Have I been ripped off?

kikililly

Hi new to this forum please let me know what you think

I have a house nearly built its taken 1.5yrs to get it to this stage and we have another 4/5 months before we can move in. The guy building it has charged us over 245k to date and its far from finished another 40k at least will be needed before we can get in let alone the garden and the wall around the house which is a mud pit.

We told him we had a budget of of 200k and he agreed but never stopped spending I think he paid way over the odds for everything and never got comparison quotes. its a 2100sqft house and it is well built but the financials of it are killing us.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Jimbo

How could he overspend without your consent?
Do you not have a contract with him?

Quazzie

A lot of that is relative to the spec of the house. It does sound expensive but you also have to remember that pricing a house that started a year and a half ago against todays prices is never going to look favourable.

sunnysoutheast

Not clear from your post whether it's a main contractor, project manager, etc. or who is responsible for cost control on the build. It's all very well agreeing a budget but it sounds like the project was never actually costed properly. The overspend could be from spec. changes, we don't know. It's also not clear whether your burn rate is ahead or behind for the current build progress.

I'd say you probably need to baseline the build now, or as soon as possible after the house is watertight and secure if you haven't yet reached that stage. You'll need to engage an independent QS to produce a report which will detail exactly what has been done, what's left and how much that will cost.

When this is done you'll at least know whether you can afford to proceed as planned or whether you need to reduce costs. You'd also be well advised to engage a proper project manager if you can get someone to take it on.

This kind of activity is going on all the time at present as people realise they can't complete or contractors go out of business.

Good luck.

SSE

De_man

excellent post by SSE, since your worried get in an independent QS / engineer asap imho. i'm afraid to say anything on this one, from reading it could turn out to be very messy!!!

was there extra works for foundations? rock breaking etc,
what stage are you at.. second fix plumbing / electrics? stone on outside of house? these can all add considerable cost, if you're on second fix this cost
on the face of it sounds okay.

however, it sounds very much as if you had a very loose arrangement with this guy, why should it take another 4/5 months plumbing & electrics & interior plastering could be completed in a month. (there's a lot of tradesmen out there looking for work)

kikililly

Hi all thanks for the reply's

This was a loose enough agreement with somebody very close who is in the trade. The reason we went with it was because he has alot of machinery, scaffold, contacts and we never got confirmed costings because he said if he got quotes in writing we'd get no favours that way. By using him we could get the value of his contacts and machinery etc without having to pay market price.

We have been paying in stages and we now have a last invoice to pay him. We are queriying the total cost to now as some price seem like figure plucked out of the sky. He also wont give the electrical cert so we can connect esb.

We have spoken to sub contractors who have confirmed the price they charged for the job and he has added another few k to those prices when he told us what these people charged.

Don't know what to do. It is messy. I hate the idea of leaving somebody stuck if i'm not in my right to do it but I don't know what to do here.

muffler

To put it simply you should advise him that you are not happy with the figures and that you want a full breakdown as to where the money was spent. Get a QS then to go through those figures.

kikililly

He has given us a list of all the places that gave him invoices and what he has paid to those places regarding our house but without knowing what was on those invoices a QS wouldn't be able to make head nor tail really would he? The guy told us he wouldn't give us any further detail that we already got more than we were entitled to.

bamboozle

kikililly wrote: »

He has given us a list of all the places that gave him invoices and what he has paid to those places regarding our house but without knowing what was on those invoices a QS wouldn't be able to make head nor tail really would he? The guy told us he wouldn't give us any further detail that we already got more than we were entitled to.

well tell him he's not getting any more money than he's already entitled to...

muffler

bamboozle wrote: »

well tell him he's not getting any more money than he's already entitled to...

Spot on.

You are the employer here and if he is out spending your money (thats effectively what he has been doing) then you are more than entitled to see where the money was spent.

hblock21

kikililly wrote: »

He has given us a list of all the places that gave him invoices and what he has paid to those places regarding our house but without knowing what was on those invoices a QS wouldn't be able to make head nor tail really would he? The guy told us he wouldn't give us any further detail that we already got more than we were entitled to.

QS doesn't need invoices. He will measure the house and put 18 month old rates against the quantities, giving a construction cost. You need to talk to a QS

dutchcat

if the elec installation is complete,you can get recci to send out an inspector to cert your house, think it used be £150,then you can get connected ,without him

Brian Dublin

kikililly wrote: »

Hi new to this forum please let me know what you think

I have a house nearly built its taken 1.5yrs to get it to this stage and we have another 4/5 months before we can move in. The guy building it has charged us over 245k to date and its far from finished another 40k at least will be needed before we can get in let alone the garden and the wall around the house which is a mud pit.

We told him we had a budget of of 200k and he agreed but never stopped spending I think he paid way over the odds for everything and never got comparison quotes. its a 2100sqft house and it is well built but the financials of it are killing us.

Any comments would be appreciated.

