That was with even the builder saying that he couldnt do anything about getting it changed, but he also agreed that it wasn't laid out right. He said I only build the houses I will take it back to the developer and see if we can get the building stopped.

You should have been talking to a lawyer when they ignored your observations about the slab and continued to build that house ...

From your comments there are no other options but to get legal help and hope to get as much of your deposit back. I would not want this house. Are you willing to lose $9k to walk away from this contract?

Did you pay a premium for this lot? You will probably lose that premium due to the neighbors house being right in your front view.

You need to consult a lawyer ASAP. If there is no chance to get the 9 thousand back, you will be better off losing this money. Do not wait until they finish the house. If builder thinks this is a great house, let him try to sell it. I think he might be talking to a lawyer to make you pay him the balance.

Yes we paid a premium for that lot and we would love to keep 9k as we are young and this is actually our first home buying experience. If this house will probably never sell again, that 9k will be the one of the hardest things to let go and we will be set back a good way, but I don't see how we couldn't.

You need to get a lawyer and try to get out of the contract - or get a reduced price for the home. I would not pay a premium for a lot that has a weird front view. I am not sure how they have the right setback from the property line - you should measure it. Is there a stake where the property cuts back toward the left?

In these situations one has to look at the big picture.

One side of that picture is the financial one: Sure, there's 9k on the line and it's all well and good to say "get a lawyer" but lawyers are expensive. That 9K could be whittled down pretty fast with no guarantee of a happy outcome and you still might be on the hook for the whole 9K if you walk.

And the other side of that picture is the emotional one: Certainly for the near future and possibly for a considerably longer one you'll be in limbo, you'll be unhappy, you'll have an uncertain outcome looking at you everyday, all adding up to considerable stress; an intangible which has a price tag itself.

And the third side of the big picture here is a big fight might negatively impact your credit rating which would of course effect your purchase of another house. That could very well be unfair, but in all this I'm not talking about fairness, I'm talking real world.

No easy answer here but the best of luck with it!

That is just sick. It seems they are trying to take advantage of you because you are young. I would actually see if there is a consumer watch dog reporter on your local news who might cover this for you. I am sure the builder would hate this negative publicity.

Honestly, and I hate to say this, but I think you best course of action would be to take them up on a new lot/house (with every single free upgrade you can get out if them) if you can't get your deposit back & start fresh in a different neighborhood. I know you will give up on your big backyard...but you will actually be able to sell one day if you change. The free HOA is an absolute joke. I guarantee you that barring the demolition of the house in your front yard...you will have an extraordinarily difficult time selling your current house/lot. Best of luck...I am angry for you.

Appreciate the comments and the help, we are going to contact a lawyer and have them look over the contract. We will try whatever it takes to get out of the contract and if it means a 9k loss it is something we will need to take in and work hard to make the money back. It has obviously been an emotional Rollercoaster and shows that everything isn't fair, some people will give up their integrity to make a dollar. I have been avoiding naming the company because we don't know where we are yet, but when the time comes I will probably have some negative reviews written about them all over the Internet.

I'd also suggest contacting the planning department. This seems extremely odd that this would get approved. Not knowing my setbacks before building would be incredibly stressful.

You should be able to look at your municipality's code online as well but it may be a black hole if you don't know or its not clear as to how the subdivision is zoned.

Honestly I like the idea of potentially getting a different home in the subdivision if this location is very important to you.

Do you have any contingencies you can default on that would get you your down payment back?

At the end of the day I would ask myself do I truly believe this location will gain equity. If the answer is no then I would really consider working out a split of the down payment back if you can.

Would be nice to see more pics if you can to get more perspective.

Good luck!

Before you see an attorney check your contract for an appraisal or financing contingency, if you have either of those, talk to your bank, they can probably kill the deal faster and less painfully than an attorney.

An attorney is still an option and I am not even sure attorney fees are going to be as bad as they could be as this is not a contract issue but a negligence or fraud issue.

What a mess. I think bry911 had an excellent idea to contact your lender. I can't imagine they will find the value of the INTENDED house to be the same as the reality with the neighbor house situated like that.

However.....I'd still like to see how each house is set on their respective lots. Something is odd and I'm wondering about the angle of your house on the lot. Even if no setbacks are in violation for either house, this was a foreseeable situation for someone who chose not to pass that info on to you.

The problem with the lender solution is that we used their lender as they gave us an 8k incentive. This would be a great option except for the fact that they probably have a much better relationship with them.

