Karsten Homes
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:05 pm
We are thinking of buying a Karsten Home here in Oregon. Would love to hear thoughts and imput onm Karsten. I believe that they are a fairly new company.
Not new at all - the Karsten family has been in the business for a long time - they were just sold to Clayton. I live in a Karsten triple we bought in 2003. The quality has been generally very good and we are pleased with it. Santiam Homes off Hwy. 20 in Stayton is about 3 mi. from the plant. Many people have been with the plant for many years (it was Guerdon Homes' plant until about 1999-2000). They answered all my questions.
One thing they would not do was plywood or OSB flooring. That seems to be typical for this region. I'm OK with that, as I don't have children spilling lots of water, but OSB would have been nicer. See if they'll do that.
Only issues I have had - they may be common to all homes, mfd, site-built or whatever - were:
Center section roof about 3/8" above the other two sections - you can detect this from outside the house
Couple of floor squeaks I have yet to track down
Small leak in shower drain that was easy to fix- they did a good job with access.
Santiam's setup crew were excellent and they had good subcontractors for electrical and plumbing.
Everything else has been just great.