OT: Do builders ever finish on time?

[BellePrincessBelle]

My house was supposed to be ready by Jan. 1st it's Feb.1st and I'm still waiting for the kitchen cabinets to be installed. While it wasn't the builders fault that the cabinet company built my cabinets in the wrong color the correct ones have been there since Mon. & they haven't installed them yet. I'm getting mad now. They promised they'd be in and ready for the granite on Mon. so we could close on Tues. and move in on Wed. before my DH has to leave for a conference.

 

[720L]

no. It seemed like they worked slower the closer they got to finishing!

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

no. It seemed like they worked slower the closer they got to finishing!

Great!!! Thanks for scaring me more .
We were supposed to be in before the babies but that didn't happen.

 

[sanibelover]

As a Realtor working with a lot of new construction, my answer would be, "NO."

The only thing that is certain in new construction is that they will never finish on time!!!!!

 

[bnorm27]

There are soooo many factors that can affect when the builder finishes. The weather, inspectors, suppliers, and of course the subcontractors all come in to play. When we built our house 7 years ago, we were delayed by rain. Not that it affected the construction crews, but the county had this ridiculous rule about grass or grass seed being in place. Well, the rain was so bad it kept washing the grass seed away. We got delayed by two weeks because of this. Hang in there, and it will all be over soon enough!

 

[java]

Well in our development we actually moved in a month early! (and we didn't want to!)
They were anxious to move onto the next house. We wanted to stay in our old state to finish out the school year. But we closed early on our old house and the new house and lived in a hotel for a week.

 

[tlbwriter]

Mine was about 2 weeks late. Does your contract say anything about the deadline? Mine only said that if they didn't finish by the deadline, we didn't have to buy the house, which didn't really help since we wanted it! But it wasn't a problem, since we were renting the home we lived in at the time and were on a month-to-month lease.

 

[DebMcDonald]

We were about two weeks late, but he also moved extremely fast (which he says he will NEVER be under that much pressure again). From the start of our foundation to our move-in date where everything was completed it was two months. We were hoping for a end of May date, because that is when we closed on the house we were selling and we didn't move into our new house until June 11. We also did not have cookie cutter construction we had major landscaping with lots of rock walls, etc. He did a wonderful job.

 

[Cindy B]

No!

 

[pearlieq]

Both of ours have been right on time, but they weren't custom/semi-custom or anything. It was Ryland and Lakewood. But they hit their due dates right on target and that seemed to be the norm. I suppose there are fewer variables in mass-market, assembly-line type construction.

 

[HM]

Our builder wouldn't even give us date for closing until about a month beforehand so that they could be assured of being "on time". Then they only gave themselves a week to redo any mistakes we found in walkthrough....

Good luck! They can get it done. I've watched houses go up around me (we were the first in our neighborhood to finish) and I've been amazed at how quickly they can get the last few things done, when they know that they need to.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

As a lawyer who has defended her share of construction companies, I say 'no'.

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

You all made me feel better because it's not just something that happened to me. I went over and they are putting in all the cabinets right now. The granite guys are ready to measure as soon as the base cabinets are in and they said they will cut in on sunday if they have to. No real choice not to close since it is our construction loan that will convert to a regular loan. It's 100% custom. I designed it myself.

 

[dznyacct]

Our house was supposed to be done "late December" . Fast forward to the middle of March (St. Patrick's Day to be exact ) and we FINALLY closed. I don't know how people build more than once or twice in their lives. It was truly a test of our marriage .

 

[KelNottAt]

Our garage/home office addition took 22 weeks instead of the 20 week estimate. I didn't think that was TOO bad.

 

[janey99]

Sometimes they don't finish at all, and then you have to sue them, and then even if you win, you have to wait 3 years to be made whole because the poor contractor can't be expected to just pay you out of pocket the whole amount he scammed you for, even though you gave him a giant lump sum to begin with . . . . .

Oh wait - was that out loud?

 

[Melrosgirl]

They gave me a completion date the day we drywalled and they were right on time.

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

Sometimes they don't finish at all, and then you have to sue them, and then even if you win, you have to wait 3 years to be made whole because the poor contractor can't be expected to just pay you out of pocket the whole amount he scammed you for, even though you gave him a giant lump sum to begin with . . . . .

Oh wait - was that out loud?

Oh my goodness!!! That is horrible. I hope you did get all of your money back in the end. I do have to say our builder has busted his butt and all of our subs are great. The cabinets were a huge problem. It's not the builders fault I gave birth 10 weeks early. I just want to be in before they are released from the hospital which should be in 2 weeks or so.

 

[HeyIt'sMe]

We built our house in 2003 (not a custom home). We started the whole process (paperwork) in early June and were told at that time the estimated completion date was November (no specific date was given).

We closed on the house November 18 and moved in November 20.

I can't believe it will be 5 years!

 

[TaraPA]

The above poster had it pretty good! We signed the papers in Sep/2004 with a completion date of Sep/2005 (custom home). We had to move to a hotel on 11/1/2005 because the people that bought our house could not wait any longer (understood), and we lived in that hotel with 2 boys until we moved in here on 12/9/2005. NOT FUN. The house wasn't even completely done, we had workers in & out of the house at 6am for 2-3 more weeks doing the finishing work! We got our temporary CO on Christmas Eve, thank goodness, I was so nervous the township was going to come evict us!