Something does not look like it adds up. It looks like a side-load garage based on the way it is framed. Maybe I misunderstood which lot it is, but if the OP's house is on lot #82 and this new house right next door is being built on lot #83, there is no way they can make the driveway work for lot#83 without it going over the property line of lot #82.

Somehow I doubt setbacks are allowed to be so close. Even in my city where I am building on a 6000 square foot lot, my set back is 5' from the lot line, which means houses have to be a minimum of 10' from one another. I would call your local building department first thing in the morning and ask them what the setbacks are for the area you are building in. Then depending on what they say, I'd go out there with a tape measure and see if they are in compliance. If not, let the building department know.

Our lot is 82 and the other house is lot 83, it is going to be a front garage house. It appears as if the driveway will point straight at our house and then turn left

I am sorry for your situation. Is the orientation like this? I still can't see how the house can be that close and the driveway will work without crossing onto your property. The house being built on lot 83 seems to be at a very strange angle.

Yes it is a pretty tough spot, especially because we were really excited about the house up until a week and a half ago. It had every thing we needed. If I were to put the houses on the lot layout, I would say yes that is how they are laid out on the site which truly confuses us too. We do not understand how that was the only solution to the layout or if they did not care enough to put time into another solution. The worst part is their real estate agent saying they were more focused on lot 81 and 80 and did not focus on our lots.

There is some great advice posted above. I would agree that you should check with the town building/planning office when they open on Monday (assuming they are closed for the holiday today). Something just does not add up with the way they have positioned that house on that lot.

Normally, the garage side of a house is located on the more "straight" side unless topo dictates otherwise. And it looks like you have fairly level lots. This set up would have fixed everything.

Poor siting which you have nothing to do with when a better solution was available so show this to the builder.

I'm gobsmacked after looking at your photos, especially the first one. You need to find out what the setbacks are. I can't believe that any planning department actually allowed this house to be built where it is situated. A stop-work order, followed by a demolition, followed by a rebuild as Architectrunnerguy suggests would solve the problem.

Alex House makes an important point, namely, to check with the local building department to see if the house is within the required zoning setback and if they have a building permit for the house as it stands. A formal complaint is in order.

I'm no expert but I agree with everyone else, the new build looks way too close to your house. Very irresponsible of the builder as it impacts the value of both properties. I hope you are able to work something out.

The only way one is not encroaching on the other's lot is zero setbacks, and even that would be cutting it fine. I think a surveyor visit is in order.

Casey

Does someone own lot 83 yet? Because they won't be able to sell, either. Ugh.

I can't believe that those lot plans got through the planning commission. There is no reason for the doglegs and every lot that has one will be exposed to this problem. If the developer started at the street and drew the property lines diagonally straight to the back line, no one would have this problem.

He is attempting to get more money and have more large house lots with creative property lines. Everyone who has a similar lot will run into this problem to some extent. I would talk to the developer and then talk to an attorney, any decent attorney is going to back the developer down in a few minutes. He will subpoena the sales records for all the lots for a class action suit and the developer should rethink his position. Even without going the class action route, this looks like an easy negligence win to me.

They started building the house next to ours before the lot was purchased, so that house is not sold yet. Which in my opinion was huge mistake, as they have shown what that house will look like instead of getting someone like they got us. We have emailed their real estate agent to get our options in an email and then we will be contacting the lawyer first thing tomorrow morning. We also sent an email to the planning comission of cherokee county and asked them to contact us immediately. Possibly another step we will take is to get a surveyor out so we have a much better understanding of the property lines.

The photos will look even worse once the second story and roof go on the lot 83 house. Right now with framing only, it is still a "see through" structure. The view from upstairs will be just as blocked as the view from the front porch. So sorry you are having to deal with this.

Do any of the workers building the house next door smoke by chance?

Ok Mark, now I'm curious as to why you'd ask that question as I'm sure you have a good reason. :)

Anyone smell smoke...?

Oh no :)

What US State is this house in?

It is in Acworth, Georgia. The county is Cherokee

I found this document from the cherokee county government.

http://www.cherokeega.com/Planning-and-Land-Use/documents/Zoning%20Ordinances/Article_8_-_TND_10-08-07.pdf

http://www.cherokeega.com/Transparency/meetings-board.cfm?bd=21 This link gives you names and might lead to meeting minutes for zoning appeals.

