Who made the mistake? If it's all on your GC, then he's gonna be eating the cost. Who decided on the "improvements?" If the GC is making all these decisions, it's time you sit him down and explain that this is YOUR house, not his, and YOU'LL decide on the improvements.

A bedroom that is 9'8" wide hardly sounds like a bedroom -- sounds more like a walk-in closet.

At the VERY least, you deserve a much lower price on your house. Good luck.

The mistake is all on my builder, and I totally agree, he did not get any adjustments approved through me at all. But I really was wondering, how much of a cut in price, or what else could he do (add ons) etc. to the house to make be satisfied with this house!! Thanks phillipeh for your response.

You need to protect yourself. Get a construction attorney NOW. Do not negotiate with the builder, just get a lawyer on board and explain what happened to him. He can advise you of your legal rights and what avenues are open to you.

A consultation won't cost much and could save you thousands.

You need to look at your contract. It probably says something like the GC will build your house according to the plans and specs -- and he obviously has not done that. If you are willing to accept his mistakes in exchange for something else you consider worthwhile, that might be ok (nicer cabinets, more crown moulding, nicer countertops, better insulation, whatever). Definitely meet with your banker because what you're going to need to do is figure out how much the GC's mistakes are worth and what he can do to make it up to you. For instance, multiply your cost per sq ft by the number of square feet you are missing. That is just the beginning of what he owes you (and those "bump outs" you didn't authorize don't make up for the missing square feet). I don't know how many bedrooms you were supposed to have, but you basically have one less now because of that 9'8" bedroom that is better suited as a large storage area.

How can your GC make all of these changes (moving walls, adding bump outs, etc) without ever contacting you???

Do you own the land?

That is a big issue.
You need a lawyer, hopefully bevangel can advice you better.

This is the way I see it:
You do not pay for the square footage that he is not giving you.
In addition he has to compensate you with upgrades.
Why?
If your rooms do not have the right dimensions the value of the house decreases. You could actually have problems if you are financing the home, when the bank send his appraiser.

I would not buy a house of that size with rooms of 9'8".

You should also realize that there may be a conflict of interest between you and the banker. The banker is interested in making sure the mortgage is covered above all else. If the house appraises for less than the mortgage, which might be possible if it was built far off spec, then the bank may have the right to call the note due immediately. That would leave you holding the bag.

That's another reason to see an attorney.

I just want to say thank you all for your advice, and I am sooo scared and nervous. We do own the land, but we put the land up to help with down payment for the loan. This is horrible, I am meeting with my banker and the builder Monday morning. I plan on taking my measurements of the actual house verses the house plans to see what they have to say or offer. What does everyone think about a 13'8" x 21' living room and it is the only living room I have. It was suppost to be 15'4 x 21' which was small to begin with, but we need that space. thanks again for all advice..

Unless it's very clear to you that the "advantages" give you a better house than you were promised, I'd have them fix it or make some major concessions or additions to the house. I'd get something from the builder in writing, quickly. I wouldn't call the attorney quite yet. In my experience, don't call an attorney until you really need an attorney. It always costs you more money. There's nothing that prevents an agreement between you and the builder from being legitimate and binding. If you get an attorney, every discussion becomes attorney to attorney, and a 5 minute phone call costs you $100. Also, what would that do to the remainder of the project? Work out as many specifics as you can, write it down in as much detail as you can, agree to it with witnesses and a notary, and move on.

Well, as a builder, I missed 80 sf on a 3200 sf. home (overhangs). No one noticed, but even if they had it was within the allowable margin of error of the warranty programme.

What you should first determine is the overall difference in sq. footage between what you bargained for and what you got. Going into the minutiae of room dimensions doesn't help. Offhand, it certainly sounds like the foundation was off more than 8" x length/width of house.

I agree that you need to stand strong to get what you want and what you are paying for. If the builder screwed up, he screwed up and needs to fix it. Of course, a lot depends on what your contract says. Which is where the lawyer comes in.

