We bought a brand new home from Richard Fuller Homes in April that has a "2-10" warranty from Home Buyers Warranty/National Home Insurance Company. Right away, we started noticing signs of serious grading/drainage issues, plus foundation failure. Now, ten months after buying, we have more foundation failure, serious roof problems, and a sinkhole. Many of our doors will not close because they are so badly twisted out of square by the foundation failure. This presents a huge security and safety risk.
We have spent hundreds of dollars on engineers reports, inspections, and so on to prove our case. NHIC sent an engineer too, and he agreed with the ones we'd hired. But no repairs to the major defects mentioned have been made. Just the copies and postage for all the letters we've written, photos, and support data have run into the hundreds now, because every organization that gets involved wants their own set of copies... The Better Business Bureau wanted theirs in triplicate. And most of it must be sent certified mail.
The BBB has refused to make our complaint available to anyone searching the BBB records for info on this builder or warranty company. And previous complaints against them with the BBB were kept from us when we researched before we bought. According to the local BBB, that is not what they do. Another bloated and useless bureacracy.
This matter with the house has taken over our lives. It has become my full time—no, OVERTIME—job. I start researching, letter writing, phone calling and emailing first thing every morning, often on weekends too. I am usually still at it well into the night. We can't "get over it" as some incredibly ignorant and insensitive people have suggested, because we are LIVING IN IT, and still PAYING FOR IT. We have submitted letters and complaints and data to countless consumer protection services and gov't offices. The governor of Oklahoma had a representative call and tell me there is "nothing they can do."
We live in a house that is less than a year old, and it is falling apart. We have documentation even from the warranty company's own engineer stating this is so. As most people know, hiring a lawyer, let alone going to court, is prohibitively expensive. Fixing our house is also prohibitively expensive, given the serious and impractical nature of the repairs, which currently total well over $20,000 and are rising due to the continual discovery of more defects and further damage. Stalling on the part of the warranty company and builder are causing the damage to worsen.
Floor Cracking
If we lose this battle, it will mean bankruptcy. We could lose everything, and all because a builder was negligent, and because the builder and warranty company thumbed their noses at us, the gov't, the law, everybody. It would seem that all anyone has to do to get out of honoring a contract is to ignore it. What then, I ask you, are laws for?
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