My development is still incomplete and the builder has abondoned us. What do I do now?

Last week I spoke to a distressed homeowner in Texas in a community where construction is still not complete. She said the community is only about 15% complete and the builder has basically abandoned her community. She and her neighbors have made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the builder and now she is very worried about what will happen.

I wish I could say this is a unique situation but it is not. 2 years ago our company was facing a similar situation where a builder we contracted with had serious financial problems and was not able to complete the development of several of their communities. Since we had the management contract for these properties, our company was forced to deal with a host of problems. Water and electric accounts still in the builder's name were disconnected without our knowledge and several contractors had not been paid by the builder so the contractors placed liens on some of the homes. Additionally, many homeowners refused to pay their assessment to the HOA since they felt they were not receiving "what they had paid for."

Confronting such challenges is well beyond our scope of services, however, we dealt with the problems to best of our ability. Unfortunately, since most of the communities were ultimately insolvent and we had not been paid in several months, we had to terminate our management contract. Some homeowners sold their homes, some moved and leased out their homes and others are still in their communities.