Tracy Winters Log Homes and Sealants Tracy Winters Construction Group LLC Jacob "Jake” Winters Violated contract to build house Lake City FL Florida

Tracy Winters is a log home builder that we contracted to build our home in Youngstown FL. We paid him and his crew, sons Jake, Zach, and family friend Ruby more than 90% of the contracted amount before he abandoned us with an estimated 40% of work remaining. After a good initial impression, he began requesting advances, he personally stopped showing up and his kids would conveniently show up well into the day, if they showed up at all for a couple of months. Work was done out of sequence to benefit their draw schedule and that caused damage to the interior of the house. Tracy claimed that he was working in the office because his secretary wasn’t working out and NO supervision was given to this crew of unorganized, irresponsible young men.

Meanwhile, we were tracking him on Facebook cutting logs for Cracker Style Log Homes. When we confronted each of them, including Tracy, they blamed each other for their shortfalls. By the time we realized we’d hired a group of unprofessional, unreliable, untrustworthy builders, we’d paid so much towards the total cost that we were desperate to keep them on the job. They continued to work out of sequence, refusing to finish the main roof so they could try to earn more draw money for jobs requiring less work, causing damage to the framing and flooring that shouldn’t have been done before the main roof. The weeks leading to there termination found us with only one worker "Jake” who expressed to us that he was on probation and that working out of town prevented him from having to check in with his parole officer. After several requests to Tracy to state his intentions, text back from him stating that he was re-evaluating his company, and a week of no one showing up to the job site, we concluded that we’d been abandoned.

After six weeks of Tracy’s absence from the building site, it only took him one day after we fired him for violating the terms of our contract for him to return for his trailer. I have correspondence, photos and inspectors reports that prove everything above. He’s been downgraded in BBB as a result of this abuse. Be care, Jake appears to have his own company now. Do your research on them. They’ve got several complaints with Southland and Cracker Style Log Homes.