Built to Fail: The Virginia Housing Scandal No One Is Talking About
When my family moved to Virginia, it felt like a thought that took on a life of its own.
A quick conversation with my husband went something like this:
“Everything is going bad here. Maybe we should move to Virginia.”
His response? “Maybe.”
A couple months later, we were Virginia residents.
A Fresh Start
New Jersey was in the middle of a housing crisis. Jobs were disappearing, and people I knew were living in their homes without paying their mortgages, just praying the bank wouldn’t evict them. I was terrified it could happen to us.
Virginia seemed like a completely different world, and I was so grateful to be here.
I loved the people and the culture. I sold my handmade soaps at some of the best farmers’ markets in the area.
I learned about sustainable gardening, ethical farming, crafts, and local traditions. I began selling at local staples like Ellwood Thompson’s Market, and still do.
I felt immersed in the best of Richmond.
Buying a Home
Time passed, and we had an opportunity to buy in what’s locally called the West End. It was great, but it didn’t have the amazing view of the Swift Creek Reservoir that struck me when we first arrived in Virginia.
When we first settled in, we had rented a little house near the reservoir, where we enjoyed some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I had ever seen, every single day. It was the place that I felt was home for our family. I missed it when we moved.
Later, with our third child, Violet, we needed a larger home. We had watched a development adjacent to the reservoir grow and always thought it would be great to buy in Rountrey since it offered private access to the views I loved so much. We took our time touring homes, but ultimately, the location made our decision for us.
Our first choice was a builder I wish, to this day, we had chosen. To my knowledge, they have never had formal complaints against them at DPOR, which I know now, is a rarity. The owner was engaged and involved, and my neighbors who built with them are very happy with their decisions.
We toured a bit more and found our builder. The design of their model looked like a true McGee & Co. dupe, if you know, you know. Pair that with the fact that they were a Christian-centered company, made some big promises with more “included” features, and we were sold.
We’ve learned a lot since then. We also don’t go to church anymore.
The Build Process Unravels
The smooth, pre-planned build process we were promised disappeared almost immediately. Everything was sold out, communication was choppy, and promises kept turning into excuses. We were very close to pulling the plug and early enough to do so. To keep us engaged, we were offered a James Hardie siding upgrade at a cost-share with the builder. We pushed through.
The pandemic was in full swing, making it almost impossible to monitor the build. We had to trust our builder. Contractors were allowed to work, but we tried to respect boundaries. When we visited, the builder’s reps often missed appointments. We hung in relying on Zoom calls and emails, and in the end, had a near perfect written record of our experience.
Nearly every conversation was documented.
The Closing That Shouldn’t.
By closing time, every deadline had been missed. Our bank’s walkthrough before finalizing the mortgage revealed a missing tub. The upstairs sink hadn’t been installed and wouldn’t arrive until after we moved in. Our screens had been stolen from the job site. The front door was missing trim. Somehow, that turned into a slab of wood painted over, but that’s another story.
Light fixtures were missing, and our project manager became increasingly absent-minded.
Then the PM missed a walkthrough with our real estate agent. A closing process that was supposed to include three walkthroughs was reduced to a single rushed meeting where we frantically compiled a massive punch list of 120 unfinished items.
Our realtor confirmed this list with their realtor as the punch list, and we thought we were good to close. After all, everyone assured us we had that warranty.
The leaky truth…
A few nights before the closing date, we were walking inside our new build home and heard a noise. It was dripping sounds in a bedroom with wall to wall carpet. When I looked up I could see that a repair was in progress, and there was water. I hadn’t been told about the repair or any water issue. This is likely a contributing factor to the nightmare we live through now.
The Nightmare Begins
Days after moving in, I started receiving early morning “open the door” calls from the project manager to finish the punch list. Parts were being taken from my home to use at another. Garbage was removed from the garage, and some feeble “fixes” were attempted. After a couple of weeks, the builder canceled all work for 30 days citing covid.
Months passed.
After three months, I emailed to ask about the electrical issues so we could turn on the lights and another leak happened.
The response was slow. We arranged a meeting with another licensed contractor present as a witness because we were concerned about mold. We also couldn’t believe the excuses we were hearing and thought another licensed professional within ear shot would inspire better answers. By then, we were on our third leak, that we knew of.
We sat in a half-finished house.
It only got worse. Our HVACs failed often, the windows cracked, and the floors were infested with pole beetles. Google it, it’s gross.
Insulation was missing. The tub didn’t drain and would stay full which made me worry about drowning with a younger kid in the house. It would take hours sometimes to get the water to go down and only if you held the drain open.
The shower leaked. The lights still didn’t work.
When we flushed the toilet, the bedroom lights turned on (arc circuits and moisture we think).
Meanwhile, the builder’s model home was right next door. We watched them working on other houses, laughing with new clients, and posting pictures on Instagram while ignoring us. At one point, an employee told us that in a staff meeting, they laughed about us picketing outside one day.
Imagine paying someone hundreds of thousands of dollars and having them mock you while leaving your home unfinished. Imagine knowing you were doing something wrong and making a joke of it.
Why We Don’t Just Laugh About It
My daughters were constantly sick. At first, during the pandemic, I thought it must be COVID. But only my oldest daughter ever tested positive. To this day, the rest of my family has never tested positive, but we have never felt worse.
