New City Construction

I cannot say enough good things about New City Construction. Professional, courteous, timely, and experienced are just a few words I would use to describe the service we received. I had two large remodel projects for our rowhouse in Washington, DC - a first floor remodel, including kitchen and a rooftop deck addition. Joey and his team met the deadlines provided to us, navigated the DCRA process quickly and when we hit a snag with the roof deck developed creative ideas to tackle the issues. The work quality was excellent and thoughtful. For the most part, we stayed within budget. We couldn't be happier with the end result. I absolutely would recommend New City to anyone looking to do a remodel in Washington, DC.

If we had to sum up our impression of NCC, we would say “No Pride, No Shame”. Our initial interactions with NCC started a long time back, in 2013. I spoke with the owner, Joey Yaffe, and wanted to get information on the design-build process and he gave us very good suggestions. He also recommended a realtor that we eventually went with and were extremely satisfied with. We bought a single family home in Takoma Park, MD in June 2014. Our plan was to renovate the house and to add an additional level. During out interactions with NCC’s owner, we were assured that NCC had the capability to work with any architects (My SIL and her husband are architects, and we wanted to use them to draw up the plans). NCC was one of the four companies that we were interested in to do this major renovation of the house. We had each company bid on our plans. One thing that we found odd was NCC charged $4000 for its bid, and none of the other companies did that. We actually hoped that because they were charging for the bid, they would be very thorough in going through the plans and their bid would be the most accurate. We got bids from three companies, and were initially planning to go with another company. However, NCC pursued us, and convinced us that we should go with them. We signed the contract with them early February 2015, with a promised delivery date of November 2015. NCC finished the project a year later than promised and billed us 40% more than their original bid. New City told us the house was suitable to live in April 2016, but they did not actually finish the project until December 2016.   Here are a just few of the most frustrating things NCC did: Underbid the project to get our business, and then tried to rely on the cost-plus contract to recover costs from their deficient bid. Extremely poor project management/lack of supervision. On two separate occasions NCC’s plumbing subcontractor cut through structural framework.  Not sure why the subcontractor was not more closely supervised after the first incident.  The replacement plumber failed to properly connect the second floor shower drain, and water came pouring through the walls of the first floor and basement. Thank goodness we checked the kitchen cabinets before install, as no one at NCC noticed that the wrong color cabinets were delivered.  We realized after project completion that sub-contractors walked off with extra components/materials that we purchased. The worksite was such a mess that we did not discover the thefts until it was too late. Failure to comply with reasonable requests. When portions of the roof/shingled areas were removed, we asked that NCC tarp over the exposed areas.  NCC repeatedly failed to tarp some areas, and after a rainstorm there was a large puddle in our foyer.  Later when mold was discovered under the flooring in the exact spot of the puddle, NCC kept insisting that the mold was not their fault, even though their own mold removal specialist indicated that it was probably caused by moisture leaking through the floor. When insulation was installed there was an area in between the first and second floors where the insulation was exposed to the outside.  We asked NCC to close up this area, or tarp it until the permanent siding went on, and they refused to do so.  When we moved in, we discovered that a mama squirrel had crawled in through the insulation and had a nest of babies above our bathroom.  And this was only discovered because the plumber had to bust through the bathroom celing to fix the leaking pipe! Failure to meet deadlines. NCC kept on extending the completion date by 2-3 weeks at a time. Our lease was up, and if NCC had been honest about a realistic completion date, we would have found a short-term rental for a few months.  Instead NCC assured us they would be done in a month and suggested an AirBnB.  We ended up moving a total of 5 times in 5 months, each time hoping that our project would actually be complete. Failure to communicate or provide information. We repeatedly asked for invoices for subcontractor work/materials (which NCC was obligated to provide per their contract) and never received anything. Failure to resolve issues. NCC recommended we install a French drain in the basement to deal with moisture issues, and we did so, even though the cost was high. During NCC’s one-year warranty period, we experienced major flooding, multiple times. We showed the pictures and videos to NCC, but their answer was that they didn’t know what to do! After installation, our brand-new dryer was not getting hot enough to dry clothes. NCC was not able to resolve the issue and suggested we contact the dryer retailer. We called the dryer technician, and he came by twice, and couldn’t find any mechanical reason why the dryer would not heat properly. Twice he asked us to ask our contractor to check the install, and when we asked NCC, both times they said the install was fine. The retailer ended up replacing the dryer, but the new dryer took forever to dry clothes as well. We thought we had to live with it, but then during a family visit, my wife’s cousin took one look at the dryer vent and realized it was improperly installed. The exhaust vent was about twice as long as it should have been, and installed with unnecessary bends that limited air flow. We went to home depot, bought a $12 aluminum vent, pulled out the old vent (which was choked with lint after just a few months use) and installed the new vent.  The dryer started working immediately, and a year later continues to work great.    This is just a very condensed version of the issues we experienced with NCC.   Finally, there was a lot of disagreement between us and NCC about the cost. We felt it was unacceptable that they pass on the project costs that were due to their project mismanagement. However, at this point we just wanted to be done with them, so we worked out a final agreement. One of the points that NCC wanted to add to the agreement was that we will not give NCC a bad review online. We refused because we wanted people to be aware of our experience with New City. If we had read even one review like this, we might have not signed up with NCC and might have avoided this mess.