Family Moves Into Their Brand New Home, But They End Up Suing The Contractor To Try To Get All The Problems Fixed

Jayne Elliott

2 minutes ago

Shutterstock/Reddit

Imagine moving into a brand new home that’s part of a new development. Your house is the first house in the new neighborhood.

What would you do if you started noticing problems with the house almost immediately? Would you hire someone to fix them or try to convince the contractor to fix them?

In this story, one family is in this situation, and the dad has a clever plan to try to force the contractor into fixing the problems.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

My contractor was cheap, so I made sure to get my money’s worth

So this is actually what happened between my father and the contractor who built his house (my childhood home).

In 2000, my parents and their two young children, ages 7 and 5 (that’s me!), were looking to move into a house big enough for a family of four and that they could stay in for a very long time.

They found a newly constructed street in a quiet neighborhood in a town known for being family friendly.

It was perfect.

His parents wanted to make it even more perfect.

There were only four available lots, so my mother chose the one she liked best.

Now the houses on these lots were still under construction, so they were mostly just framing at this point.

So my parents decided to contact the contractor, let’s call him Alfred, and see if they could have any input into the design, as they had already set up a mortgage agreement on the property.

Alfred agreed, but didn’t let them do too much. Which wasn’t all that bad. My parents were pretty busy trying to sell their old house anyway.

How exciting!

A few months go by, and the house is finally ready to be moved into.

My parents are thrilled, they finally have their family home!

We move in and everything’s great…for about 36 hours.

But the good news quickly ended, and they were left with a huge mess.

On literal day 2, the furnace in the basement breaks and spews smoke throughout the whole house, setting off the smoke detectors.

The police and fire department show up, investigate, and tell us that we can return in 72 hours.

So we stay in a nearby hotel for the three days.

But there were other problems.

Everything is great again, until we start noticing a bunch of small details that Alfred seemed to have overlooked.

My dad hires a home inspector to look at the house; the inspector finds numerous faults that could cost thousands to fix.

My dad is MAD.

So my dad, being the calm jerk he is (and I love him for it), decides to get some help in paying for these repairs to his 7-month-old house.

His dad had a really good idea!

You see, Alfred had been the contractor for four houses on the street, of which only one (ours) had been bought.

So my dad went to the bank and expressed interest in the other lots. He asked that a $1,000 lien be placed on each one. This was all legal.

Alfred found out and was rightfully angry. He couldn’t sell these lots because of the liens! He asked my dad to remove them.

My dad agreed and said he would, IF Alfred paid for the repairs.

It worked out really well for his parents!

Alfred refused to pay, so my dad refused to lift the liens.

Alfred then sues my parents.

My parents counter sue.

The court rules in favor of my parents.

My dad had to lift his liens. But Alfred, he had to pay my parents $50,000! Instead of paying $2-3k for repairs. AND a home inspector looked at the other three lots and made him pay for any repairs on them.

How awful for this contractor to cut corners so badly that the house is hardly livable almost immediately! I’m glad he had to pay the parents in this story. I’m sure that more than covered the cost of the repairs.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person thinks this is a good example of when you should sue someone.