Van Der Valk Construction

My husband and I closed on our house back on February of 2022. We were told expected completion day was some time October 2022. Our lot wasn’t cleared until August 2022 so the expectation date was already not possible. Here we sit August 2023 and our house is still no where near its completion. When I try to reach out, Mel is pretty much rude or just non responsive. There’s no explanation as to why this is taking so long just that “everyone is booked and busy” but this seems to be an ongoing problem with this company so I don’t even think that’s true. An example is our tile was estimated to take 4 days for completion. Here we are 2 almost 2 1/2 weeks later and tile is still not complete. The only explanation I got from Mel was that she hasn’t heard back from the tile guy and the tile is half completed. This is incredibly frustrating. At one point I told Mel give me a rough estimate on when things will be completed. She gave me push back saying “we didn’t even break ground until August of 2022”, okay but why? Why did it take so long for you to break ground when we closed in February of 2022? There is never any updates and I have to text anywhere from 4-6 times to get any sort of reply out of her. I started texting at random times because it doesn’t seem like any time is a good time for her. At one point she got so snappy she said not to reach out to her at certain times. I asked when would be a good time because I felt like any time was never a good time for her and she just never got back to me about that. I guess there’s no point in reaching out and I’ll just hear from them when the house is completed but it’s completely unprofessional.
Some times when I ask about our house, I get information that isn’t even correct. The first time we reached out she called my husband by the wrong name and another example is she said we didn’t have carpet in our home but most of our home is carpet. She always says “sorry looked at the wrong home” but how can you?, do we need to constantly tell her who we are and what the address is?, what model we chose and so forth? If this company is so overwhelmed why not hire extra help? We should have looked into reviews more before closing. Our realtor was kind enough to look into the company to make sure they were legit, even though she was not making any sort of profit off of this sale.
Mel also said we should be able to get 2-3 extensions on our mortgage but that isn’t true. Bell bank only grants 1 extension and it’s not cheap. Here we are, about to pay our first mortgage payment with an in complete house and no sign of when it will be completed. I would definitely stay away from this company and I will never get a house built again because this has been such a terrible experience

I closed Sept 14, 2022 with a build out date of Nov 2023. They did not begin construction until 3 months ago. When requesting update I am given snippy responses from office staff such as the County will not release your permits to begin construction if you want to know why contact the County or the Contractors do not give us a schedule as to when construction will begin. Buyer beware! They are so far behind schedule the community is a mess with construction debris making it difficult to drive. It seems they start a project stop and begin on another with various progress throughout community. They seem to get irritated with simple requests for updates and expressing concerns with progress. If delays continue I will need to refinance my loan with higher interest rate increasing my mortgage. The poor customer service is a great concern and lack of communication is distressing only to have it be met with annoyed responses from office staff or no response for days/weeks/months. Buyer beware they are happy to get a contract to build but the poor customer service and lack of communication or response to your concerns is distressing to say the least not to mention the prolonged delay to finish construction. I will be paying property taxes on a house that has not been built in Nov. I will need to make interest payments on loan until house is built and if construction is delayed passed 18 months I will need to refinance the house at higher interest moving into house with higher mortgage not to mention I am paying rent. The funds are there but there is a delay not sure why. Some of the house are in the process of being built with weeds so tall half way up the house. This will cause undo financial hardship as I am semi-retired. Buyer beware.!