I predict that you may need to make some choices as to whether to accept a price cut or have them redo the work. A lot of that depends on how long you plan to be in the house, your financial situation, your desires, etc. Just be sure to think through what's more important to you. If you're going to be in the house for decades, then having the right house is more important. If you're moving in two years, then go for the price cuts. See what I mean?

"If you're moving in two years, then go for the price cuts. See what I mean?"

The size of the rooms aren't going to do a whole lot for re-sale and the price adjusted accordinly. This means that, as usual in these cases, the homeowner eats it and the builder goes on to the next project,(hopefully learning something from this so it doesn't happen to someone else).

Where in the heck was your builder when the forms were up before the pour? Measure twice, cut once! This shouldn't have happened to this extreme. Mistakes are made by all of us , but get real here!

This problem started at the footings not the foundation. someone should have caught it then.

Another example of why the homeowner should be present at the build as much as possible.

I know we don't know the circumstances surrounding your presence or lack thereof during the build process, but I couldn't agree with creek side more on this one. This should have been caught long before the roof was completed.

I am truly sorry you are experiencing this. This situation would give me many many sleepless nights and probably an ulcer. I'm already having insomnia because of our build, and we haven't even started yet!!! I hope you find a way to resolve this. I definitely would stand my ground on this one. Good luck.

My husband works 2nd shift and I work 1st shift, so we were at the site all the time, we are living directly in front of the house, but we had no entrance into the house except for steep ladder from basement to first floor. Thanks again for all your help.

Lovins - As several people have pointed out, lawyers don't come cheap so I can understand why you might be tempted to try to handle this matter by yourself.

I am an attorney and would love to help you out BUT I am only licensed in Texas and don't want to be accused of practicing law without a license in whatever jurisdiction you are in. Thus, I cannot give you actual "legal advice" on this forum.

All I can do is share a little bit about my own experienceso and offer you some general information under the rubric of educating you about the law. Further, this is NOT the area of law in which I practice in so the informtion I have to share is what I learned from going through a somewhat similar situation with my own builder.

I fired my builder when my house was about half completed. He had made dozens of mistakes in the process of building my house which we had been fighting over pretty much since day one. But then I got hit with a $54K lien from a supplier that builder had never paid --- even though builder had taken draws specifically to pay THAT supplier. Builder's draw requests list that specific supplier and specifically state that a total of $50K of the draws he was receiving were going to be used to pay that supplier!

Then, while I was still reeling from that one, I got notices from a couple of other suppliers and workmen that they too had not been paid and that they were also going to file liens if they were not paid immediately. These were all folks who supplied materials and labor that went to meet the milestones for draws that builder had already received. Thus, they should have already been paid!

Despite evidence that builder was pocketing money and not paying subs, my banker insisted that I COULD NOT fire my builder b/c their loan agreement with me included the builder as a necessary party. (I learned later that bank was really concerned that, because we had partially funded our own build, builder held a residual lien that had priority over bank's lien... more about that later.)

Anyway banker suggested that, instead of me firing builder, the bank would allow us to draw additional money from our loan to pay off the lien and the threatened leins (which basically meant I paid for those materials twice!) and that I could then take over handling all money while builder finished the build. This would be done in exchange for Builder agreeing to forego all future draws )since all subs would be being paid directly by me) and to accept whatever money was left over when the build was completed as the remainder of his profit.

The idea was that this way no additional money would flow through builder's hands until my house was complete... at which point, builder would collect whatever amount was still left in the pot as his profit. My banker assured me that the amount remaining to be drawn from my construction loan should be enough to finish my build. My builder also swore that there was "plenty of money left to finish the house."

