NEVER BUY A HOUSE FROM.........

OK. The moment you have all been waiting for.......I hope I can meet your expectations as I am tired (I am running on large amounts of Dr.Pepper!) and my sentences may/may not be complete or even make sense for that matter.  Bottom line ----we closed on the house yesterday so now I feel comfortable to "spill the beans!"

For those of you that have been following our building journey, you are well aware that it has been a bit of a struggle.  We knew when we decided to build that it would be stressful, but this was just ridiculous!!!!

 It started with the frame work and plumbing not being correct.  At that point we met with the builder, his foreman, his assist and and our realtor on site to discuss.  Our builder claims that he was blind sighted with all the issues, even though we had sent several emails explaining such to his realtor/brother, whom we had been under the impression that he was the actual builder until 45 days into the build!!!!  The "discussion" got a  little heated shall we say!  The conversation ended with the builder agreeing to reduce the house price  (we were told a % and verbally agreed to such on site.)  We immediately went home and recapped the conversation with our numbers and requested the credit amounts via email so we could get an addendum to the contract.  No response..........The builder just seemed irritated with us the entire build as we made him adhere to an addendum of house changes that he signed with the original contract. Let me note that we literally picked out everything for the house BEFORE the foundation was poured and DID NOT change anything!!!  I practically emailed his assistant everyday with things that were wrong and needed changing.  Example: brick mason's ran out of brick so another pallet was delivered.  I went out to inspect the brick, the invoice said the brick was correct, but the label on the pallet was a different brick. It visually was a different brick. I emailed to not put this brick on the house and it went up anyway!! I am talking about 1/3 of the house was bricked in the wrong brick!!!! It took who knows how many people to look at the brick before it was decided that it needed to come down.  Bottom line- it should not have went on the house to begin with!!!!-OK..let me get back to the point!!!  Basically, he just doesn't seem to think that he has to communicate with his customers and this was a custom build!!!

Anyway-as the closing date came closer, we needed to finalize everything!! We even gave a punch list 2 weeks ago to help get this house closed last Friday!!  Technically, per the contract we did not have to give a punch list until 5 business days after the C of O was received (which wasn't until last Thurs-the day before the original closing date!) the builder then would have 5 business days to comply with the punch list items.   We felt this put our builder in default of the contract.  Then we finally got our final credit amounts last Thursday, so on Friday our plan was to have an extension of the closing date signed (to allow for the bank and title comp time to prepare the closing doc) and my husband is welcomed with a Friday the 13th surprise!!!!!  He is told via phone and email from our builder's assistant that they cannot reduce the sell price because they don't have authorization to do so.  The options that were given to us were we can pay the full amount or terminate the contract, either way they will not reimburse us any monies that we have already paid.  TALK ABOUT A MAJOR BLOW!!!! When Scott called me, I thought at first he was kidding, just trying to get me worked up!!! I called the assistant and explained that is not what was verbally (with witnesses) agreed upon and that we have 3 inches of emails pertaining to this house (we made sure everything had a paper trail) so if they want to stick to this story that's fine!  My husband then sent an email that we take this as their termination of the contract.  15 minutes later Scott get a call from the builder- he is yelling and throwing a fit- calling my husband heartless and such.  Apparently, the builder's 8 yr old son was dx with cancer 2 weeks ago and is in LR at Children's undergoing chemo ( let's stop there for a sec---please pray for healing for his son-- this situation has nothing to do with our house)  Now back to my story-------Scott was a little shocked and said he was sorry about that - he didn't know about his son, in fact this is only the 2nd time he has ever talked our builder, regardless we have been asking for his credits to get a new contract written up for 10 weeks.  The builder then said he would take "X" amount off the house ( I guess he suddenly had authorization again!)- we can take it or leave it--- either way we will have to sue him for our money if we don't buy the house.   Do we feel our builder is totally a liar??? OH YEA!! ( we feel he most likely offered this to save himself any future litigation). We went home and discussed the situation and felt that we were backed into a corner.  If we start over, Nat loses her spot at her new school and such.  There were some other factors that I am not going to get int  that made us feel like we needed to go ahead and proceed with the purchase.  We could have sued and probably recovered our loss, but since we were not sure if we could recover our attorney's fees, it could end up a total wash. ( OK- my fingers are aching here!!) So ....Saturday, we signed an extension of closing and the builder waited until Monday afternoon to sign as well.....

So we closed FINALLY yesterday at 2:30 and are now working our tails off trying to get into the house.
If you are in the NWA area- buyer beware-----our builder is RIGGINS CONSTRUCTION.  The nicest thing I can say about this company is that if you buy a spec house you might be fine, as you don't have to deal with the builder AT ALL!!!!!
A co-worker of Scott's found a rating on yellowpages.com on Riggins-it was a story similar to ours. Apparently he is also building in Joplin, MO, due to the tornado damage from May 2011 and gave the run around with that customer too.
Ya know word of mouth advertising can be your best friend or your worst enemy!!!
So........like I said we are currently getting moved into the house and plan to make the best of it and "move" on with our lives!!! Ya live and ya learn, huh?

 I hope to start showing decorated rooms  next week!!!!