You Give Love... Errr.... Home Remodeling A Bad Name

Alright boys and girls... get comfortable. This could take a while.

Things you need to know:
Section 203(k) insurance enables homebuyers and homeowners to finance both the purchase (or refinancing) of a house and the cost of its rehabilitation through a single mortgage - or to finance the rehabilitation of their existing home.

Ok - that's what we have. In order to do a 203(k) loan, you have to hire a 203(k) consultant. They are the ones who gather the invoices and such from your various contractors, approve their work, and then send the invoices onto the bank to be paid (called a draw).

So... we have C.C. as our 203(k) consultant, and we'll call our contractors AH Inc. (I would more than happily name them here so anyone searching them could find out their true colors, but since there could be the need for legal action, I don't want to mess that up.) (Kinda give you a sense of where this post is going, doesn't it).

AH Inc. started the demolition portion of our house remodel last week. Things were going well, then we got an e-mail from C.C. saying that he had heard that we had fired him and wanted to know the status. Mr. B and I were all... "Homeboy say WHA????" (well... no we weren't... we don't talk like that... I think the words that were actually used were ones that probably shouldn't be repeated here.)

Mr. B called C.C. and asked what was going on. I will explain... no... there is too much.. I will sum up.

#1 - AH Inc. apparently called another 203(k) consultant, said they needed to make 2 draws - one for $17,000, and one for $15,000 and that we HAD FIRED OUR 203(k) guy and needed a new one, and could he help them get the draw and also be our new 203(k) guy. Well... this guy called C.C., and that's where the e-mail originated from.

Clearly, we had not fired him. They were trying to make this draw behind our back.s

#2 - AH Inc. called ANOTHER 203(k) consultant and invited him to their offices to discuss a "national organization" of 203(k) consultants and contractors. When they got him in their offices, they proceeded to tell him about our "situation" and called our Lender while he was in their offices, and tried to get him to tell the Lender that he was our new 203(k) consultant and it was ok to release the draw. He walked out, called our 203(k) consultant and told him what happened.

#3 - 2 more 203(k) consultant call ours and tell him that AH Inc has contacted them about helping them get draws.

Holy Fricking Thieves.

Then.... we bring in another contractor to give us a bid for the work, and he finds about 10 different blatant safety violations on the part of AH Inc.

THEN when we start trying to gather information about AH Inc. to report them, we find cover ups and misleading info and corporate changes and inconsistancies and silent partners and weird mailboxes in UPS facilities. I can't even begin to tell you all the crap that has come out about this company.

Suffice it to say, then, that all work on the house has now stopped and will stay stopped until they are paid what work they did, and we get another contractor hired.

The thing that sucks? After meeting with 2 different new contractors, Mr. B asked me what I thought. I said "I think they both seem like nice, knowledgeable people.... which is exactly what I thought about AH Inc." I don't trust any of them now.

Sigh.

This is their idea of how one secures an opening above a flight of stairs.....


This is their idea of securing an elevator shaft on the 2nd floor of a residence. That hole is completely open all the way to the basement floor. Oh YES - a little yellow caution tape will catch ANYONE who might stumble as they're walking.

And again... if yellow caution tape is good enough for the 2nd floor, it's definitely good for the 1st cause.... hey... it's not THAT far down to the basement...