The plan seemed a reasonable one to me, since it meant that we would not have to go back try and try to figure out how much of my money builder had already pocketed. Clearly he been "paying himself" a portion of his profit up-front but it would all wash out in the end. Builder would be able to finish my house rapidly since he would not have to fund any additional work or materials himself. (By this point, builder was admitting that he was "broke" even though he had originally represented to me that he could afford to front up to $100K of costs of my build at any given time.) All builder had to do was line up the subs, order materials, send all payment invoices to me and survive until my house was finished. At that point, he would collect the rest of his profit and be out of the hole.

Builder agreed to the plan and I forebore from firing him. Logically, he should have worked his butt off from that point on to get my house done as quickly as possible so he could collect his remaining profit. But instead of finishing my house, he pretty much quit working it for over three months! What little additional work was done during this period, I paid for directly per our agreement.

THEN, all at once, builder started demanding more money saying he was ready for his next "draw" and not only that, but he wanted to meet to renegotiate the draw schedule so as to move more money to the front end. Wrong!!!

Even if we had still been going by the original draw schedule, he still had not met the milestones for the next draw and what little additional work had been done, I had already paid the subs and materialmen for. There was no way I was going to now give builder a draw (which was meant to be used to pay subs) and thereby pay for the same work twice!

Builder seemed to have forgotten completely that he had agreed to forego all future draws and to finish the house and then simply collect, as his profit, whatever was left when the house was completed and everybody else was paid.

When I reminded him of our agreement, he changed his tactics. He started claiming that he had put more money into the house than he had received in draws. He wanted me to reimburse him his "out-of-pocket" expenses. Given that by the time he made this claim, we had paid out over $65K dollars to clear up liens and threatened liens from subs that builder had been supposed to pay out of the money that had gone into his pocket, it made no sense to me whatsoever that builder could possibly be "out of pocket" any money on my build.

But, trying to bend over backward to be fair, I told builder that if he would supply me with canceled checks, paid invoices, and signed lein waivers prooving that he had actually paid out more money to suppliers and workmen to build my house than he had received in draws, I would reimburse the difference.

Builder responded by giving me a list he had written up showing checks that he alledged had been written to fund my house. But when I asked for copies of the actual canceled checks, he balked. He had his account at the same bank where we had our construction loan and we were sitting in the bank offices when he gave me the list of checks. Banker indicated that with builder's approval, he could get copies of all checks written on builder's account in about five minutes flat and builder could then go through those and separate out any that had nothing to do with my build and turn the others over to me immediately.

Builder refused, claiming it would take him too long to go through all his canceled checks and that he didn't want to do it sitting at the bank. He promised that he would get the canceled checks that were on his list to me within a day or two. He never did.

Instead, over the next two weeks he sent me a series of faxes each of which showed a few of the checks. In all, I eventually received almost illegible faxed copies of about 30% of the checks on the original list. He also supplied me with some other documents that he claimed were copies of some of the "paid invoices" for materials and labor supplied to my house.

Because he was supplying everything piecemeal and much of it was nearly illegible, I wound up spending about 60 hours digging through the documents and calling up the people they had been made out to trying to make heads/tails sense of builder's accounting and trying to get legible copies of documents. Where he had not provided any payment invoices from suppliers he claimed had provided materials, I also called up the suppliers myself and, where I could talk them into doing so, had them send me copies of invoices for materials delivered to my build.

Ultimately I discovered that some of the canceled checks builder did give me had been written to pay workmen for work they had done on OTHER properties. Further, some of the materials' invoices proved without any doubt that builder had been having materials delivered to MY property that he then hauled away in his pick-up truck and installed in a spec house he was building at the same time but under a different business name! That way, if an invoice never got paid, the supplier would file the lien against MY property instead of builder's spec house and I would be the one on the hook!

As the evidence mounted that builder was a total snake-in-the-grass, I decided I no longer cared what the bank said about not firing my builder. I sent builder written notice that the contract was terminated and copied my bank.

