Caruso Homes

Caruso Horror Experience 1 of 3

Traditionally embarking upon a journey of building your dream home should be an exciting and joyful experience at each stage of the process. From acquiring the land to groundbreaking through each stage of the construction process until key exchange and finally moving in and making the house a home.
Unfortunately, ours was a terrible horror story with Caruso Homes as a builder. Our search for a new home started in the year 2021. After searching through several real estate databases and visiting several communities, we decided to instead purchase a piece of land and build our own. We visited Caruso Homes’ Community (Belmont) in Bowie, MD and fell in love with the Kingsport model.
Sales stage
We did most of the engineering work on the land, including surveys and perc testing among others, during the land acquisition process. We finally settled our construction loan in September of 2022. All documents from the engineering work we had done were submitted to Caruso Homes months before we settled on our construction loan. We were informed in November of 2022 that a septic design needed to be drawn since in fact we are not connected to public water and sewer. Monica (who has been let go by Caruso) sent us a contract from Caruso Homes in March of 2023 for an engineer to complete the septic design. Caruso Homes kept telling us the work will be done “next week” for months. In April, my wife called the engineer (Dan Blevin) who was very rude and unprofessional, He told her that he can not talk to her since he was not under contract with her. He would only talk to Caruso Homes. She sent Caruso Homes an email message explaining this to them. All we got was an apology from Monica saying going forward she will reach out to him for updates. Following that, they kept telling us ‘Next week” for almost six long months.
I finally got fed up and called a meeting with Tom Baldwin in August of 2023. During this meeting was when Tom told us that the contract we signed with Caruso Homes for the septic design was between us and the engineer and that we had contracted with the engineer. After that I called the engineer and threatened to terminate the contract with him if my work wasn’t done on a specific date. He told me that Caruso Homes did not pay him the full amount he requested for the work, that was why he stopped working on my project. I called a meeting together with Caruso Homes and the engineer which turned into a huge argument between them. They both denied each other’s claim. He finally completed and submitted the work and was approved by the county in September.
Take away from that was that there was no sense of urgency from Caruso Homes team to pressurize the engineer for six months while we waited. When my wife sent them the email after her encounter with Dan Blevin (the engineer), they could have told us then that the contract was between Dan and us. Our project was not a priority to Caruso Homes for one reason or the other. The wait would have been shorter because Dan would have been terminated in April after weeks of giving Caruso and us a false completion date. We wouldn’t have to wait for 6 months to submit a simple septic design. They had records of all engineering work already completed months before we settled. With the experience they have with construction in Howard County, they should have told us that we needed a septic design way beforehand. It would have been completed a long time ago. They just didn’t care.
Barbara was our initial point of contact. During the selection process, several important details were left out that would have affected our selections. Some of the information she gave us was later changed after she was terminated. We were missing a few windows and light fixtures that were in the model home, and we were not told were optional during the very long selection meeting we had with Barbara. We would have selected and paid for them because we wanted them as in the model. I discovered later in the process that we were missing a window in the formal living room and another in the family room. We are also missing a light fixture in the morning room and the formal living room. After the selection, which included flooring, bricks for the front, kitchen and bathrooms cabinets and knobs, landscaping, engineering among others, we were told that we owed $103,000 that were due before breaking ground. A payment plan was set up and this amount was paid in full.