Trinity Custom Homes

I have never encountered a business worse than this one. My advice to anyone considering Trinity is to run away, but run away fast. I contracted Trinity to build a modest home for us in Harlem. We chose Trinity because their price was much lower than other builders. After closing on the loan, we learned why.

Before Trinity had even started on construction, they started hitting us with extra costs. More block - $1700, extra steps - $1800, building permits - thousands of dollars. When we protested that these things should have been included in the original estimate, Trinity refused to build the home after we filed a complaint against them with the Better Business Bureau and left several negative reviews online. Of course this was after we'd closed, so Trinity was already holding tens of thousands of dollars that belonged to us. We would have been happy to walk away at this point, but doing so would have meant a loss of well over $10k in closing costs and other fees. Ultimately, we had to hire an attorney to compel Trinity to finish the home.

In the end, we closed on our loan in early June and the house wasn't finished until February. Even though our contract stated that Trinity was supposed to finish the home in 120 days after footers were poured, the footers were poured in August and the house wasn't done until February. The sales guy Ryan, told us on multiple occasions that it almost never took them a whole 4 months to finish a house.

The house we got has a ton of shoddy construction that Trinity refused to fix during our walkthrough. The posts on the front porch have gashes in them, but Trinity said they met building code even if they're ugly. One window was shoe-horned into place and cracked the window frame, instead of replacing it Trinity smeared some caulk on the crack that of course just cracked again within a week or two. When Trinity's contractors built steps that didn't come all the way to the ground, they stole several hundred dollars of rock from a pile of rock that was supposed to be used for our driveway to fix the problem. Trinity failed our certificate of occupancy inspection with Columbia County over 9 issues. Their fixes paid zero attention to how they looked cosmetically. Including using white caulk in between a grey box and grey siding. Also, a lot of the posts to the porches weren't even level.

Also, all of the finishes are super cheap and there's no way to upgrade. The light fixtures, stove, doors and locks are all things that will likely have to be replaced and discarded.

During the process, Trinity asked lots of things of us that other builders never do (between my parents and I, this was our 4th custom home we'd had built) like pulling permits. We had to fill out permits, work with the county and pay for permits. Then Trinity expected us to know construction related items like what the County code was for how close they could dig the well to our property line. When I protested that it wasn't my responsibility to know building codes, they blew up on me. They would tell us at the last minute that a specific permit was needed, and then when it took days or a week to get, act like we were holding things up.

Finally, nearly all of our issues arose from dealing with the owner of Trinity homes Jerry Bobek and his yes-man Jim Bartlebaugh. Jerry threatened me with everything from imprisonment to lawsuits for leaving bad reviews. He also told me again and again that Trinity secretly records all conversations with customers and that his Atlanta attorneys would leave me broke and penniless if I didn't do what he said. He told me several times that he had people "looking into me". The guy is completely unhinged and I wouldn't buy a paperclip from him. Also, don't be fooled by the name "Trinity", in my experience there is absolutely nothing Christian about this business, the people who run it or the man who owns it.