My First Contractor Dispute - Very Scared!

[Eric Wood]

At the beginning of April I purchased my first investment property, and now I've found myself in my first dispute with a contractor. I'm definitely learning a lot from this experience, but I am really hoping to receive some solid advice from our community because the situation is also quite nerve wracking and frustrating. If it is at all relevant, this property is in Florida.

When I purchased the property, I knew that there were some structural repairs that would be needed. The full extent of the repairs were impossible to know until the floor was opened up to fully access the damage. I shopped around for contractors, and found a GC who I felt was fair and straightforward based off a few initial conversations. My big mistake at this point was sending the contractor a large deposit ($8,000) before he ever started work. After receiving my deposit, I was told by the office manager and others at the company multiple times that I would be followed up with to be put on their schedule. I had to constantly call and follow up because these dates I was provided were not honored and I received no communication or updates. Long story short, the contractor finally sent a small crew out to open up my floor. The damage ended up being significantly more extensive than I ever would have anticipated, and he then came back with a contract price to finish the work of $57,000!

At this point, I called the contractor to see what my options were. With a repair this extensive, I did not want to blindly proceed forward before assessing the situation completely. The contractor told me ver batim "I'm not going to refund any of your deposit if you are going to turn around and have one of my competitors do the work. I will only refund your deposit and release you from the contract if you sell the property and provide the closing documents to prove it." So according to the contractor, the options I had were to

1. Pay him an enormous sum of money to repair my property
2. Sell my property (not a realistic outcome because selling it as-is without repairs would require me to write a huge check at closing)

After this conversation it became very clear that I no longer wanted to do business with his company. I emailed him saying that I wanted to be released from the contract, which he refused. Per his contract, the next step of the dispute process is to move into mediation. I could honestly live with the expensive lesson of losing my $8,000 deposit, but the possibility of a lengthy court case that could get extremely expensive is terrifying to me. I'm not sure exactly what my options are now, but I'm hoping for some advice from the community

I'm searching for some honest feedback from the group here. Am I in the wrong as the consumer? This contractor incurred what was probably less than $1,000 in expenses related to my project (literally just sending a small crew to bust up a section of flooring in the living room), which I would have more than happy to compensate him for if things ended amicably. He is now threatening to sue me for the "expected profit" that he would have received if the project were to have been fully completed. To me, he just seems like a bully and an egotistical jerk for trying to strong-arm me into staying under contract with him - but maybe I'm not looking at the situation objectively?

I've made it more than clear that I have no intention of working with him. If I wanted to hire someone else to complete the repairs, should I wait until my dispute with him is completely resolved and I've officially exited the contract, or can I begin work with someone else now? I need to complete the repairs as soon as possible so that I can stabilize the asset and get a tenant placed