She Discovered Her Home Builder Was Ripping Her Off—So She Warned The Entire Neighborhood
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Hell hath no fury like a worn scorned!
You’ve probably heard that expression before, but this story is living proof that it’s real!
The woman who is the star of this tale wasn’t playing around when she found out that the people who were building her house were playing sketchy games with the money involved.
So, how did she react?
Well, let’s just say that she wasn’t playing around…
Read on and find out what happened!
Sleazy real estate developer fraudulently nickels and dimes. Mom helps to drive final nail into coffin.
“Setting the way-back machine for 1994, we start our tale in sunny San Diego.
We’re moving to the area from Orange County since my dad got a new job down there, and he was pretty tied up with the projects they immediately threw him into. My mom took over most of the details surrounding the move, including dealing with the company building our house.
My parents had bought a home that was being constructed as one of those big neighborhood development, choose-your-own-slight-variation-off-one-of-three-model-homes deals. Mom negotiated all the details, including the specific flooring upgrades she wanted.
Mom noticed something was off…
As she looks at the “contract” they gave her with all the details to sign, she starts to raise some objections. Apparently the contract just said “carpet, x amount square footage”, it didn’t say what brand, color, model #, etc. Same goes for all the other agreed upon upgrades.
She tells them “that’s not a contract”, and says that if she is paying for specific flooring upgrades those better be written down.
She gets the updated papers back, with the actual details listed, then notes that the square footage listed was significantly higher than the house needed. She told them the house isn’t that big, and they’ve calculated too much square footage for the materials.
They counter with the assertion that she hasn’t taken into account “cutting loss”, and as they cut around corners and stuff there’s always material left over. She says “fine- then you better tell your installers to leave every single scrap of material on site, and just pile it in the garage. They aren’t to take one square inch from the site.”
She wasn’t playing around!
They agree, we fast forward a couple of months. She drives down the day they finish the carpet. She walks into the garage, and sees this rather large pile of carpeting materials, most of which are completely intact. It’s on at that point.
She goes and chats with the friendly subcontractor there at the house, and he agrees to show her the work order he got from the builder.
Lo and behold, the square footage on the work order is significantly smaller than the contract my mom had, and was correct for the size of the house (by the by, my parents had gone with the exact same flooring layout that one of the model homes had, so the builder absolutely knew the square footage needed. She had only changed the materials for the upgrades).
A ha!
She asks to borrow the orders so she could photocopy them, the subcontractor happily agrees. She drives into the corporate offices for the developer with the copies and starts to raise hell. There were a couple of people there to sign papers to have their own home built, and after overhearing the story abruptly left.
She gets a refund on the carpeting, and brings up the linoleum. They refuse to admit they did the same thing on the linoleum, so she goes back to the house the next day and takes pictures of the leftover amounts of the process and does the same thing.
For reasons I’m not clear on at this point, the refund for the linoleum was supposed to be returned along with some of the money in the escrow account when the HUD paperwork was returned.
Next, it comes to light that a bedroom window seat that my parents had requested and that was in the contract wasn’t put in as agreed. They complained to my mom and tried to get her to let it slide, whining that it would cost them “$300 to send a contractor back out to put it in”.
After threatening them some more, they finally folded and had someone come out and put it in.
They finish the house, and my parents do the normal walk-through inspection before signing off on it and taking ownership. My dad, being my dad, goes through and tests every single outlet, every single light switch, etc.
Dad wasn’t messing around, either!
He comes back with a 2 page checklist of things that were wrong/not functional, and they have to send someone out AGAIN to fix it all.
We finally complete the process, and move in. However, the HUD paperwork is delayed, and isn’t delivered on time. Then it comes back and it’s incomplete (doesn’t list the reimbursements they had to make for the overcharges), and the escrow money was short by the amount that was due for the linoleum.
As the linoleum was just in the kitchen and the dining table area, the difference wasn’t nearly as large as with the carpeting, but it was the principle of the thing and my mom by this point was seriously angry. She brings it up, and they basically refuse to pay it, saying it was a small amount of money ($103), and she should just forget it.
Enter the petty revenge.
It was GO time.
She goes around to each of our new neighbors, and makes sure to tell our story and to encourage them to double check each of their contracts and the amounts they were charged. All of a sudden, amounts they were being billed started to change, on the average of $1-2k per house.
Then she got a nice piece of white Styrofoam board (about 3 feet by 4 feet) and wrote in very large, black, block letters “AVOID AGGRAVATION- TALK TO US BEFORE BUYING A XXXXXXX HOME” (name of development company redacted as they are still around, and my parents still live in the same house).
That sign got put in the front bedroom window, over the garage, and was easily visible by any passerby.
I should note, our cul de sac was maybe the second or third street that was actually sold and constructed, aside from the little one with the model homes. This was in a neighborhood out of maybe 15 streets total.
We had all kinds of people stop by- realtors, appraisers, people looking at buying a home, and one guy that was very obviously from the developer posing as a home-buyer. My mom would happily recount every single frustration that we had run into, including the money they still owed us from the overcharge on the linoleum.
I was the third of five kids, and 10 years old at the time, and all of us were so fully versed on the high points that we could each give the story if my mom wasn’t home to anyone who knocked (aside from the littlest, who was only 6).
I can personally remember running through my spiel to 3 or 4 different people when I was the only one who came to the door. The developer threatened to sue us, and my mom just said “Naaah, you don’t have a leg to stand on” and ignored it.
After the undercover developer guy came by, our check magically showed up in the mail, and my mom got a call from the developer basically saying “Ok you got your money, now take the sign down now please”.
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Maybe later…
My mom declined, letting them know she was still mad, and left it up for 6 months. In a shocking coincidence, they also didn’t sell a single house in that neighborhood for 6 months.
The builder they had ended up going out of business, and the developer ended up filing bankruptcy and going through a reorganization of some kind. They hired a new builder who finished the development, but it took several years past the original time frame.
My parents don’t credit the sign with directly putting them out of business or anything, but apparently at that time in the 1990s, property values were actually declining for once, and so the developer was sitting on a whole bunch of land that they had paid too much for.
This is likely a large contributing factor to all the different shenanigans they were trying to pull. That being said, not selling a single house for 6+ months in an entire development couldn’t have helped the cash flow situation.”
Reddit users spoke up.
This person weighed in.
Another reader was impressed.
This Reddit user shared their thoughts.
If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a man who stopped salting his neighbors’ driveways when they wouldn’t stop driving through his yard.
And another individual spoke up.
Good for her for fighting back!
And I can tell she’s the kind of person who doesn’t play around…
A word to the wise: don’t mess with her!
She found out these house builders were scamming everyone!
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