Category Archives: Project: House

The Poor House

New builder finished his forensics work on the new house. He says it's roughly 1/3 complete, with about 1/3 of the construction loan's worth of work done (which, coincidentally, just about totals the amount of the liens that the former subs have put on us). That's not awesome because there's only 1/3 of the construction loan left.

Also, he says the original builder grossly under-estimated the cost of the house, so we were on track to be stuck with a big bill at the end, no matter what. Also there are multiple outright code violations and a few questionable spots.

As it stands now, we simply don't have the funds to finish the house. Chopping it way back to the minimum possible to be called a livable house wouldn't be enough to get it into our budget (and then we'd have a really expensive but kindof crappy house). And the new builder is reluctant to start without a sizable down-payment, which we don't have.

We have no idea what we're going to do.

On the bright side, it's looking like the old builder may become the subject of a State Bureau of Investigation investigation. If he's convicted, there might be a chance we could declare our losses as theft or fraud. That could help with taxes, eventually.

The Big House

When our now-former builder went belly-up, he had more than our house in the works. He had multiple projects or different sizes all across the area. And, so, there are a lot of angry people out there now.

This weekend we received a letter from a family who had contracted this builder to build a workshop for them. Same story for them as us: he took a lot of money, didn't do the work, left sub-contractors unpaid and then scurried into bankruptcy, leaving everyone else high and dry. So, this family is doing what I didn't think we had the option of doing: they're starting a criminal case against the builder. They're trying to figure out where all the money went, so they're contacting people that the builder listed as creditors on his bankruptcy filings. And they're asking us for a timeline of payments that we made to him. They have sheriffs and detectives and district attorneys on board.

This makes me smile.

I know we're not going to get any money from him, but I'd be very happy to see him in jail. At the very least, that reduces the chances that I'd run into him (ahem) at the grocery store.

Still no progress on the new house. The new builder is still trying to figure out what was done, and most importantly, if we can avoid having to tear it apart to so that inspectors can do the inspections that the former builder skipped. Little things like: the foundation, the insulation in the walls (now covered by drywall).

No steps forward, five steps back.

Third verse, Same as the first

We have a new builder! Old builder is officially bankrupt! For legal reasons, we can't use any of the old sub-contractors or vendors for anything still left to do. So, we're picking out cabinets and appliances and plumbing fixtures ... again! Groovy.

And the tile that's already installed was installed badly. So we have to decide if we want to spend the money to tear it up, buy new materials and have it done right; or, do we want to wait until it starts to fall apart in a couple of years and then spend the money to tear it up, buy new materials and have it done right. Decisions...

And why did the bank approve so many payments to the former builder when the work he claimed was done was never done? Beats me! Lawyer is on it.

Had a long talk with the new builder about the strange elevation choice the last builder made when he put in the foundation. He said it would be easy to fix. Just demolish the existing garage, back-fill five feet or so around the foundation, add five feet of gravel, then build a new garage at the same elevation as the rest of the house! $50K! Easy!

Fer fuck's sake.

But at least we're approaching the point where they can start estimating the remaining cost. And maybe after that, they can start working on getting this thing done.

Proving Me Wrong, Double-time

Because the new house has been ... delayed, I talked Mrs into taking the current house off the market for a while. I didn't want to waste time and energy showing the house to people who would then be freaked out by the fact that we wouldn't be ready to leave until Spring-ish. She wasn't happy about the idea, and neither was the realtor. But it seemed smart to me! And then we immediately got requests for showings from two sets of people who said they could be flexible with the closing date. So I relented. And they both made offers. Both of them above our current asking price. And they said they'd be happy to close whenever, and they'd even rent the current house back to us while our new house is being finished.

So that's kindof awesome.

I'd like to be wrong like that more often.

Flat Out Fucked

The house nightmare gets darker and more convoluted every day. We learn that more money got sucked away unused, and the cost of finishing the house goes up. There are questions about inspections being skipped - which we so hope are just clerical issues. There are questions about mistakes in the construction loan. Sub-contractors are calling us looking for their money.

NC law says that we're safe from the liens they're filing against us because the sub-contractors never had contracts with us: they had contracts with the builder. We paid the builder, he didn't pay them. Glad I'm not a sub. If there's any money in the construction loan left over after we finish the house, the subs get that. But they can't go after us directly - so far as we've been told.

Lawyer says we can't tell any new builders we might want to use how much is left in the construction loan because it would open us up to accusations of having cheated the subs by cutting them off unpaid, then negotiating to use up all of the remaining construction loan (thus preventing them from getting any remainder). I'm not sure there's much to worry about there. We haven't gone over everything in detail yet, but the chance of finishing the house with the money left in the loan seems slim, to me. That means we'll have to make up the difference out of pocket, if we can. I don't know what happens if we can't. More loans? Crack open our retirement stuff (which would be equivalent to a loan)? Beg from family? We also can't change the house plans or drop any of the features that were in the original contract, for the same reasons : it would look like we are trying to cheat the subs.

