Cb Blair Development

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• By a user in Worcester

  June 26, 2017

  Custom build my house (NOT)

  UH, If you want a frame with some builders specials, this is the builder for you. just about everyone else that puts anything in a Blair house is a subcontractor, and you use Blair's. We paid for tile in the kitchen, an updated sink and about 50 grand worth of updates in our house. The flooring guy grouted right to the baseboards so when the house settled all of the tile developed cracks, (of course this happened after the 2 year warranty. My stainless steel kitchen sink developed holes, and was dripping water under the sink (we have since replaced it. When we got the sink replaced we replaced the faucet with one from The House of Antique Hardware. The Plummer was under the sink and called us over. He asked "who put in your plumbing", we replied "The builder". The Plumber told us that the person who installed our plumbing under the sink was a "Rank amateur". I've replaced all the doors in the house, and had to pay thousands of dollars extra, because none of the entry doors are standard size, so I had to order a special size. All of our window's that came with the house have the film showing weird spots in them. our outside faucet, actually broke off, and we had to get a plumber, (another 300 bucks), so we could use the hose. In out great room we moved an occasional table and realized that where the two pieces of lumber in the floor under the carpet did not meet up, (There is actually a 5" square hole in the subfloor"). One of our neighbors put an air conditioner in his second floor and the window and air conditioner fell onto the ground. I and all our neighbors developed cracks in the foundation, Blair actually came and fixed the foundation but now there are ugly plugs in the cellar walls where the repairs are. I have probably retrofitted about 80 grand worth of replacements, and I still haven't gotten to my downstairs bathroom with needs the tile ripped up and replaced. Because of the cracked tile our toilet has to be reset once a year because when the weather changes in the winter, the floor moves with the house and the toilet moves 2 inches to the left.

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• By Fourbambinos

  August 18, 2011

  As with any builder or GC, be very VERY careful and use extreme caution. I have heard other horror stories about Blair Builders, but will comment only on the experience that I myself have had and possess documentation of. We submitted an Offer to Purchase with $1500 earnest money/initial deposit through our buyer broker back in May of 2010 that was accepted. VERY CLEARLY stated in the Offer to Purchase was a financing contingency which allowed us to back out of the deal if we could not sell our own home. We made no representation that it was 100% sure to close, and especially in the current real estate market in our geographic region, we would have been foolish and naive to have done so. Nonetheless, the house we lived in at the time was in fact under agreement and scheduled to close in a few weeks when we made this Offer to Purchase. After having met with Blair's selling broker/office manager to discuss options, upgrades, and floorplan modifications, we seemed ready to proceed as soon as our own home's closing went through. We was pressed and strongly encouraged to sign a Purchase and Sales Agreement (with no contingency of financing), but we resisted, knowing that anything could happen between that time and the time our home was supposed to have closed, especially given the state of the real estate/mortgage industry at the time. Unbeknownst to us, Blair went ahead and paid $600 or so, taken out of our $1500 initial deposit, to a 3rd party architect to draw up the modified plans we had discussed and tweaked for conceptual purposes only, back when we met with the office manager shortly before. At no point whatsoever were we told that our money would be spent and that, should we exercise our financing contingency and back out of the deal legally, we would forfeit that $600 that was spent without our knowledge. From what we understood, many of the larger building companies will have their own in-house architects that are paid staff obviously, therefore eliminating the need to pay a 3rd party designer. To make a long story only slightly less long, sadly the sale of our home did in fact fall through at the 11th hour, and we subsequently backed out of the deal with Blair and the new construction, perfectly within the rights afforded us in our Offer to Purchase, and since we resisted signing the Purchase and Sale Agreement, we were under no obligation financially whatsoever to them at this point, and expected a full refund of our initial $1500 deposit, as stated in the Offer to Purchase Agreement. Unfortunately, Blair felt that we at least owed them the $600 for the hired architect that we were never informed of, and wanted to only give us back $900. Again we resisted as we were unwilling to simply pay for something that we did not authorize, or at least were never told that this step in the procedure would incur non-refundable cost to us. If we had known that is was going to be a non-refundable exercise, we would have halted everything right there and just patiently waited for our own home to close, knowing that we were free and clear to proceed. After going back and forth through attorneys for over a year to no effect, we filed a suit in small claims court since we knew Blair had no grounds to be keeping even $1 of our money. Oddly enough, a few days prior to the court date, Blair's attorney contacted my own attorney stating that all the documentation pertaining to this case had been lost on their end, and that they were still willing to pay me $900 of the original $1500 back to us. Again we said no, and lo and behold, the day of or possibly the afternoon before the court date, they succumbed and returned all $1500 to my attorney. Unfortunately we were then out $200-$300 in attorney fees, but if I was going to have to lose money in this situation, it was going to be to my attorney and not to the builder. It's too bad because we really liked the general contractor we were working with, he was easy to work with and very flexible, and the prices were not outrageous. We were really looking forward to the new construction on a great piece of land, but it wasn't meant to be. I would NOT recommend these people to anyone, and as I said in the beginning, make sure you are VERY careful and have good resources (people who have built new homes before) to get advice from when venturing into a new build situation!

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