Home builders contractor won't return earnest money

Posted: kvaks Date of post: 23.06.2017

Ten Things Your Home Builder Won't Tell You ", baynoteOrOutbrain: You may anticipate a few things going wrong, but you'd expect your builder to erect your house on solid ground, right? Don't be so sure. Population growth and urban sprawl mean there's not much residential land left in many areas. Knowler, a senior engagement manager at Navigant Consulting, which specializes in construction disputes.

A lot of homes are being built on expansive soil — earth that swells when it rains — without adequate safeguards. After badgering his builder for the soil report, Duffy learned his lot was a hot spot for potential swell. John Palmeri, Writer's attorney, says the company offered to fix the Duffys' house, but "they were bent on going to court.

Swelling soil isn't the only problem. In March , four hillside homes built on the site of an ancient landslide in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Early in , Capital Pacific Homes which had bought the builder, J. Capital Pacific declined to comment. He has handled cases in which builders didn't seal roofs, in which 2-inch concrete slabs have been used instead of the 4-inch slabs specified, in which sewage pipes have been cross-connected to drinking-water pipes.

In some cases, builders are skipping steps dictated by municipal building codes. In one Sarasota, Fla. What they found, in addition to wet lumber, were several code violations, including missing hurricane straps, which are steel plates that tie the wood frame together and to the concrete base.

Says Brian Stirling, the structural engineer hired by the homeowners to investigate, "If we'd had a strong storm, they would have had some serious problems. Home, agreed last summer to buy back the four houses and said it would make county-supervised repairs on 12 others in the subdivision.

But by settling the case, he says, "U. Home did the right thing. There are 21 states, including New York, Texas and Pennsylvania, that do not regulate home builders at all though some individual cities and counties within those states do. Of those that regulate, only 19 issue a home builder's license with some kind of testing or work experience as a requirement.

Ten Things Your Home Builder Won't Tell You | Fox News

Both Oregon and Arkansas will start doing so in July. The other 10 states merely register home builders as business people, though some do require builders to post a bond.

home builders contractor won't return earnest money

Don't count on the home-building industry to police itself, either, if past attempts are any indication. Consider the Certified Master Builder program, started in by the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City and touted as "your assurance of quality. A handful of homeowners disgruntled with their CMB builders sued the program.

In October , HBA started phasing it out. Tim Underwood, HBA's executive vice president, insists "the program did some good," such as requiring builders to offer a one-year warranty. This has been signed off on by the municipal building department.

And sometimes they don't even do that well. On one recent inspection, Curtis found 64 items that the municipal inspector had missed, including a gas water heater lacking flues without which the heater may leak poisonous carbon monoxide. But these warranties are often extremely limited in coverage, particularly after the second year.

Consider the warranty offered by Aurora, Colo. It lists 34 exclusions and, like many warranties, states that the home must be "unsafe, unsanitary or otherwise unlivable" to get structural-defect coverage. Anne Stark, a Dallas attorney specializing in homebuyer complaints, did a review in the early s of three years' worth of Home Buyers Warranty's structural-defect claims and found that 80 percent had been denied.

Em Fluhr, the warranty company's president, says, "If homebuyers detect any worsening of the situation, they can submit another claim. Accepting a builder's warranty could actually do you harm. Many states, through case law, recognize implied warranties based on industry standards that provide more protection, says Lemon. Some builders' warranties usurp that. During construction, you can't wait to have the builder out of your sight.

But once the work is done and problems crop up, he's nowhere to be found. Denise Burton knows all about it. Their walls weren't plumb, for example, and there was no framing behind one. Worried about losing their low interest rate, they moved in anyway, with a promise from the builder, Diamond Key Homes, that everything would be fixed once they got in. Burton made at least a dozen calls to the Phoenix-based builder over a four-month period and sent letters and faxes.

Mostly, she was ignored. And when the builder did send workers out to her house, says Burton, "they'd make it worse. And that was only after the state agency that regulates contractors, acting on Burton's complaint, temporarily revoked Diamond Key's license.

Diamond Key declined to comment. Drake, a San Antonio attorney who represents homebuyers. What's wrong with arbitration?

Well, for starters, arbitrators are less likely than juries to award treble damages, say construction-industry attorneys.

Also, arbitration is more costly, believe it or not, than taking a case to court. Jim Blackstone found out just how expensive. When the company didn't fix the problems to his satisfaction, he went to arbitration. Who wouldn't love the lush curtains and intricate crown moldings? Too bad the house you buy will look nothing like the model. Few decorative touches are standard, and builders are notorious for using sneaky design tricks to make models more attractive, such as putting in scaled-down furniture to make a room look bigger.

Maria Lo Bianco, a buyers' broker in Springfield, Va. If the dining room is visible from the foyer, I might do an exotic color design there and leave the foyer plain.

Some practices are flat-out deceitful. Often, builders will plant grass where the driveway would go to make the lawn look bigger, says Alan Fields, who co-authored Your New House Windsor Peak Press , a guide to buying a home. Rather than specifying every item for the house, a builder will set cost allowances for things such as light fixtures or carpeting. That way the buyer gets to pick out what he wants. The trouble is, many builders use allowances as a bidding strategy, low-balling the cost to keep the total price down and land the contract.

Jones, the Memphis builder, says low-ball allowances are common in his region. But you don't expect that to happen when you've ponied up for an "exclusive" design. That's what happened to Alex Pinchev, president and CEO of software company MainControl Inc. The next year the Pinchevs learned that their builder had used the same design for a home across town for high-tech big shot Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape.

The Pinchevs' architect sued the builder for stealing the plans. Architects confirm that originality is not the home-building industry's strong suit. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. All market data delayed 20 minutes.

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