Why do Builder's project manager(s) wait until the last minute to finish a house. I am asking this after speaking with a few neighbors in my "supposed to be" new community, and gathered that our builder is 1-2+ months behind with almost every house that doesn't belong to an employee. However, this seems to be an issue no matter the [time of] year or builder from different articles and forums I had been reading online.

We are supposed to close on our home by Dec. 30th and the driveway has a huge "bowl like" slope in it and the yard gradient is completely con-caved. Before bring this issue up with both the sales rep and project manager; I drove around to look at over 100 houses in our community and literally we are the only ones with the crap yard and driveway. After I brought this up to the PM, he said, we will take care of it. I went to the sales rep to explain that the PM said he'd take care of the HUGE issue but I didn't feel confident as to what would be done. My sales rep assured me that the lot would be dug up and more dirt will be brought in and the driveway will be re-poured.

Fast forward a few days and I see forms set up for at least 7 houses and no attempt to excavate our yard or anything This was the major thing, not even including other punch list items like: my dimmers were missing, exterior ceiling fan was broken [it seemed when it was being installed], garage doors not painted, laundry shelving not installed right, shutters not put on and stained, etc. Can't even get to the landscaping bit because the grade is so crappy!

How are they going to finish this in barely 3 weeks when they couldn't do it in a months time(as we were supposed to close last month before Thanksgiving)? I don't understand why PMs do this. Why isn't there a priority to finish the house that is actually days from settlement rather than the other homes that are 2 months out. Are PMs able to schedule workers that quickly where they can just lollygag until 2 weeks out?

Sorry this was long but couldn't find a thread discussing this. Thanks!