You wouldn’t trust the brakes on your car to be replaced by someone unqualified to do so. Then don’t go and let someone unqualified to connect your gas. One can only presume you had no Contract regarding the building or the price. The time span of 1.5 yrs there are housing estates have been finished in that time.
Under the law you may have a case that you agreed a price by telling the builder you only had 200k. That is to say that it seems logical that you had an amount to spend and you would not have agreed to build for more than that amount. Even allowing for a reasonable increase in building materials
The increase should not be that.
Even if this is a relation or friend A Contract should have been drawn up between both parties. Have you made any changes to the original plans that would add to the price. That includes extra power points lighting plumbing. and the likes. it all adds up to a fair whack over all.

you should seek legal advice. Cancel the building of boundary walls for the moment and the garden. You wont be living in the garden. Well maybe.

But your case is a warning to any would be home builder even when you think a relation or friend would look after you price wise. Shop around and get all your legal ends tied up. Always look for a builders guarantee scheme membership and membership number.
So sit down with the builder find out what has increased the building to the new price and what happened to the original price and get it down on paper.

You seem to have been very if not foolish than naive

Brian

Quazzie

You wouldn’t trust the brakes on your car to be replaced by someone unqualified to do so. Then don’t go and let someone unqualified to connect your gas.

One can only presume you had no Contract regarding the building or the price. The time span of 1.5 yrs there are housing estates have been finished in that time.

Under the law you may have a case that you agreed a price by telling the builder you only had 200k. That is to say that it seems logical that you had an amount to spend and you would not have agreed to build for more than that amount. Even allowing for a reasonable increase in building materials

The increase should not be that

Even if this is a relation or friend A Contract should have been drawn up between both parties. Have you made any changes to the original plans that would add to the price. That includes extra power points lighting plumbing. and the likes. it all adds up to a fair whack over all.

you should seek legal advice. Cancel the building of boundary walls for the moment and the garden. You wont be living in the garden. Well maybe

But your case is a warning to any would be home builder even when you think a relation or friend would look after you price wise. Shop around and get all your legal ends tied up. Always look for a builders guarantee scheme membership and membership number.

So sit down with the builder find out what has increased the building to the new price and what happened to the original price and get it down on paper.

You seem to have been very if not foolish than naive
Brian

I cleaned up your post to make it legible.

muffler

Brian Dublin wrote: »

you should seek legal advice.

It may well end up that way but that wont be debated here.

Brian Dublin wrote: »

You seem to have been very if not foolish than naive

I think we can do without comments like that.


Please note that if you should choose to post again please do not copy and paste from another document.

ctrl-alt-delete

muffler wrote: »

It may well end up that way but that wont be debated here.


I think we can do without comments like that.


Please note that if you should choose to post again please do not copy and paste from another document.

Why can we do without comments like that though?

It is not always the builder that was in the wrong, if it's in their nature they will work on as loose a leash as he is given,

there is no doubt the op has been naive

muffler

ctrl-alt-delete wrote: »

Why can we do without comments like that though?

It is not always the builder that was in the wrong, if it's in their nature they will work on as loose a leash as he is given,

there is no doubt the op has been naive

I'll call a halt to this and if necessary moderate posts and users here. Boards.ie rules allow for the post but not the poster to be attacked.

Im not going to allow a situation to develop in this forum where someone comes here looking for a bit of help and advice only to be told they were foolish and naive. If someone feels that can offer something constructive or positive to the thread then by all means fire away but please dont pull this off topic by questioning moderating decisions straying away from the OP's initial query.

ctrl-alt-delete

muffler wrote: »

I'll call a halt to this and if necessary moderate posts and users here. Boards.ie rules allow for the post but not the poster to be attacked.

Im not going to allow a situation to develop in this forum where someone comes here looking for a bit of help and advice only to be told they were foolish and naive. If someone feels that can offer something constructive or positive to the thread then by all means fire away but please dont pull this off topic by questioning moderating decisions straying away from the OP's initial query.

In all honesty though its not a fair platform for the question being asked,

From what i read, all builders are tarred with the same brush, and it seems all clients have been ripped off through no fault of their own,

The question cannot be answered by any of us on here, the Op should know themselves,

Some need to understand that they are being naive and foolish at times, and by hearing this, they might invest further research into any such projects they may be undertaking in the future.

De_man

hi, can you confirm

what stage is the house at now?

Since you said about him witholding the cert for electrics, it now sounds very much as if you're on 2nd fix electrics/plumbing, if this is the case you're possibly on target maybe a little bit on the expensive side of 245K but nevertheless in and around the ballpark, just doing a calculation talking about 115sq/ft but this is a builder managed project, going back a year and a half this would have been extremely cheap, in fact i'd say you wouldn't have got a builder to do the job for that price in the first place.

what's the situation regarding 2nd fix carpentry? has stairs,doors, skirting been finished? how many?, what standard is specified? mdf,red deal, oak, ash?

Apologies for all the questions but to fair it'll give everyone a better idea of whats going on if you tell us the exact state of construction, otherwise it's impossible to guess

Your main issue here is this person is too close to you and you trusted him,
maybe he promised you too much bang for your buck
i recommend you get an engineer/QS or anyone who can visit the site &
sit down and go through this (make sure it's not a local- pub talk travels very quickly)

depending on the progress, it might very well turn out that this guy was doing you a favours all along

good luck & let us know