I suffered excruciating migraines with visual impairments that took me out for days. My husband worked from home in an office next to the HVACs. He would come downstairs looking gray and exhausted. One day, he said, “Maybe I’m dying.” That scared me because I thought so, too.
My daughters, usually happy and loud, were suddenly depressed and fatigued. My youngest developed tics and stopped growing. The doctors began classifying her as a ‘failure to thrive’. She’d never even had antibiotics before we moved in, she was the picture of health.
I hoped it was the stress of moving. Thank God for homeschooling because they wouldn’t have made it to school most days.
I stopped going out. I couldn’t look at bright lights without triggering a migraine. My limbs went numb. I’d feel what can only be described as zaps and pins and needles. I felt sick all the time. My world became small and I stopped doing the markets I used to love.
Pushing Back
We sent certified letters, emails, and made phone calls. Sometimes we got a response, sometimes we didn’t. The builder made promises but rarely followed through. Crews would start jobs and leave without explanation.
Then, a neighbor posted on our community website asking if anyone else was struggling to get our particular builder to finish their home. That was when I knew we were in trouble. We weren’t alone.
Before you say it, Virginia has no class-action lawsuits.
Gov. Youngkin vetoed this bipartisan, common sense, consumer protection. In all of the United States only Virginia and Mississippi don’t allow class action suits.
Every Virginia homeowner has the burden of all legal costs associated with suing a builder. The state favors arbitration, low regulatory burdens for the state (meaning they don’t do much so you are on your own), and it costs more to sue than to fix the problems yourself unless your ceiling collapses, like ours eventually did.
We spoke with an attorney. We had such a hard time getting the builder on the line the attorney thought, maybe they are out of business. But we could see them working on adjacent houses so he said, “I wonder what would happen if you asked them to build you another house?” So we did. Wouldn’t you know it, we got a call back.
We did what the attorney said and tried to talk about fixes. He thought it was the best route. At that time our ceiling was still intact, so we tried. The builder’s reps left pretty quickly once we talked repairs and we went back to the status quo.
Months Later.
Our HVAC kept malfunctioning.
A short time later, the ceiling was dripping, then sagging, then on the floor.
The builder declined to fix it. We were still under a two year systems warranty and had been in constant communication with the builder for over a year that there was something wrong.
During the remediation the clean up crew found evidence of a fire that was extinguished by the flooded HVAC return.
What the builder knew that I didn’t was that he was past the one year mark. The state wouldn’t step in.
After three more months of trying to resolve it with the builder, a summer without AC, being ignored, and ultimately having to fix it myself, I sued.
I filed a complaint with DPOR, the state’s regulatory board, just for good measure. DPOR somehow declined to cite the builder when it was discovered that unlicensed and under-licensed subcontractors were used to build our home which violates Virginia Code and our contract.
I tried to escalate the case for audit, and DPOR and the Governor’s office put me on a constituent tracker.
FOIA requests revealed that the builder was aware of everything. He had received all my emails. The builder, on our email notifying him of possible mold, wrote “ANOTHER ONE” in all caps, and forwarded the email to employees on July 6, 2022. On July 8, 2022 he was updated with confirmation of a positive lab result for Stachybotrys.
The next year, the builder in a written statement to DPOR on February 6, 2023, said he had no knowledge of mold at my home and how it would be deeply concerning to him if did.
He wrote the investigator at DPOR stating how we were now “working together” implying the DPOR case could be concluded when in reality, attorneys were engaged.
He fabricated having conversations with us in writing to the investigator at DPOR when we had never met personally or spoken at all. We spoke exclusively with the team we were assigned to.
DPOR has a list of Prohibited Acts including a prohibition on lies in defense of a license, but this builder was exempt somehow.
Finally, the Scandal.
Just a few months ago I watched a news story about how the same DPOR officials who fumbled our complaint had a remarkably similar complaint about a Northern Virginia builder.
DPOR’s John Robertson told a WUSA9 reporter that they refer cases like these to the Attorney General. DPOR’s Jennifer Sayegh echoing that she’d escalated the matter.
I remembered the name. But that’s not what DPOR told me. Specifically not what DPOR’s Jennifer Sayegh told me.
So I asked the Attorney General’s office.
My question was how many cases have you been referred by Jennifer Sayegh or any DPOR officers or employees since 2020.
For context, there were over 5,000 consumer complaints to DPOR against contractors in that same time period.
Wanna guess the answer?
One.
Which one? A FOIA request to DPOR revealed it was the very same one Jennifer Sayegh had been told was investigated by WUSA9.
It wasn’t the first time DPOR had heard of the report’s contractor and allegations of fraud. The regulatory board had failed in citing this contractor just like they had failed in my complaint.
The office of the Governor was notified in that case by the consumers just like we had notified the office of the Governor ourselves.
I’ll bring those receipts in the next article, but for now I think I see the real problem. Welcome to my new life’s mission.
If you have built new construction in Virginia and have kids with PANS, tics, migraines or chronic illness, be safe and check for mold.
Referenced in this article:
Special thanks to WUSA9 and Authors: Larry Miller, Stephanie Wilson, Tom Kopania, Ruth Morton for reporting what so few will.
Published: 7:00 PM EDT September 25, 2024
Updated: 4:53 PM EDT September 26, 2024