Cautionary Tale for Potential New Construction Home Buyers

I wanted to take some time and share with you all my experience when it came to buying a new construction house as a warning against shading developers in the Houston area. Hopefully in sharing my story, not a dime more goes into the hands of these scammers, and people can be spared from the headaches I went through.

This all started back 4 years ago. My family and I were going through a horrible renting experience. We had been residents of a household for 3-4+ years, kept the property tidy, and did what we could to be overall good tenants. Our landlord demanded that we move out immediately. We pleaded to get some time, so that we could properly look for new residents, even offered more rent payment to stay, but he didn’t budge. This led us to a stressful situation where we needed to find a new home and quickly. We ended up finding a new development being constructed by AC HOME. We were first time homeowners and had no knowledge of what could go wrong. To us, new construction meant no immediate major problems with the home. At this point we were also drained from the search; we just wanted to make sure a roof would be above us. So, we decided to purchase a home in the neighborhood. We were the first ones to move into the area which had houses that were built, being built, or empty lots. Our home needed to be further constructed as we had more requests, given that we could customize as seen fit. We were met with delay after delay as to a move in date, going over the agreed upon closing day. This did put a lot of pressure on us, but we were able to finally move in.

Prior to our move in day, the realtor selling the property gave us an initial walk through of the residents. We were able to point out anything we saw that would have needed fixing, and it would be documented to then be addressed by the developer. I suppose that got lost, because years later, some of the things listed still haven’t been addressed, and there is no one from that initial purchase to fix it. I would also like to note that again, we were first time homeowners, and didn’t have much in terms of financial availability, so a now regrettable choice not to get an inspection done was made.

After some time living in the house, small problems turned into big issues. I went through a game of telephone with the realtor to try and figure out who I could contact to help address these things. I was finally given some key information; the email of the individual seeing the development of the neighborhood and long overdue information regarding my homes warranty (at this point it was over a year of closing and my initial warranty that I should have had as already expired). At first, I was able to get them to come over and patch up some of the problems up. But they ended up becoming vigilant in their effort to lessen the communication they had with me. After some time of silence from them, and a newly slapped HOA on us, which I tried to get information on because it was in the closing documents but was never sent to us (till the point that I thought it was spam when I finally got some word of it) I sought legal counsel.

I spent years going back and forth with them only to conclude with further frustration. We got to the point of mediation where I asked the mediator to ask why they took so long to respond to me, are they even legally able to represent the company I was pressing legal action again (they let us know after wasting so much of our time that the initial company, AC HOME, was no longer in business as of 2021), and who ever overlooks the community anymore if they have no involvement? They answered that their delayed responses were due to me threatening them with legal action (mind you, this was only done after they completely ghosted me. It is also worth noting that through out the legal process, they remained equally as silent to my legal representative when we presented them with multiple attempts at settling), they are still able to represent the company as there is still a bank account, and they have no knowledge who runs this community now. I call bullshit in a lot of their responses, but that’s what they were giving me.

The bright side to all of this is, to my knowledge they’ve been hit with a massive case by another ex-resident of the neighborhood and must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately for my ex-neighbor, they were advertised a different type of house and community prior to moving in. They were also from out of the country and moved here to a house they thought they were promised. We mostly spoke in google translate to each other, at their time that they lived here due to the language barrier, but they were going through a lot of struggles as well when it came to these individuals.

That neighbor and I were not the only ones who faced hardships with these homes. Horrible construction and little involvement from these people led to many neighbors having way worst issues with their homes than I. A total of 1 new house has been built since then, but many of the initial houses have been filled with renters. I think I am one of the only few owners in this community.

Of course, individuals like this wouldn’t just have one company under their belt. They have also used the names Venetian LLC and American Citigroup Construction, Inc. If you look up any of the companies, I’ve mentioned you’ll see a common player in this. Given the nature of this company, a leading theory me and my legal have come up with is all their assets have most likely been moved overseas. I would potentially see no money in my own legal ventures.

If you made it this far, thank you. I just hope to help as many people as possible make a home purchase and warn them against these horrendous individuals. If you’ve had any bad experiences with new developers that you’re willing to share, please send my way. Be safe out there!

Edit: TLDR; had to buy a house due to previous landlord demanding we leave. Ended up buying a new development that ended up being an absolute nightmare.