadillac Escalade as I came home the other day and again cars/trucks parked in the way. I normally have to take a wide arc to get this large vehicle in the garage. Due to the vehicles, I had to take a shallower arc to get in our driveway and then into the garage. When entering the garage, because of the shallow turn I was forced to take, our Escalade hit the corner of our garage trim and did quite a bit of damage to the vehicle. (See 1 picture below).



Also, the workers have made it very uncomfortable living there, especially for my wife. They don’t just stare, but literally drop everything they are doing and stare at her the entire time she is out of the house. Whether it’s to get the mail, or go outside with our girls. They even do it to me when I am outside or leave. I don’t get it. It literally feels like an invasion of privacy and is very rude.

I also constantly am finding garbage, construction debris, cigarette butts, and other things in our front and back yard. It ridiculous that I come home and have to clean up after these guys while they are working on the nearby houses. I have mentioned this to Riverside multiple times and have had no response. I have literally collected bags of garbage over the last 8 months.

Then to top it off, Niki and Todd have been very rude in relation to my problems. Not once have I received an apology or a course of action to remedy any of these items. Instead I have received curt emails from them stating they have no interest in taking care of us on these items. I have also repeatedly asked Todd for the owner of Riverside’s contact info and he has continued to ignore my requests.

One night I noticed the house across the street was left wide open. Even after the disparate treatment we have received from Riverside as an act of good will, I went over and took care of that and locked the place up. I knew the folks buying it were going to be moving in over the next couple of days and wanted to help both parties out. I notified Riverside of this and did not receive any response or thank you. (See 2 pictures below)




As a Mortgage Professional, this is just ridiculous. I have never seen, nor heard of this kind of treatment or experience in all my years in banking. I believe when you pay good money for something you should get a quality job the first time or they should make it right. I have had friends and family point several of these items out to me and it’s very embarrassing when they ask “how much did you pay for this place again?” Then after telling them they ask, "Who’s the builder". Probably not a way a builder wants their name associated.

This transaction has been very hard from start to finish and not a pleasurable experience. I would expect one of the biggest financial milestones in your life is building your own home. One would think they would look back on it with fond memories. At this point it makes me sick to think about half of this stuff and then to get treated this way is the icing on the cake. My Wife and I have spent countless hours away from work to deal with all these issues. Either in meeting Riverside folks to get stuff looked at, or arguing with Riverside to get acceptable and justified service. This is not how getting your “dream” house is supposed to feel.