He didn't answer your calls...why answer his? I would have tossed the crap before now anyway....

I share your sentiments! But selling his stuff without notice because someone else declared it "abandoned" may not have been the best solution.

I used to do this with tenants who would move out and leave me a houseful of junk--and come back two months later irate that it had all gone to the Sally Ann in the interim. I even had a car towed as abandoned--guy came back three months later. My lawyer advised a better approach.

Your responsibility as the "finder" of "abandoned," "mislaid" or "lost" items--and each has a separate legal definition--depends on your jurisdiction. A number of states have specific legislation on the matter.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lost and Abandoned Property

Definitely on your side on this one!

Was your contract on a cost plus basis? If so, there is a darned good chance you bought and paid for that stuff and I would insist that the builder provide me with proof to the contrary before I would let him take it.

Even if your contract was a fixed price deal, if your GC is as lousy as you say and there is no "paper trail" regarding these materials, there is at least some chance your GC never paid the supplier for them. And the worst of it is, if an unpaid supplier delivered that stuff to your site or was even told by your GC that it was for your build, the supplier can put a lien against your property! (The time limits for filing M&M liens vary by jurisdiction so, depending on where you are located, you may be safe, but I would definitely check.)

If the time limit for filing an M&M lien in your jurisdiction is more than about 3 months, before I would even consider letting the GC pick the stuff up, I would call around to any local suppliers who might have supplied the materials to try and find out who supplied it and whether they had been paid for it.

IF someone says they supplied it and haven't been paid, ask for a copy of the delivery invoice. Do not let your GC pick the materials up. Instead, send the supplier a certified letter (with a certified copy to your builder) saying the materials appear to have been mis-delivered to your site and that the supplier needs to come reclaim them. Then, get a receipt for anything and everything picked up by the supplier.

Now, assuming the time for filing liens has passed, and your contract was a fixed price contract, then PROBABLY the stuff legally belongs to your GC. He should have cleared it out before you moved in. And in all fairness, by this point, you OUGHT to be able to charge him a storage fee for having had to deal with the junk all this time - but as I'm sure you'll agree, the chances of ever getting any money out of him for storage are probably minimal. Much as it would feel good to try and make him pay for dumping this one last hassle on you, if he wants to reclaim the stuff there probably isn't any point in wasting yet more time and psychic energy on the b**tard.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any law that seems to apply to your situation. The closest laws I can come up with are abandoned property laws governing situations where a tenant leaves behind personal property in a rental unit and the landlord is stuck trying to decide whether he can sell it or has to store it until the tenant comes back and reclaims it.

Don't think those laws actually apply in your case but you might read up on them for your jurisdiction anyway. Many jurisdictions require a landlord to keep abandoned property safe for some period of time. After a specified period of time - and after having sent notice to the tenant, most jurisdictions allow landlords to sell abandoned property and to keep all or part of the proceeds to pay for storage costs. Others allow the abandoned property to be placed on the street. Others allow landlords to claim the property and do whatever they want to with it. Other jurisdictions may have still other rules.

If you make sure you treat your GC at least as well as the law would require a landlord to treat a tenant who left behind abandoned property in a rental unit, then even if the GC got upset enough at you to file suit, the court would probably determine that you had made a good faith effort to treat your GC fairly. Typically where no law precisely on point exists, courts use the nearest applicable law as a guide and they try not to punish someone who has tried to be fair in the absence of specific law on point. So, I think you'd be okay if you followed the landlord tenant rules.

In other words, give your GC the same written notice that you would have had to give if he was a former tenant and you were the landlord... including an inventory of items left behind and a specified date by which he must reclaim the stuff. Then, follow the landlord tenant laws in disposing of any property he doesn't reclaim. Hardly seems fair that you should have to go to so much trouble but the last thing you need is to give him any possible basis for winning a lawsuit against you.

Personally, if it were me, once I knew for a fact that I wasn't going to wind up facing liens for unpaid materials that my GC had wrongly delivered to my property, I'd want to get some friends together to load all the stuff into a pick-up and then unload it - perhaps none too carefully - in the driveway of his personal home in the middle of the night! But that probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to do.

Best of luck.

Thanks for all of the advice! I DO know that the items where paid for...I spoke with the supplier, and he said "that they were replacements for the wrong sized item in another build"....but, interestingly enough, I had the same amount replaced in my house, due to the wrong size being installed...so it seems a little fishy. I would also like to point out that they were left in my locked, attached garage, not outside, so it is located inside my personal property....BTW, how long do subs have to place liens on a property? I ask because the same GC sent out $10K of misc bills AFTER the loan was closed, and 3 months after I moved in....I was mortified, to say the least...worst yet, I have not received any communication from him..he is a real b***tard!

Thanks again!

If there is no statutory law, Common Law applies. And, if you can plow through the link above, you can see there's lots of it.

After three months, I don't think there's any chance of filing a Mechanics Lien. But that doesn't preclude him filing a Court action.

The rules in each state are different.

Funnily, I had a framing contractor call me three years after a place was built and sold claiming that I still owed him a few thousand dollars. I just reached into my handy file drawer and pulled out his bills and acknowledgements of payment. And crossed him off the list for future jobs.

I'll bet you a dollar to a donut that YOU paid for all of these supplies. I have been in the shop of contractors and they have all kinds of "left-overs" from jobs and then they just use them on the next one....thanks to the former builder~~~~~ Ask him for the receipts used on your house....of course, you might have a hard time telling just what was used.....but I really think it was on "your dime"....GOOD LUCK