When you decide to have a new home built, you want it to be exactly the way you ordered it to be. While some people check on the progress every day, you shouldn’t be expected to do this — or to know enough about construction to spot mistakes. That’s why you hired the builder in the first place.
Unfortunately, mistakes do happen. For example, one woman said that her house was nearly done — granite countertops were in, floors were built and she was about to get her keys — when she realized all of the built-in cabinets were wrong. The builder had constructed the wrong ones. She eventually got the company to confess to the error, and then she had three options:
— Force the company to put in the right cabinets. Obviously, this would delay the process significantly, especially with so many other finishing touches already done. They’d have to be removed, altered or reinstalled.
— Walk away from the house. This meant that months of waiting would be wasted, and she’d be starting all over again.
— Take the wrong cabinets. This would have been easiest, in some ways, but it meant she wouldn’t actually get her dream house. That can be hard to take when the whole point of getting a new build was to have everything be perfect and to not make any compromises.
If something like this happens to you, it’s critical to know what legal options your contract gives you. It’s also important to consider your options up front, perhaps adding clauses to get you out of the contract in specific situations. Always prepare for the unexpected, and an attorney can help you.
Source: Plugged in Family, “When Your Home Builder Makes a Mistake,” Wendy Wright, accessed Dec. 08, 2016
