It depends on what your contract says I suppose. What has been going poorly?

- Missed a concrete support footing in the basement concrete pour.
- Several other concrete pours have been wrong or in the wrong place
- Two sets of stairs in the wrong place
- Door Headers at the wrong height
- Garage Door Headers at the wrong place
- Trusses put in the wrong place. The support areas were not placed on top of the walls.
- Not communicating with the subs.
- Way behind schedule
- Items are not being ordered until the day that they are needed

And that's just the things I can think of off the top of my head.

This post was edited by neroselover on Tue, Jan 21, 14 at 16:23

Talk to your lawyer about what your contract says and what the laws in your location provide for in contract termination. Also think about how you would go about finding someone to take his place. Most contractors don't like to come in in the middle of a mess, because as soon as they touch it, they are legally responsible. Since a lot can't be known, they usually charge a high price to step in just in case there is something that goes kerblooey and needs warranty work down the road. It usually comes down to, are you willing to take the financial hit to separate yourself from poor workmanship, or do you prefer to exert more control at the site by perhaps hiring a full time consultant? (If that's even possible under your contract.)

Or, do you just sever ties and walk away completely from the entire build.

We don't really need anyone to take their place. We've done all the leg work with the electrician, the drywaller, cabinetry and flooring people. We just need to hunt up a plumber.

All of our windows are in. They should have put the last door in today. The roof is not shingled yet. I think they were starting that today. We don't have siding on yet. I think we were planning on having them do that and then cutting ties. My husband has been on the job site 2 - 3 times a day to answer questions that our GC does not know the answer to. All the subs have contacted my husband, because it hasn't done any good to contact the GC. They either don't know the answer or tell them incorrect information. We have weekly meetings to go over different items about our build and they forget to do what we've discussed or can't remember what we told them or do it wrong any way.

This is process has been a lot more frustrating than we expected it to be. We met with the builder all of last year going over details. We brought in pictures, which they put in a file. I guess they never refer to it because they keep asking questions about the same things that we have answered over and over again.

Hindsight is 20/20, but we wish now that we'd only hired them to frame up the house and not general it.

If your home is being built with a construction loan, the bank may require that you hire another GC to finish the build. So that should be your second stop after you visit you r construction attorney.

If your home is being built with a construction loan, the bank may require that you hire another GC to finish the build. So that should be your second stop after you visit you r construction attorney.

Get legal advice. You may have to pay "liquidated damages" and it's best to negotiate that than bring the matter to court. Make sure all subs and suppliers have been paid to date. Document everything!
The deficiencies you list certainly justify firing the guy. You may want to see if there are any B&P code violations that would put his license at risk for added leverage.

We don't have a construction loan. We went with private financing, so that is not an issue.

If the builder is not living up to the contract, then I would talk to an attorney about separating from him/her. We had serious problems with our builder who did declare bankruptcy mid-build. He literally walked off the job with our house a shell. We hired his crew to complete the job.

DH and I met with our attorney who said we would get nothing from the bankruptcy court. We were not satisfied with that answer and went to a hearing before a magistrate. I was allowed to speak and question our builder about the contract, forged lien waivers, etc. We ended up with 5 years of payments totaling $30,000 with no interest. This is better than nothing for us.

Best of luck in your decision making process. This is supposed to be a "fun" time, but problems such as those you described can lead to headaches and frustration.

Bevange,

What made you to choose him at first?
I am in processing to select one to build for my custom home. This thread is scared me.

Thanks,

Houses14 -- I see you are asking bevange about why they chose their builder. I started to reply before I realized you had addressed them. Since I've typed this already, I'll add it to thread.

We chose this builder for several reasons. They seemed very with it when we met them at the home show we attended. They seemed very with it and like hard workers at this home show. They told us their process for working with home builders, which included putting our floor plan into their computer program and to show how it would look when finished (never happened). They told us how we would go over all the details and we would be involved in selection different aspects of the house. They talked about the weekly meetings we would have to stay on top of details. They told us how much they wanted to be a part of our build (it's pretty unique to our area and in a high traffic location.)

The tile lady that I had worked with in the past had recommended them and several others said they would be their top pick in our area. We had gotten references from them and called several. All checked out. We also toured several of their jobs. Their work was very good. The job site was neat and clean.

We were told how they would work quickly, but carefully, as they took pride in their work. They told us that they would never take on more work than they could handle, as they wanted to do quality work. They told us they would be about to build our house in 4 - 6 months. It's now been 6 months and we still aren't even enclosed. After we started working with them, we found out that they had never built a house from start to finish before. Also, after we signed our contract, we found that they had signed another very large house, a business remodel, plus some other odds and ends jobs. They've only been able to allocate about 4 men to our job most days.

