Contractors and contracts

The wife and I bought a house last month and to make a long story short, there was a very nice, well built shed included in the deal that was unfortunately not on the actual property. The title company said it needed to be removed/moved in order for us to close, so the contractor who built it came in and took it away. He is a friend of the sellers and to make sure we got a new shed on the actual property we signed a contract with him to rebuild it.

The contract says he has until 12/1 to get it built and we gave him a $1500 deposit back in the first week of november. My wife has texted him twice, I tried calling and not only did I not get an answer, I didn't even get a voice mail. The 2nd text (the last time we've heard from him) was 2 weeks ago where he said he'd have the concrete foundation poured by the end of this past weekend. He now has 5 days left to get the concrete poured and set the shed up.

I've never dealt with contractors before, is this normal behavior? I'm not real happy with the lack of communication and the fact that he's deposited our $1500 and we haven't seen or heard a thing from him since.
Am I being unreasonable here?

 

Its the norm whe dealing with bad contractors.

 

Yes, normal behavior. Don't give them any money until work starts. Check their license with the state before hiring them. Write "Time is of the essence." in the contract.

Pay subcontractors yourself as you can be held liable if the contractor doesn't pay them.

File a complaint with the state license people when something goes wrong.

 

Based on the terms of your contract, what are the non compliance penalties to the contractor?

Does the contract give him any escape routes?

 

# 1)Why did the shed need to be removed/moved if it was not on the purchased property?... Something's amiss !!!
#2) Why could the existing shed not be moved onto the purchased property ?

 

The contract just says he will complete the shed by dec 1, doesn't explain any penalties or anything. The guy finally got out to our house yesterday and poured the concrete base but then told my wife he won't make the 12/1 due date. Keep in mind this is the date HE created, not something we specified. He also didn't make any apologies and didn't in any way seem sorry he was going to be late.

We bought the house with the shed as part of the purchase and didn't find out it wasn't on the property until the title company did a survey. No idea why the sellers didn't just move the shed but I had no control over anything, it was all the lawyers and realtors making the decisions.

Since he has already said he wasn't going to meet the contracted date, what would you do? I'm obviously not giving him any more money until it is completed, but once he gets it built if it's past the contract date why should I pay him at all?

Also, this guy is apparently not even registered to work in MA, he is based in RI so he really shouldn't even be working in MA. We didn't choose him, the sellers asked him to do the work for us.

 

Well, hopefully a lesson learned there.

1) understand the need to move the shed. It was not for your direct benefit but for the sellers, to get it off the property where it was sitting. Encroachment is the term I think.

2) Hopefully your purchase price was lowered to cover the cost of replicating the shed. Or at least by the value of the depreciated shed. And the seller paid for the removal of the old shed OOP.

3) No control? No, I don't know your detailed circumstances, but that doesn't sound right. The buyer is always in control, and the lawyers/realtors work for you. If the deal wasn't coming together in compliance with the purchase contract you wrote, you had the right to walk for free (which always rattles folks when they think they are going to lose a sale)

 

OP. I wish I could help but I think Clearwater Bill may be more knowledgable here. I am not too experienced with property disputes. I am a contractor in Pa. and the first payment to me is the customer (you) paying for the material when it arrives at your door.

 

Realtors don't make decisions. They offer advice, decisions are yours. If a realtor does otherwise it can affect their license.

If the sales contract included the shed, its the sellers expense tomake it right, not yours.

If the land changed prior to closing, you were aware of it and closed anyway you accept it . If it changed after the fact you might be able to void the sale.

 

The final resolution for all this, I have my shed now. It's 2 weeks late but its there. The contractor, from what I saw, didn't actually do anything, some other guy did all the actual work. The original shed didn't have windows and back when all this started I asked the contractor to put 2 windows in the new one. He said he would but didn't say how much it would be, and then yesterday when it was finished he tells me the windows added $500 to the cost. I looked the windows up on Lowes.com and they are $49 windows, 25x30, single hung, pretty plain. Definitely not $250 per window. I asked him to give me an invoice on the parts cost and he couldn't do it, so I told him I'd pay him $150 more than the contracted price and if he thought that was unfair to come over and we could talk about it. He never responded, just picked up the envelop with his payment from my mailbox and that's that.

Overall not impressed with his unprofessional communication and overall work. I'm going to have to repaint the doors, they look like crap but at least the structure itself is solid. I don't know if I'm being unreasonable or not, I just expect a person to talk to me when they've got problems. If he knew it wouldn't get done by the time he originally said, he should have told me, right?

 

The whole deal was haywire IMO