Builder reacted by demanding that I pay him an additional $95K or he would refuse to release a residual lein he held against my house, thereby causing a cloud on my title. In his words, "If you don't pay me, you won't be able to draw any more money to finish your house and your house will rot."

By that point I knew that, if anything, even with a generous profit margin thrown in, builder owed me something on the order of $50K and possibly more. There was no way I was going to give in to his extortion. I felt I had no choice but to file suit.

I am still in the midst of that lawsuit which only because necessary because I screwed up and did not get him to provide me with a release of his residual lien BEFORE notifying him that he was fired. I just never thought to ask for it. As I said, this is not the area of law I practice in and I should have gotten an attorney skilled in this area of the law to advise me. I thought I could go it alone.

My legal fees to fight him have now mounted to nearly $15K and will probably triple before all is said and done. If I'm lucky, the court will order him to pay my legal bills but, for now, it is coming out of my pocket and even if he is ordered to pay; who knows if I'll ever collect. Builder on the other hand keeps threatening bankruptcy and is actively transferring his property (including the spec house) to his rich Daddy under a very dubious lawsuit that rich Daddy filed against his own son and then they settled one month later by Builder giving his Daddy a second lien against the house. Daddy has paid off builder's bank note on the house - which of course wasn't very much since builder was skimming materials from my site to build the house - and is now in the process of foreclosing on the "judgment lien." What a crock!

Meanwhile, it took me three months to convince my bank - and three different sets of the bank's attorneys - to allow me to take over as GC and continue drawing the rest of my approved loan amount to finish my house.

It helped that I had a one-time close loan so that, even if bank refused to allow me to take down the rest of my loan, all I was legally obligated to do at the end of the construction period was pay the interest that had accumulated during the construction period and begin making regular mortgage payments on the amount that I had drawn.

As I finally pointed out to bank, if you don't work with me, this loan automatically converts to a mortgage as of X date. On that date, I'll pay the accumulated interest and I'll start making the monthly mortgage payments. I can afford to do that, at least for awhile. Then, since I won't be able to get another loan until I can get a court to order builder to release his lien... which could very easily take a couple of years, I'll finish building the house as and when I have any extra money to do so. In the meantime, it will sit unfinished.

In the meantime, if I lose my job or get sick or if I die or if my legal bills mount too high or I just get tired of throwing good money after bad, you are going to get stuck with a partially-built house as collateral and builder has a prior lien against even that. Instead of me going to court and spending the money to prove that builder's lien is bogus, you would have to do it. And since I'm the one who has the necessary documents to prove builder's lien is bogus and you don't, you would probabaly have no choice but to pay off that bogus lien! Builder will get a windfall and both you and I will lose.

It is therefore in bank's best interests to work WITH me instead of essentially helping my builder extort more money out of me.

So the moral of my cautionary tale is, you cannot afford NOT to hire a good lawyer who is experienced in these matters.

However, if you do decide you can go it alone, at least don't try to do so if your builder shows up with his lawyer in tow. Your bank akready has lawyers on retainer and you can be sure your bank is recieving legal advice on how to handle this matter RIGHT NOW. But while your banks' interests are not actually alligned with yours, at least they are not directly opposed to you. They will probably work with you so long as they don't think helping you will hurt them. But, to protect the bank's interests, or even its perceived interests, the bank will throw you to the wolves in a heartbeat.

Your builder however knows that at this point, his interests are directly opposed to yours. If your builder "lawyers up", you MUST get competant legal advice or you WILL get royally screwed.

Now some general advice in the way of strategy. Do not make any decisions or agree to anything on-the-fly. Both your builder and your banker know more about everything involved in this matter than you do including what it would cost to actually repair your house, what options the builder might have short of actually going back and rebuilding from the ground up, and what the actual market value of the house he has built thus far is. You only ace is that you don't have to agree to their initial suggestions.

