Cindy
Edmond,#2Consumer Suggestion
Mon, February 16, 2004
I am a volunteer for Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings, www.hadd.com after being the owner of a severely defectively built new home. You need to write to the builder by certified return receipt mail, and hopefully you already have some kind of paper trail to show you reported the defects within the warranty period. The BBB may not even be making your complaint public information, so your builder probably couldn't care less. He may or may not care more if you file a complaint at every state agency dealing with consumer complaints and/or home builders. If your state licenses builders file with the licensing agency, also your state's attorney generals office. Your state may have a statute of limitations that goes well beyond the warranty limit, but suing is not usually an affordable or practical option. After talking to a couple of attorneys you should begin to get a feel for what your state's laws are regarding breach of warranty, and construction defects. In many states these cases don't pay enough to interest lawyers in helping very much, so it's pretty much a myth that you can just sue. Good luck, and I encourage you to check out hadd.com There's a free downloadable document on resolving a construction defect case, and you can contact HADD or file a builder complaint, and get more info. We don't have a way to keep up with all the complaints people send about builders so we can't post them online anymore, but we can still give you more information that may be helpful.