I'm not really sure what we could have done differently. We had gotten references, toured two job sites of theirs, asked others in that trade, met with them from Jan. - July before signing the contract. It just seems that once the contract was signed everything changed. :(

Found out today that our siding that arrived today is wrong. They were supposed to start on it tomorrow. We gave them exterior pictures last January when we met with them, which are in the file and we've brought the photos in again to study. We've discussed the siding at the last 4 weekly meetings and it's still wrong. :(

Very frustrating.

houses14 - Why did we hire him? Because the ONE thing he turned out to be very good at was talking a good game! He comes across as the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. I called all the references he gave us. Then I found out later that one of the three references was his GIRL FRIEND! Another admitted to me later that the only reason he agreed to give a reference was in order to get the builder to finally come fix punch list items that he'd been waiting over 2 years for! The 3rd was actually a satisfied customer...at the time he gave the reference. But by the time we started doing discovery in my law suit, that customer too was pissed off at builder because he had started having some problems with his house due to some of the shoddy building practices builder had employed.

We also talked to a couple of builder's subs before hiring him. Later on we found out that builder had owed them large sums of money and had flat out told them that the only way he'd be able to pay them was if he managed to land another job... so it was in their financial interests to tell me they'd never had any issues with him!

When we started having issues ( the second week of the build!), according to builder, the problems were always due to a "misunderstanding" because I had somehow not made myself clear. Builder always promised that HE would make everything right b/c he just wanted me to be happy. Despite problem after problem after problem - none of which ever seemed to actually get resolved to my satisfaction - I continued to believe for quite a while that he wanted to build me the home of my dreams and would eventually do so. It was only after he very clearly lied to me on two separate occasions where there was absolutely no possibility of a misunderstanding that I started insisting that every single communication between us be in writing. Even when we met and talked about something, I started carrying my computer with me and IMMEDIATELY sitting down and writing up exactly what we had agreed to, emailing him a copy to his smart phone and demanding that he read it and sign it if he agreed with it OR that he respond with a revision stating his own understanding before we went any further.

That's when it became more and more difficult for him to get me to agree to sign off on additional draws when the work that he claimed was completed really was NOT. Once I was dried up the spigot of easy money, we started getting liens filed against our house by subs and material men. Then builder started claiming that he had more money tied up in our house than we had paid to him - although he could not seem to tell me exactly how much. I told him that if he could show me with DOCUMENTS (receipts and canceled checks) where he had paid out more than he had been given, I would reimburse him every penny of the overage. When he started sending me documents to back up his claim, I called the materialmen and subs and went thru every receipt with a fine tooth comb. Turned out he was sending me bogus documents... eg., receipts for materials that were never put into our house; lien releases from subs who told me that either the signature on the lien release was NOT theirs or that they had signed the release in exchange for a payment check that then bounced so that the release was not valid, and so forth! Builder was only able to reasonably document an amount equal to about 60% of what we'd paid to him in draws...which means that he apparently pocketed close to 40% of the $290K we paid to him. That's over $100K in "profits" taken out UP FRONT on a $540K build that was less than half complete at the time we fired him. Yet he claimed we OWED him money!

In answer to your next question about why the builder is not in jail, I talked to the local district attorney about a criminal prosecution for fraud. The DA told me that he had TRIED to bring a criminal case against my builder previously due to the claims of another previous client of his and had failed. According to the DA, builder and his attorney convinced the grand jury that the only thing going on was a contract dispute so it belonged in civil court not criminal court. You should now that Builder is a local boy, son of one of the wealthiest citizens in the area, a deacon in the local church, and - as I said earlier - a very smooth talker. Like us, his previous client who sought to have him prosecuted was a newcomer to the area. Having failed once, the DA was not willing to attempt to prosecute him again. Thus my only option was to go thru the civil court system. And before I could complete that process, builder passed all his assets to his father who put everything into a spendthrift trust leaving builder "judgment proof". Then builder declared bankruptcy.

Bevangel -- I finally had time to read through your experience. What a nightmare! I'm so sorry to hear about your experience.

While ours has not been the ideal situation we were hoping for and we are sick that we are having to consider firing them, I can't imagine living through your nightmare.

I purchased a RTM home from a builder but he is cooperative and so far no such problem created by him. But got all the advices if it happens.

Thought I'd update this thread with what we did. We read over our contract and found that if they realized that they were going to be over any of the estimated costs by even 5% they needed to notify us in writing. We had received nothing in writing and upon doing some calculations my husband found that they were 292% over in framing with an another invoice still to come. Upon questioning them about the difference, they admitted that they had realized back in July that the program they used for estimating had been off by at least 40%.

So, they knew going into our contract that they were going to be off in labor costs for framing.

We terminated our contract with them last week and are now consulting with a lawyer to see how much of that we are responsible for paying for.

Please look at my site i have been getting lots of interesting information for people just like us, who have been ripped off. "Have you been ripped off by a doggy trademen" (facebook page) please share your stories there.

IM NOW 5 MONTHS & MY BUILDER ONLY PUT FOUNDATION IN TRUSSE COMPANY IS DELAYING & DELIVERY WAD TO BE SEPT 20 BUT NOTHING WAS DELIVERD ? I FEEL STUCK

ITS IN VALDESE NC ANYONE HEARD OF APPALACHIAN TRUSS COMPANY I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO NOW

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