When you meet with your banker and builder, tell them up front that you are there to explore solutions and that, when builder is ready to make an offer about how he will fix this mess, it MUST be in writing and that you will need several days to consider his offer before agreeing to anything. You are NOT there to make any final decisions. Period.

Then, DO NOT SIGN ANY DOCUMENTS until you take them home and read and consider them AT YOUR LEISURE.

Also, do not SAY "we're agreed" or "yes I can agree to that" or any words to that effect during the initial meeting. Be very careful about letting the word "okay" slip out of your mouth. You may mean it as just "I hear and understand you" but it could be interpreted later that, by saying "okay", you entered into an ORAL agreement. Say, "I hear you" or "I understand you", not "OKAY."

In response to suggestions you like, use phrases like: "That's an interesting idea and if you'll put it in writing, I'll definitely consider it." Or, "yes I think I could possibly be talked into that but I do need to see it in writing and have to chance to consider it in depth before I agree to it."

Ask questions. Ask "what other options are there?" and keep asking it until you are absolutely certian builder has put all his cards on the table. If builder makes a proposal, ask him what his "objective criteria" are for determining that this offer is a fair one. That way you are never saying that his offer is unfair. Instead you put him in the position of having to justify to you that it is a fair offer. If he can't do so, he may propose something more to your advantage. If he does, ask again what his objective criteria are for determining that that is a fair offer. Even if you think his proposal is fair, he may surprise you by raising the offer even more.

Bear in mind that the screw up here is all the builder's fault and he is looking to get out of the mess as cheaply as he possibly can. His first offers are going to be as low as he can possibly make them. Don't get angry and don't despair and give in thinking this is the best you'll get. (That is one of the reasons for determining up front that you are NOT going to be making an agreement today. You'll feel less pressured to give in to a low ball offer.)

Your banker is innocent of this mistake but your banker IS NOT going to be looking out for your interests either. His primary concern is whether or not the bank loan continues to be properly collateralized by the house that ultimately gets built and his second concern is that you will be happy enough with the house (or concerned enough about your credit rating) that you won't walk away from it and default on the loan. This means, the builder's screw up puts the bank in jeopardy too. But the bank has you standing between them and the builder because, ultimately, YOU are responsible for paying back the money that has been loaned to you even IF you never get the house you contracted for or anything approximating it. The bank wants to keep you in that position. Thus, the banker will encourage you to do whatever the bank figures is in ITS best interest, not what is necessarily in your best interests.

Just be fully, completely, and totally aware of that because your banker is likely to say things like "we just want to help you get these issues worked out so you can get your house built." Without even meaning to do so, your banker can easily step into the "good cop" role in a good cop/bad cop style of negotiation. And you will be the loser if you fall for it.

Before you meet with your banker and builder, you need to reread the loan documents you signed and make sure you understand them completely.

Did your builder assign his entire lien to your bank or does he still hold a residual lien? The latter is likely if your bank did not fully fund the cost of your build and you had to kick in some extra cash money in addition to the value of the land you owned. If you even think that you might want to fire the builder, and you've paid the builder that extra cash amount already, then one of the first things you need to do is have the builder sign a Waiver of his residual lien so you don't wind up with a cloud on your title. [As I said, I screwed this up myself and it is costing me big time.]

Do you have a traditional "construction loan" or a one-time-close (construction to permanent) loan? Is there a drop dead date by which the build is supposed to be completed? What do the documents say are "events of default"? These are events that would allow the bank, at its discretion, to call the loan immediately. It is my opinion that you need to meet with your banker separately and find out the bank's position on whether the builder's screw up in building your house much smaller than it is supposed to be could possibly be considered an "event of default." If they say "no" then try to get them to put that in writing. If they say it could be, then try to get them to agree to waive that default in writing. The last thing your bank wants is a half-built house on their hands. Make sure that your bank is willing to fully fund the remainder of the build. AND, unless you have a one-time close loan, get a commitment in writing that, once the house is finished, they will not come in and decide that the finished house is worth less than the cost to build it so that you wind up having to bring thousands of additional dollars to the table just to get your permanent loan.

