Steen Realty and Development Corporation

More like Sleaze Realty

In my opinion, this is not a company that you should do business with based on my personal experiences. Steen Realty & Development built a home for my husband and me in 2021-22. The experience started positively enough and Ian Steen was easy to reach and readily available. Once we were under contract though, he stopped returning phone calls and responding to emails. The date we were promised delivery of our home came and went with no explanation. We moved into our home 5 months late and before it was done! We had no choice as the lease on our apartment was over. We spent the next 6 months chasing the company to complete our home and the numerous punch list items that we had. Eventually they stopped dealing with our issues and told us they were not going to honor our warranty because we still owed them money. The money that we hadn’t paid them was very modest (less than 2% of the contract) and was far less than the value of the incomplete work! In my neighborhood, nearly EVERYONE has had an issue with Steen Realty and Development. Most have given up trying to work with the company. We all joke about a “Steen promise” and “Steen quality”. We watch with amazement the way that this company builds houses. The routine has become that houses are delivered 6-12 months later than promised. Attached is a picture of a house under construction in my neighborhood. It was sitting exposed to the weather all winter long. The building wrap blew off and the home was left open to the weather. The window openings were also uncovered letting rain and snow into the structure. The asking price for the house (10 Westview) is $1,250,000. Some unsuspecting buyer will purchase this property. This is a house likely to have future problems all because of shoddy construction practices. Steen will be nowhere to be found to deal with the problems.

Awful company to deal with, Ian Steen is not a good person. I live in Highland Woods, everything from the quality of the finishes being downright laughable, landscaping was done terribly, not following up on promises. And we've had to deal with a broken road for two years as he takes his sweet time completing the latest stage of the development. When I brought up my displeasure with the condition of the road to Ian, he let me know that he did not have to do anything on the road for another year, and since I dared to complain he was going to further delay the process. Honestly, in doing my homework on Steen Realty, I thought the negative reviews were too much and perhaps disingenuous, but no, all of these negative experiences are spot on! Avoid working with this man and his company at all costs.

We built our home with Steen Realty in 2021-22 and before they got our money they were very friendly and always available. We worked with Ian Steen who is the son of the owner and is just not a good person. Once they get your payment you will not get anything but the bare minimum from them ever again. They go from nice and responsive to mean and unresponsive once they get the payment. I am writing this over 2 years after we gave Steen a list of items that we needed fixed in the home after we moved in. Some were normal, new house settling problems but most were items where they cut costs in order to make the most they could on the sale. We know this because we ended up paying for the repairs ourselves from outside contractors who told us this. We were told they would get to all items when they could but once the one year warranty was up, Ian told us they would no longer help us even though these items were all brought up before that warranty period. It took them so long to get to everything and we trusted them that they would eventually fix the issues. Unfortunately, they were just trying to stall in order to get past the warranty period so they could legally forget about us. Ian never returned calls or emails and actually told the contractors in the area that were working for him to not to do the work for us until the warranty period was up. This same thing has happened to many others in our development and some of them have decided to sue Steen to get their issues fixed or hold back the money they still owe him because he refuses to help them. We have had to pay out of pocket for a lot of poor quality work that they have done and were told that our entire neighborhood was "entitled" because we wanted them to fix all their issues on time, which is ironic since his Dad has provided him with this job in the first place. The "Steen promise" is frequently joked about now in our development since it is meaningless to anyone that has worked with the company here. Be careful when working with these people, they act friendly at first but will not live up to their promises when the time comes. Photos attached are of a broken gutter downspout that they crushed while running machines over it and refused to fix, the gutter (also broken) where the water was backing up to our foundation, and one of the many cracks throughout the house that they also refused to fix. These were just a fraction of the issues we ran into. Update to above (more issues with home): Recently had an insulation contractor come out to the house because the 2nd floor was not getting cool in the summer or hot in the winter (this is a newly built home....). The insulation guy told us that they barely put any insulation in the upstairs around the windows, none under the floors of one of the rooms and did a horrible job everywhere else. The HVAC unit was basically irrelevant because the air was escaping everywhere on the second floor. When I first called the company he had mentioned Steen by name and said "Oh I already know what is most likely going on with the home", implying that this is a known issue with Steen homes. I am not shocked by this but here we are with another issue with our newly built Steen home. If you can't see it then they most likely did a bad job. Be careful with these people, we have already sunk tens of thousands into this new place.... Update (again): added some photos of a Gutter that has been leaking for a while and when we had a professional go up there to look there was a huge gap in the corner. The guy said "who did this, they clearly had no idea what they were doing". Once again please be careful not to work with this family.

My sister just moved into her beautiful new home built by Steen Realty and Development and it is beautiful. Incredible team effort put forward by a locally owned and operated general contractor. Professional, hard working and honest. Couldn’t be happier to have her close. Thank you to Ken, Sam, Ryan, Ian and Ana and all of their hardworking local employees and contractors for their expertise and guidance and hard work. Great experience!