Mrs. found a builder who seems willing to take on the job of finishing the house. We went over the house together yesterday. He seems like a nice guy, sits on the board of a tri-county builders association, has a big showroom in town, etc.. So, he's not just a guy in a truck like our last two builders. And he's done this kind of thing before.

Which seems like progress! But, it just brought up a dozen more expensive things that we don't have answers for. Every time we think we're getting close to solutions and answers, more questions and more expensive questions come up.

I think we've officially fired the builder. We had to give him X days notice, to give him one last chance to work on the house. He didn't. That should be a relief since it gets us one step closer to getting the whole thing moving again. But, it doesn't feel like much of a relief. It feels like we're at the bottom of a 10 foot pit of shit and we just found a six-inch lump of petrified shit to stand on.

Every day that goes by, we remember another meeting or exchange with the builder where he did or said something that, in hindsight, was a blaring signal that he was ripping us off. But we checked him out. We looked at houses he had built. He had no negative reviews or problems, that we could find. But people who know him say he started having money problems just before we hooked up with him. And so, instead of getting his shit together, he tried juggling us and the other houses he was building, but he couldn't keep it up. And now we're all fucked. It would cost a small fortune to take him to court, and there's probably no money to get from him anyway.

I've never been this stressed about anything, ever. And it's been going on for three weeks now.

Mrs. is handling essentially all of this. I'm almost catatonic.

Mudhoney - Flat Out Fucked

We're Gonna Need You To Take Over Where Dipshit Left Off

New lawyer says that because so much of the house is left undone and therefore there's so much money left on the table that we shouldn't go with the foreman, but should find another builder (bonded, insured, etc.) who will be willing to take over.

That sounds, to me, like an impossible task. Why would a builder want to take on the headache of figuring out what's done and what's not, negotiating half-filled contracts and unfamiliar vendors?

On the other hand, he also says that this kind of thing happens all the time. It even happened to him, and he's a construction law lawyer! So maybe builders are accustomed to picking up half-finished projects? I guess we're going to find out.

If the house isn't done enough for us to close on by the end of the year, we're going to be fucked by taxes.

I can't count the number of times I've caught myself mentally searching for the Ctrl-Z, so I can unwind this mess and get us back to where we were 12 months ago.

I Can't Help You. I Know The Truth

Our lawyer dumped us. Basically, he has so many other clients suing this asshole of a builder that he knows there isn't enough money left to go around and so he can't fairly represent us. So, he referred us to another lawyer.

Yay!

Thursday, I meet with the builder's former foreman to go over what's left to be done on the house. We'll probably end up signing a contract with him to get it finished. We have to finish it. A half-built house is worthless: nobody will buy it, nobody can use it, and it would cost a fortune to demolish. So, the only way is forward. Bleeding money the whole way.

For reasons I won't get into, I have a fresh supply of Vicodin in the bathroom (sadly, I was only prescribed the one Valium). Feels like a good time to get down on 'em. Float away for a while.

I won't.

Still, feels that way.

A House Half Built

Today I learned why there hasn't been any work done on the new house in weeks, and why some of the work that was started has been sitting half-finished for months - the siding, for example, was started in July but still only covers half the house today. The builder hasn't been paying his subcontractors. He's bouncing checks. He's been taking the withdrawals from our construction loan and ... well, nobody knows. Pocketing it, we assume. And, money we paid him directly, for things above and beyond what was in the contract, that's been pocketed also. For example: the very big chunk of money for the solar stuff - pocketed. Mrs. called the solar company he was supposed to contracted with and they have no record of our property. Lesson learned there.

Nobody knows what's going on with him. He's built many houses and never had a problem. All of his people are baffled.

But, he's been ripping us off for months. And it sounds like we're not the only people he's doing this to - others of his projects are in similar situations.

Lawyer on Tuesday.

...
And now the subs and suppliers are trying to put liens on us. And our lawyer says he just got another client with the same situation on the same builder. What a shitshow. 

Nibbles, But No Catch

None of our five showings over the weekend resulted in an offer. That's sad. I was really hoping to be able to have an "...and the house sold in two days!" story.

On the bright side, the longer it takes to sell, the smaller the chance that we'll have to move into an apartment until the new house is done.

The Other Half

Half of moving is building the new house. The other half is selling the current house.


iPhone.

The sign went up this morning. And we have two showings tomorrow morning. Because I'm cynical, I assume they're both realtors scouting out new listings. But, there's always a chance they're actual potential buyers.

Update:
Mrs says that the two showings are actual buyers and that one of them said that we need to call them if we receive an offer before they get a chance to see it. Before 10:00AM tomorrow, in other words. So, that's good news.

Then she got another call asking if someone could see the house tonight. Because we have plans tonight and don't want to lock the cats outside on the porch all night while we're gone, we declined. She then got a call from the realtor asking why. She explained. The realtor said the couple who wanted to see it were going to be buying a house today or tomorrow so we should probably find a way to make it work. So, we found a way.

And as I was typing this, another showing was scheduled for tomorrow.

This will be a very busy weekend.