You also need to reread you contract with your builder and think about how each clause in it may apply to this exact situation. Chances are you probably skimmed through it quickly when you signed it. You never guessed something like this might happen so you didn't read it with this kind of thing in mind. Despite the fact that you weren't thinking of anything like this when you signed, the contract will govern the dispute if you go to court. You need to read it the way a court would read it so as to understand what your rights and liabilities are under the contract in this situation.

As for your builder, yes builders sometimes screw up and mismeasure something - like Worthy described. Typically those mistakes are a few inches and are unnoticable. Or the builder truly screwed up and is honestly contrite and wants to fix his error and redeam himself in your eyes.

Here though, it sounds as if the builder mismeasured both the length and the width of the foundation and that his mistakes were huge ones. And then, the builder didn't have the integrity to be upfront with you about the mistakes. Instead, he tried to cover it up by changing the sizes of rooms at his discretion and only telling you about a small portion of the actual mistake. I would not be terribly trusting of the builder in any negotiation.

And before you meet with the builder, you need to determine what your BATNA is. BATNA stands for "best alternative to a negotiated agreement." In other words, if you can't reach an agreement with your builder, what is your best fall-back position.

You may decide that you are willing to take the builder to court - but before you make that decision, you should have some understanding of what your chances of winning in court actually are. And how much you might be likely to win.

Unfortunately, even if you take your builder to court, there is almost zero chance that a court would ever require him to take the house back down to its foundation and then rebuild it to meet specifications. And, the further along the build is when a mistake is caught, the less likely it is that a court will make the builder go back and fix his mistakes. (I'm convinced this is why builders so often cover over their mistakes instead of fixing them as they go along. While it is cheaper to fix a mistake when it is first found, it is even cheaper to never fix it. If the builder buries the mistake deeply enough so that the cost to fix becomes too high, then they won't ever have to fix it at all... all they'll have to do is pay some damages which are likely to be less than what it would have cost to fix the problem in the first place. And of course there is always a chance you might never find the mistake!)

There was actually a rather famous court case very similar to your situation that is studied in law school in contract courses. The case is referred to as Jacob & Youngs, Inc. v. Kent if you want to try looking it up.

Basically, the situation was that the homeowner contracted to have a house built to certain specifications including a specification that the plumbing pipe be from a specific manufacturer and be of a specific quality. The builder instead chose to use a lesser pipe. The homeowner did not discover this breech until the house was completed. At that point, replacing the pipe would have entailed tearing down a fair share of the building to reach the pipe and then rebuilding the building. The court ruled that the cost of taking the bad plumbing out and replacing it with the specified pipe was so much that to order it done ("specific performance") would be economically wasteful. Instead, the court order the builder to pay the homeowner damages based on the diminished market value of the house as built compared to what the house would have been worth if the specified pipe had been used. The amount was a pittance.

So applying this to your situation, (and I'm making these numbers up just to illustrate):

If you take your case to court, the court will probably something reason like this:

Homeowner contracted to have a 2000 square foot house built for $200K. Cost to build the 2000 sq foot house would have been $150K giving builder a profit margine of $50K.

Instead, of following the specs, Builder built a 1900 square foot house and spent $145K building it (thereby increasing his profit margin by $5K if homeowner is required to pay the full contract price).

If specific performance is ordered, it will cost builder $30K to tear the house down and another $150K to rebuild it to specs.

Thus, the final product will be the 2000 sq ft house homeowner originally contracted for. That house would have a market value of $200K BUT $325K would have been spent to build it.

This is economically wasteful. (The economic waste doctrine pretty much applies to any situation where the total cost to do a thing is more than the value of the thing when done. Courts don't like economic waste and will seldom ever order specific performance where such an order will result in economic waste. BTW, Courts also don't want to order specific performance when it would force them into the role of overseeing a long-term project like building a house just to make sure its orders are being followed. So you can bet that the court is going to be looking for some solution other than ordering specific performance!)

