All Forum Posts by: Jessie Newton

@ Jon, Thank you for your response! We had seen houses he had built, and were impressed with his work. However, we did not know he had next to zero capital. It took him four months to get started, which he blamed on the weather, and we, unfortunately, accepted that excuse.

My cousin is a state senator, so I have already spoken with him and gotten the same response. I can agree with you, it would be absolutely pointless to try and take him to court.

The estimate, he assured us, was on the "high end." We even downgraded some things (concrete floors, rather than doing actual flooring) and saved money on things like that. So an estimate that was already on the "high end," plus saving money on other things, I just didn't foresee it coming to this..

Basically, we take full responsibility for not having a contract drawn up. That's the plain and simple fact. I just thought that even with a cost estimate, there has got to be a threshold he can't cross. There has got to be a certain point where it gets out of hand, ya know? One of the many times we met with him to discuss the budget, I asked him why he didn't communicate to us that things were going over (not regarding upgrades that we had funds to cover, but other things that he just under quoted). His response was that he knew we were going to make a lot of money off selling our first house. I feel like that is none of his business, nor our intentions with that money.

Also, I'm not sure how to "cut our losses and move on" when there is still a debt to be paid, that neither we or the contractor can afford to pay.

@ Milton, thank you for your response!

• The house is just about 100% complete, so no need to really hire another contractor to come in a finish. I'm talking paint, caulking, some things that we can take care of ourselves.
• We have been researching on our end and creating an excel spreadsheet, and plan on meeting with our contractor once he does the same in order for us to see exactly what happened.
• I have already printed off receipts from storage fees and other things to add in our discussion. But in the past, he has blamed this on the bank for not giving him money when he needed it.
• It's not necessarily the fact that I don't like the "tile" so to speak, it's the fact that I sent him a picture of what I wanted and told him where to get it from, and he did something completely different, costing me a lot more money.

Thank you, Caleb, for your response! I am trying to avoid having to go down that road.. being that we wouldn't have the money to hire a lawyer either. And even if we did, I can agree with you that it would be a waste since he wouldn't pay. But at the same time, could he take us to court saying that we owe him the remaining $50k? We cannot close on our house if he puts a lien on it. I hate that he has put us in this position, due to his negligence.

My husband and I bought some property in July 2017. We have a family friend who has been a contractor for over 16 years, so we chose him to build our house. He said signing a contract wasn't necessary, but did give us a cost estimate after reviewing a set of house plans. We knew we would make a good chunk of money off selling our first home, therefore we wanted to put that profit towards upgrading some things on our new house (metal roof, hardy siding, etc.) We are at the end of our construction loan (which has already been extended once due to our contractor taking FOREVER) and not only are we out of time, but we are out of money. He under quoted us about $50k, not including the upgrades we chose, since we had funds to cover that. The cost of lumber went up, he forgot about finishing out the upstairs bedroom, didn't put anything in the budget for the stair case and other misc. items. He has gone over budget with certain things and I just don't know what to do. He has barely any operating capital. He would front about $15k, and then pull off our house to go make money elsewhere since our bank wouldn't allow us to draw, being that he had not completed the current phase. Therefore, we had to move in a rental house and pay for storage for 3 months, on top of getting an extension on our loan, as well as increasing the amount we borrowed. Bottom line, who is responsible for the overages? Us, because we are the homeowners, or him, because he had a set of plans and didn't give an accurate estimate? We will never use him again. There are a couple of things that are left to complete, that we can find someone else to take care of. There are things I am not pleased with, that are either sloppy, or just plain NOT what I asked for. HELP.