A frustrated homeowner who says she didn’t know where to turn decided to call TMJ4.
“We love our house; I love this house — but this is not what we paid for,” explained Jenny, while pointing out areas of deterioration on her home’s exterior trim.
Jenny believes the wood trim is rotting from the inside. It’s a problem she says has plagued her since 2019, three years after her family moved into their brand-new home in Mequon. “The bill, right now, to replace three-quarters of the trim on our house is $20,000, and then we need to have it all repainted,” she added. Jenny says the company that built her home, Kings Way Homes, has denied all responsibility.
The CEO of Kings Way Homes, Craig Caliendo, declined TMJ4’s interview request but provided a statement highlighting the company’s one-year warranty period and A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Caliendo said Kings Way Homes investigated Jenny’s claims and wrote that “the caulking work performed on the home was completed by the customers’ own subcontractor, which contributed to some of the deterioration in the trim boards.”
Jenny hired a new company to remove and fix the exterior trim. That company told TMJ4 that the trim was not installed properly. “There wasn’t metal flashing protecting it from the masonry work,” said Drew Biskobing with Forward Remodeling LLC. “Masonry has such a high moisture content to it, typically around 40%. It’s made with water,” he continued. “Wood is going to act like a sponge and just wick all that moisture up into it if there’s not some sort of barrier protecting it.”
Watch: Frustrated homeowners claim wood is rotting off their recently built houses
A quick Google search found Jenny wasn’t alone. The person who left a one-star review for Kings Way Homes, highlighting an identical issue, lives less than two miles from Jenny.
Amber Schroeder says about a year and a half after moving into her home, she noticed peeling paint on the exterior trim. Then, she says, the rotten wood trim began falling off in chunks. “It looked like the wood that had been on a house for 50 years.” She says she’s already spent a few thousand dollars replacing the worst of it and shared her concerns with the Kings Way Homes CEO.
“He came out and he said adamantly — no, this is not normal, your wood should not be falling off like this, this is a failing product, and I’m going to help you, I’m going to make this right,” said Amber. But since that visit, she says it’s been radio silent.
Frustrated, both Amber and Jenny say they are considering their next steps. “I don’t want to seek legal advice, and I don’t want to go that route, but what they did was wrong,” said Jenny. “I think they need to be a part of the solution.”
Kings Way Homes also responded to claims by the second homeowner, Amber, writing to TMJ4: “We were notified of her exterior trim board complaints well after the expiration of the warranty period.”
Kings Way Homes noted that the warranty provides for the resolution of any disputes through the Metropolitan Builders Association of Greater Milwaukee. That process begins by filing a complaint. When TMJ4 contacted the agency, we were told they would not provide information to our newsroom or to any consumer about the number of complaints that have been filed against a specific homebuilder.
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