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When it’s good it’s good, when it’s bad, it’s ugly.
Our Fieldstone experience started out great. We made decisions, got the plan set up, everything was nice. Our initial contact person was Tadd Johnson in March 2022. There was some shoddy communication, especially when they sent messages to just my husband and not me, even though BOTH of our contacts were on the application and paperwork. A little sexist but manageable.
The preconstruction meeting happened and we finalized the plan with Tadd. There was an issue with the budget for the appliances because it was not made clear to us that the budget didn’t include the washer and dryer, which didn’t make sense because the laundry room was still part of the build. So, already over budget because we weren’t going to buy the laundry appliances out of pocket. It would be part of the whole loan. Then we heard nothing.
Contacted them a few weeks later, waiting on surveying and the city regarding the plot. A couple weeks later we initiated contact and Tadd said the city said everything should be ok but we were still waiting on information from a survey crew. Initial reports from the survey crew came back ok but after further digging, they discovered that more dirt work would be required to make the plot buildable. This is when things started to go wrong on all sides.
The plan was reworked to include some retaining walls and such. Tadd and our realtor tried to coordinate with the lot seller to have the lot price reduced in order to make the plot buildable without increasing the overall price point. The seller refused to budge. Instead of getting updates about this whole back and forth, we got silence from Tadd, but not our realtor. The seller was adamant the price not be changed.
After further work from the surveyors and the city, we found out that the plot was in fact, not buildable. There was no way to make an easement/driveway/access to any property built there. So, the lot was scrapped. Because the seller advertised the lot as buildable, he was now in breach so should have given the earnest money he received back. He refused. Fieldstone decided on their own to file suit for the money to be returned. Eventually it was and we would be billed for the legal services used on “our behalf”, so we lost the earnest money either way.
At that point, for personal reasons, we decided to not pursue the build further and as the seller had screwed us over, we requested a refund of the earnest money given to the builder since everything was now null and void with the loss of a plot. This happened in the middle of July 2022. Tadd told us our earnest money would be returned to us once all the paperwork was processed for the cancellation.
It was around the end of July that Trent Johnson came into the picture. Keep in mind, we had heard nothing since the Cancellation was signed mid-July. Trent said that a portion of the earnest money would be returned after all of the invoices and receipts were tallied for the money Fieldstone spent trying to make this deal happen. We asked multiple times for access to these receipts and invoices. As of the writing of this on Sept 9th 2022, we have seen neither the receipts nor any type of refund of our earnest money.
I’ve read reviews that Fieldstone is good at what they do. Perhaps those were simple builds where absolutely nothing went wrong. But I’ve read other reviews that as soon as something does go wrong, communication goes down the tubes and everything becomes a fight. I would not recommend them to anyone, even people I don’t like. Don’t trust them with your money or your time. They will waste both.