Jim Walter Homes ripoff Mid-State con-artist liars robbers cheaters felons Cayce South Carolina

I am also a victim of Jim walter homes or as they call them selves Walter Mortgage Co. I had a house built five yrs ago, and we agreed to put up one acre of land with no down payment......we signed the contract and after signing the contract and finding out our payments then we were told we would have to pay 2000 dollars up front plus the acre. AFTER SIGNING OUR CONTRACT!!! we told them no we would just cancel the whole deal, we were then told we would have to pay 1500 to cancel the deal even though we were told we had 72 hours to change our minds before the money issue came up. Well after calling their home office and speaking to the head man in charge, he flew to arkansas from Florida and come to find out the guys selling us the house was trying to get money from us in order to take care of another house they were short on funds on, needless to say the manager and the salesman were fired and we didn't have to make a down payment, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.......we went through three managers and five construction crews, because noone wanted to do the job right, my concrete pillars under my house were sticking out from the sides of the house and they didn't want to fix them even though we were telling them from the start they weren't right, they left my floors exposed to the weather for eight weeks and my floors became uneven and holding water, I kept calling and harassing them till they put another floor on top. my floor is still not right to this day even though they promised and promised they were gonna fix EVERYTHING. They even assured me that I had complaint forms and when they received one they would be right out here to fix what ever needed to be fixed, guess what nothing ever fixed.....But be a few days late on your payment and see if they don't start calling and harassing you and threaten to forclose on the house. Jim Walter Homes or Walter Mortgage Co is the biggest rip off in this country!!!!! And now my husband and I are out the extra expense to fix the things that shouldn't even be wrong with this house! I will never suggest anyone go through Jim Walter Homes!!!!! There is soooo many things wrong with this house, it would take two pages to tell everything....I also have like dry rot around my front door now, it is litteraly crumbling away around my door frame. JIM WALTER HOMES IS A SCAM!!!

If any of the people turn down about any lot it will be passed on to someone else higher up the ladder (or someone up the ladder will be forced to put presure on someone until the they approve the lot) until someone will aprove the lot to build on. It is all about numbers the worse sales are the more crap that will be approved. The same thing goes for credit approval. Then when a person with crap for credit gets a house (that every body knew they could not pay for) the presure is put on the collectors to do anything and every thing to make the person pay. The company puts the presure on collectors to do everything, but when things get to hot the company sells the collector down the creek. The company then plays the good guy and fires the collector.

I and 2 of my brothers worked for Jim Walter / Mid state home 1975 -1986. This is the worst bunch of scandels you have ever dealt with. They will lie, cheat, threaten or what ever they have to do to sell a home or collect a payment (due or not). All sales people, office managers, and collectors are under constant presure to do this from the home office in Tampa, FL. I understand they have lightened up some in the past few years. They have a lot of room to go from what I hear still.

First off, no building inspection department in this part of the country is going to investigate the building site before issuing a permit. They might locate it on a map but that's it. Until recently some jurisdictions didn't even issue permits, you could build anything anywhere.

Second, it is the policy of JWH to have all building sites investigated by the Sales Manager and the Lender's representative (Walter Morgage, Midstate Bank, etc.)before a contract is written. The building site is also supposed to be investigated by a Construction Manager before the start of construction. The only way many of these houses are built on substandard sites is if all 3 are either complicit or incompetent or a combination of both.

Most for profit companies are going to look out for their own interests (JWH doesn't very well and they're bleeding money). Poor lot access or location contributes significantly to job delays and theft. It also is reflected in poor construction quality and warranty issues.

On a 90% loan any other lender would make sure he could get his money out if he had to sell it which would make the borrowers bad judgement a non issue. High interest loans offset loses due to substandard lending in the JWH universe (sounds like the revolving credit strategy?).

This company prays on unsofisticated people who have no other alternative to having a home built and trust that they are doing business with a reputable company. If you want to call that not being responsible on the customers part, so be it. It pales in comparison to JWH's irresponsibility.

And yes, JWH is in the real estate business building spec homes. Hope you're not confused now.

Wow, I am so excited to see that once again an ex-employee is here to help the customer. I often wonder why no one here can ever imagine it being the customer who could have caused some type of issue. I will not address the issues with the customer, except to say that if the extra acerage was on there, it was because your land did not meet the required 10% investment. Also, I am going to guess that inorder to obtain the loan, you would not have been able to supply the rest of the equity (down payment) to secure it. JWHG does not seem to be in the real-estate business, or are they? I am confused, I do not see what benefit they would have in intentionally setting your house up for repo if it is that upside down on a loan.
Construction Managaer,
Seriously, your going to blame the company for building in a place that the county approves as a buildable site, on land the customer wants their house built upon? I can understand if the county says "no, that is wet land, it must be up higher". You seem to think that JWHG is in the business of counseling customers through life's trials. They are a company that is focused on building homes. There is no for-profit company that would tell a custmer "hey, your gravel road does not provide adequate equity to this house, I can not build your home here". If JWHG is able to access the property, then it is the responsibility of the custmer to know if they ever must sell this house, will they be able to regain their investment. This world is too congested with people placing blame away from those truly responsible.

Ah, Jimmy Owens from Cayce, I know of who you speak. I worked for Jim Walter Homes for a year before our branch (Sanannah, GA) was transfered into his division. It took me a week or so to realize this wasn't going to work out with him.

Jimmy "Force Tendered" your house because he needed to count it for the month. There are written standards for condition and quality before Tendering a 90% house but never mind that, you can start working on paint and floor covering and Jim Walters will complete your house then. Don't believe it. Once a house is tendered there is little motivation to deal with it again. The primary objective is to tender as many houses per month as possible and there is little time for anything else.

The logistics of getting anything done in the system used at this company is far more complicated than I could ever imagine. Simple house plans and usually 90% completion contracts should be a piece of cake. Au contrair. Jim Walter Homes is its own worst enemy (and then there are the customers).

Even though the construction and morgage contracts are done at the same time with the same sales person and with basicly the same company, they are two different contracts with little bearing on each other. If the house is Tendered, you must make morgage payments wheather there are issues with the house or not. My advice is to not take posetion of the house unless you are absolutely sure it is in the condition that you are contractualy entitled to no matter how excited you may be to move in.

Regarding the insurance issue; no surprise there. An apraised value of less than the morgage balance is one problem. I've seen them build in the middle of wetlands (Hey, looked dry when they started. Never mind the cat tails and cypress). So far down a dirt trail or the only access to the site address is from another road so far away that no emergency vehicle could ever find it. No reasonable lender would finance construction on these sites hence the insurance issue.

I could go on, haven't worked there for over a year and the moral and ethical lapses stil burn my bacon.

JWH has done about the same thing to you as to me. But I hired an attorney that won't give up and many other need to do the same. I also had just put up 1 acre of land for the mortgage, but JWH decided to change the paper work before it got to the court house and now they took all of my land which consist of about 10 acres. I had proof that they were suppose to only take 1 acre and it cought up with them in court.
I also had made many phone calls to JWH without any success.

When they would contact us, it was just a bunch of yes men and some more lias. I felt there was something wrong and before I had hired an attorney, we got a contractor to inspect the house and found many problems. JWH has done patch work to so call to fix the problems and made it worse. Now JWH says that they will not finish the house.

I suggest that if you can prove that they sign the paper work instead of you, Find an attorney. Keep looking for an attorney until you find one that will fight for you. Don't give in to JWH, that is what they want.

Just don't think you are the only one that has or had problems with JWH, because there are many people out there that is still having problems with JWH.