Feeling Very Scammed By This Builder
Summer of 2022 we stumbled upon a listing on zillow for lot 9 110 Von lakes. This listing was presented very similar to their active listing found on Zillow for 115 Von Lakes Drive
They market a very beautiful home that we thought we would be able to build.
We were told by the team at Lehigh homes that the way the process works is that we agree to a specific home build, we sign off on that and based off of that build we are then allowed to purchase the lot from them to build this agreed upon home. The purchase of this lot is contingent upon us building a very specific home with them. We had agree on a property around 6700sqft under air with over 5+ bedrooms. This is a similar home to the ones in the neighborhood.
Once we were pushed to purchase the lot out right cash from them (coming from South Florida we were told thats what we had to do) we can then use the lot as collateral to build the house we had agreed upon. This took place approximately on Oct 11th 2022. We purchased the lot cash nearly 390k after expenses and were then told we had to put another $200k down directly with Lehigh. At this point I felt something was off and after many delays on plans and so on we had a gut feeling to back out. In late January we had a meeting a day or so before my mothers Birthday Jan 24th 2023 and we told Lehigh (Brendan, Adam and Julie) that we were not going to move forward with the build. The budget for the house kept on climbing and things just didn't feel right. We ended things in good terms (so we thought) and they said they would buy the lot back from us since it was contingent upon the house build.
They never kept their promise. Instead they tried to countersue us. We decided to list the lot to Recoup our cost. After years of not being able to sell the lot (contracts would fall through all the time) we found out that you cannot even build more than a 2 bedroom home on it due to the health department (easement/septic tank/soil issues) In summary we have been scammed! Currently they have active listing doing the same to someone else. We purchased this on false pretenses.
Imagine committing to a 2.4m build for a nearly 7000sqft home, but you have to purchase the lot first. You purchase it only to find out that the house you agreed to build you cant even build half that size! The laws in Georgia (fulton county) did not serve us well. We trusted Lehigh 100% Brendan gave me a really good vibe at the beginning making it seem that he was going to do right and purchase the lot back. After we spent 10s of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees we found out that the plan we had agreed upon got shot down Jan 18th 2022 before we had backed out and we were not even told this. Imagine what would have happened had we move forward? What a mess and waist of time and a lot of money.
We moved to this area from South Florida looking for new air. We had lost 7 babies (issues with keeping our pregnancy) and thankfully now we have our baby boy after those losses. We were going to build our family home. We ended up in a great spot in downtown Alpharetta but stuck with this huge burden that honestly we do not want to pass it along to someone else. Lehigh should have purchased this lot back as the right thing to do.
Right now the listing they have we found out has the same issue. It wont be possible for them to build the house they are marketing. The health department Issac mentioned this to us. I am not sure what they are trying to do but my goal here is to get them to do the right thing, and I just hope someone is not stuck in our same shoes.