Issues with General Contractor

[Senta J.]

Hi All,

I am hoping I can get some advice regarding my situation with the general contractor I hired.

My husband and I are doing our first flip and we took 3 months vetting general contractors to make sure we end up with the right one. We spoke to 13 contractors and finally found one who seemed to be perfect. He came highly recommended by a very experienced flipper at our REIA, is licensed and insured, very experienced and professional. I looked up as much as I could online and found nothing negative about him. Unfortunately, something happened along the way and we don't know what to do.

We are currently a month over schedule, he says he'll do x,y and z in a given week and it doesn't get done. Then, he doesn't respond to phone calls and texts until days later. He always has some excuse: phone isn't working, family emergency, etc. Then, when he does work he'll say such & such item will be done tomorrow and wants payment. In the beginning, since things were good and he started out strong, we paid him a day or two before that work item was done. Now, however, there are several things he's been fully paid for but are only partially done. Recently we found out from one of the subs that he hasn't gotten paid for the work we paid the GC for. I don't know what the payment status is for the other subs he used. 

The investor who recommended him called recently and told us this contractor didn't pay his electrician for her job and the electrician put a lien on the house so she had to pay twice to be able to sell it. When she confronted him and withheld payment for the next work item until he pays the electrician, he walked off her job. She said he told her he would pay her back but hasn't done so yet and it has been a few weeks. 

I'm not sure what to do here. We made a lot of mistakes since this is our first flip and we trusted him. Our contract with him does not have a termination clause so I don't know if that means we're stuck with him. I have a call in to our attorney but I'm hoping the BiggerPockets community may have some ideas on how to deal with this.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer. 

Senta