"They started building the house next to ours before the lot was purchased, so that house is not sold yet"

Ok, now it all makes perfect sense. The builder moved the house forward to increase the marketability of that build (and thus his profit) since he hasn't sold it yet. It now has a bigger back yard, which as you know, is a desirable feature. In doing that of course, it decreased the desirability of your lot. But of course, at that point he didn't care because he had already sold it to you.

I can say with almost 100% certainty that if he had both lots unsold and started both builds at the same time, the houses would have been positioned like I drew above since he would be still on the hook for both lots.

In looking at almost any questionable action it helps to look for a motive and I think that's it. Bring this point up with your attorney and see what he/she thinks.

My thoughts are that this isn't about the other house being plotted incorrectly but about OPs house being plotted incorrectly.

OP says the other homes don't have any backyard, and you can see by the picture that the back fence isn't back as far as some of your are illustrating. These homes are deeper than they are wide, designed for narrow lots.

It probably looks more like large deep rectangles than the wider rectanbles being drawn.

So, to maximize the yard in the wedge lot they placed that home (OP's) perpendicular to the property line on the southeast side. This gives an enormous side yard space compared to the other option of placing OPs home at an angle which makes the front approach better. The other option gives two totally unusable side yards and a back yard that is about the same depth as these other lots only a lot wider.

Looking at the photos the builder indeed did NOT have an option of how to place the home on 83 and it was their lack of foresight with OPs lot that created this problem.

Too late now.

If it were *me* I'd walk, at 9K. I'd ask for 1/2 back and do maybe a little work with an attorney (letter writing only, limited to 2K) to try to recover the deposit. Assuming the home is at minimum 200K build price OP is only losing the basic realtor fees of less than 5% and no equity. The home on the smaller lot next door will be easier to sell than OPs.

Without seeing your contract I can't give you specific advice and no one here can, but I do want to warn you about "just walking away from the $9k." What provision in your contract are you using to limit your liability to $9k?

While I realize that this thread was started with the question of getting some or all of your deposit back, unless there is a specific mechanism for walking away from your contract by surrendering your deposit, you can be on the hook for significantly more. This may well be in your contract, but without seeing your contract we can't know. I would advise you to see an attorney, even if it is just to ensure you will only lose $9k.

I just built in Cherokee. cherokeega.com is your friend. The GIS on the website shows maps of the county and should help you find plat of your neighborhood. I'm not sure if it's there on all, but the plat of my neighborhood shows the setbacks. You can find the plat by clicking on the land and running a report on it. The folks in the county office are great as well, so don't hesitate to call them for this info too.

My neighborhood incorporation documents (can be found at deeds.cherokeega.com) specify additional setbacks, so look at your HOA from closing docs to see if that's there as well.

That said, I think I'd be surprised if there was actually a problem with setbacks, as I think they have to do a foundation inspection before framing that would include looking at the setbacks, but I'm not sure. However, if they're close, it might be worth having a surveyor check it. When my lot was surveyed, I found out that my lot was actually 10ft wider bigger than the way the builder who built next door thought, so essentially all the plantings and fence on the perceived property line are mine, not my neighbors.

What has transpired? Please let us know.

I am glad you are getting your money back. good luck on your next build.

What a sigh of relief for you!

Could you share the reasons how you where able to get the builder to sign and refund?

That's the best possible outcome for you - now it will be interesting to see what becomes of each of those houses. Take a deep breath and I hope the refund will be prompt so you can move on.

leftontheinside - the OP said the refund is coming without having to get a lawyer involved - I had to read it twice, too.

Congratulations! Finally a potential disaster story with a wonderful and positive ending. We all wonder what motivated the builder to settle in such a fashion?

What a relief for you! Congrats. Sad you had to go through all this though. Good luck house hunting again.

Jones, I'm so happy to hear the good news. Hoping your refund comes quickly and that you find an even better home that will meet all your needs. And thank you for letting us know the outcome.

That's great. I think this speaks volumes for the builder. Sounds like a person of integrity. Most would have put up a big fight but this one sounds like one who just wants to see folks happy.

Thanks everyone, we are very appreciative of what the builder did for us as this could have been a major disaster. We are currently looking for a new house and excited to see what we can find. We think the builder might of had other request for houses in the neighborhood and with the lots full couldn't sell them one. Maybe they knew they could sell the house with the demand. I will be happy for them if they do sell the house and happy for the family that gets it as long as it meets their needs, also happy that we didn't end up with it.