RYAN HOMES MISINFORMED 136 PEOPLE OF $4,400.00 SEWER ASSESSMENTS DUE TO COUNTY BY 12-31-04 NORTH OLMSTED Ohio

This also happened to us many years ago, and it still appears as a common complaint. It's legal, because in your contract it states you are liable for any unpaid bills related to the construction of your home once you own it. They didn't pay our county hookup fees either, but rather ditched that bill. We paid it and that was that.

They also didn't pay property taxes that accrued while they owned the land, and years later the county came after us with late fees that doubled it. Oddly NVR mortgage did have us write a separate check for their tax bill at closing, which seemed odd. We got county penalty fees waived since we'd never known about the unpaid bill, but it seems we paid their taxes twice.

Also odd, in that due to their bankruptcy that year, (we later discovered) the builder was relieved of paying county land tax assessments in that settlement. They also forgot to mention a twenty + million dollar lawsuit they had won in their bankruptcy filings that year. Remember their company motto A Name You Can Trust. If they didn't advertise it, you might never know it.

What made that particularly interesting was that suit revealed they had built tens of thousands of homes with defective materials. The company had a negative income of around three hundred million one year, in part due to fixing so much shoddy work, and lots of general management incompetence.

The company changed it ways in certain respects and cashed in big during the housing boom. As for managing defective housing, now you must sign a binding arbitration clause, that prevents them form being forced to do anything if more builder incompetence shows up in your home. You can't sue them.

If you're one of the estimated 7% that wins an arbitration settlement, the details are sealed and private. But I hear you still lose, because fees for arbitration can't be recouped even if you happen to win.

Failure to pay county hookup is commonplace. Home buyers assume the builder would include water, sewage, and electricity connections as part of a new home purchase. You can't really have a home without them.

Ryan Homes has often considered these as just amenities, and you must pay extra for them later. Their shareholders love it when they can pull that off, because it's a big bonus in the profit margin.

If it makes you feel better, your losses helped their CEO, Dwight Schar (NVR inc) buy a $71,000,000 retirement home in Florida with cash. Their profits also went to help get president Shrub into office. What a blessing Ryan Homes and NVR has been to so many of, us all the way around (yes, pure sarcasm intended)

Note: I'm sighting some facts and figures from memory through years of research, and while the content is fact based, the exact numbers MAY be a bit off on some points.