Altman Home Repair

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• By Linda

  November 10, 2012

  This contractor built my cottage in The Villages in St Johns Woods back in 2005. Initially John appeared to be a Southern, Christian gentleman. This is not true. He lacks integrity and the ability to tell the truth. He instructed subcontractors to do jobs for which they weren't qualified--for instance, when he lost the tile subcontractor he had the one who did my trim work quickly train (more like show) some guys to set the tile. As a result, before selling the house only 2 1/2 years later, the guest shower, the one I used most since he didn't finish the master bath, had to be completely reset and retiled.

  Since at that time I trusted the developer and his salespeople at the model home, I was encouraged to close without everything being quite finished as I was told this builder was a third generation builder and not going anywhere. We later came to find out that it's Andy Altman, John's brother, that's been the builder in the family. John worked down at the ports until right before building in the Villages. Initially trying to ride Andy's coattails in the business Andy built, John and Andy split ways right before starting on my house. We were told it only had to do with not knowing how to split the business between their sons and not any disagreement. Not true--Andy was smart. Check with most of the owners in The Villages where John built the house and you'll know that he is not qualified to be a builder.

  John never completed the work on my house and no-showed for months on the house next door, apparently stalling on the closing hoping the young man would walk away with his comparatively small deposit so John could sell at what was then very elevated prices. He either intentionally sabotaged my house or was just totally clueless about building. I didn't have electricity in the back area off the kitchen for a year when the inspector found a cut wire under the house (which was suspiciously clean cut). My doors in the house swelled and wouldn't shut, same with my wood furniture. When the air-conditioner guy came out he found they had wired the unit so that it was in fan mode when it was pointing at air-conditioner and also that the pipe on the outside was turned up so that water condensation wouldn't flow (and recycled back into the house, thus all the swelling of wood.) The developer's response was what was he to do to get John to finish these houses? Four of us got a lawyer to do a class-action against John, got to the point of inspections which revealed enough evidence to proceed, when the recession hit and for various reasons three of us left the neighborhood.

  Is John a bad builder? Most certainly, but the worst is he's a sociopath. He will lie at every turn and if that fails, after the closing, he will threaten you just so you will let him walk away without any responsibility for warranty work. He even threatened the city inspector. All of this can be confirmed, just ask most of the owners in The Villages that had him as their builder. I would also run a search on any legal history of claims/lawsuits against him. This man has incurred the hatred of many of us that were unlucky enough to have him as our builder.

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