So, instead of ordering specific performance, the court will try to figure out what amount of damages would "make the homeowner whole." It will reason like this:

Even though the house, as built, is NOT what homeowners originally contracted for, the 1900 sq ft house IS a valuable piece of property as it stands. Let's figure out what the existing house is actually worth and go from there.

One mechanism to do that is to figure out the the market value of the house as it stands. What would a willing buyer pay to purchase the house? The court will not take into consideration that the homeowner IS NOT a willing buyer and that the house as built may be worth a whole lot less to the homeowner than it might be to a "willing buyer." Instead, it will likely simply look at market comparables.

Once the court decides what the value of the house, as built is, it will require the builder to pay monetary damages equal to the differnce (the market delta) between the house that was supposed to have been built and the one that got built instead. Understand that you will first be required to pay the full contract price so the damages are probably best viewed as a "rebate" on the original price.

So, let's say that the court decides, based on market comparables, that the house as built, is worth $175K. The court will order the builder to pay the homeowner $25K.

The builder who screwed up will thus wind up keeping $175K of the original $200K. And, since he spent $145K to build the house, he winds up with a $30K profit.

The court might also decide that the way to determine damages is to look at the percentage of lost square footage.

In my example that percentage of lost square footage would be 5%. So the court may reason that if the 2000 sq foot house was worth $200K, the 1900 square foot house should be worth $190K. (We all know this is a pretty ridiculous way to determine value but courts are always looking for easy to follow formulas.) In this event the court will require the builder to pay only $10K in damages to you. The builder would wind up making $45K in profit.

Unless you are deeply emotionally tied to the property, you may find that the best solution is to let the builder buy your land, take over your loan, and pay you some small amount of damages for the time and aggravation you have invested in this house. Then you would be free to go find another piece of property and start over fresh with a new and better builder.

It is a mess and I do understand the pain you are going through. I hope that somewhere in all of the above you will find something helpful to you. At least you know you're not the only one to go through something like this. If you feel the need to vent or cry, send me an email though my mypage link and I'll give you my phone number. We can at least cry on each other's shoulders.

"Unless you are deeply emotionally tied to the property, you may find that the best solution is to let the builder buy your land, take over your loan, and pay you some small amount of damages for the time and aggravation you have invested in this house."

That is what I would do. I do not believe for one second that the builder did not know from day 1 that the footings and foundation were wrong. He just chose to ignore it because the fix is not easy (easier then than now, but still not easy).

This is directed to bevangel, I want you to know how much I appreciate your general information/experiences! It has made me realize how serious of a matter this could turn into. I hate your situation, it is awful how we as homeowners can have almost no control with the situation. I hope your case gets resolved soon and for your benefit. I will be studying your posting and you have great points for me to keep in mind. I need to research my loan and get prepared for Monday. Everything you notes is so true, and again Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. This is a very trying/stressful time and since I don't have the knowledge to understand all about our options this is going help so much. I will keep everyone posted and NO, I never thought that I would be dealing with this, everyone dreams of building a house to raise your family/grow old in and it is very important me. So again thanks for all the post.

Do not agree to anything or sign anything without consulting an attorney. Good luck.

What a wonderful, comprehensive response BevAngel.
I wish you the best outcome on your suit --

Just wanted to say good luck with your suit BevAngel --- and best of luck to the OP as well. GW never ceases to amaze me.. it is such a great resource, but I must say, it is unexpected and amazing that an anonymous person (BevAngel) would take so much time to give such detailed, thoughtful advice. As a person struggling with a real estate related legal issue, it is very interesting to me to read your entire post as you make so many great points. Thank you for taking the time to write it all down. I am sure that you have not just given the OP some great "help," but many others will learn something as well. Thank you.