I wish that this posting on YELP would be a glowing review of the builder that we selected to build our dream retirement home, but unfortunately it is about a builder that walked away from their numerous responsibilities and have turned what was to be our dream home into a living nightmare. To be clear about which company that I am reviewing, it is Clarity Home Design Inc. out of Pittsboro, NC with the officers and operational owners of Allison and Will King. North Carolina contractor license number 80509.
The issues that we had with them can broadly be stated as numerous non-structural, cosmetic quality issues, breach of contract including numerous downgrades from the original plans submitted to the Architectural Review Board (ARB) for approval without the use of a required change order, the unauthorized discharge of collected storm water onto our property, providing final plat layout plans within the contract that were not accurate and eliminated our ability to build the intended stand-alone outbuilding in the area communicated to the builder, and their refusal to accept their many responsibilities and work in good faith to provide an equitable and fair solution to these many issues.
I will easily admit that I made a critical error in placing my trust in this builder, thinking naively that he would have our mutual interest in mind when building this house. He took that trust and used it repeatedly to benefit himself financially by building a far inferior house from the plans that he submitted to the ARB for approval. In the rush to secure this house on our trip down to NC to find a new home, I failed in securing the detailed specifications of the house that was being built. We had traveled to NC during the height of COVID and were determined to find a new house during that trip. Due to COVID, we were limited to traveling down one other time to check on the progress of the property. After signing the contract, I had requested that I be given the specifications to which Will King responded that there were no specifications and because this was a "SPEC" home, he had the right to change anything that he wanted to. The contract did not indicate this, but rather that the builder had design rights that restricted our selection of the finish surfaces and selections of colors. The builder made numerous downgrades on our house that took away thousands of dollars in cost to the builder. In asking my realtor if I could get out of the contract, I was told that I would lose my 10% down payment. At that time, I again made the error of trusting the builder that he would build us a beautiful home and did not end the contract. My BIG mistake.
The builder was contractually obligated to provide a copy of the ARB house plan approval document which would have contained the specifications of the house build that I had requested in August. This approval document was to have been completed prior to start of construction, sometime around April of 2020, but was not presented to the ARB until a month after we had signed the contract in August 2020 and had walked through a partially enclosed house. The builder never did provide us with those specifications, and they turned out to be in fact much nicer than the house that we had received. How the ARB allowed the builder to proceed with building this house prior to construction still is a mystery to us. Especially since this was the first house the builder had ever built under the name of Clarity Design Build and likewise was also the first house that they had built in this community.
We had initiated a lawsuit against Clarity Design Build on January 4, 2023, in Chatham County, case 23-CVS-6 and reluctantly dismissed the case due to financial and emotional cost on March 6, 2024.
Prior to the filing of the lawsuit, we had secured the assistance of the Better Business Bureau to provide for an unbiased arbitrator to end this dispute in 2022. Clarity Home Design's officers ignored that offer and other later offers for arbitration. We made numerous attempts to receive assistance from the Architectural Review Board, which was controlled by the developer, and the selling realtor, to resolve our differences. These requests were mostly ignored by both parties to help in holding the builder accountable for his actions. We were shocked by the amount of coordination that took place between these three parties to stop any type of equitable solution to our problems.
An example of how he saved money on our house is the carpeting that was installed in our house. The carpeting fell apart within 6 months as he paid a total of $1.34 per square foot for this carpet that I would not have used in my hunting shack. I'm currently replacing the standard sized front entrance metal door with the wooden 42" custom door that was to have been installed on our house. After we signed the contract, he framed up the door with 2 by 4's to save thousands of dollars read more