Fairway Homes West Inc

Fairway Homes West/ Reality Homes (Fairway Homes West is a subsidiary of Realty Homes based in Washington state. Fairway Homes West is located in Arizona. We are in Arizona. Only the salesman and a build supervisor are in Arizona, which we quickly found out) We signed a contract with Fairway Homes West/ Reality Homes for a 1500 sq foot home to be built on our land. Fairway Homes West (FHW)/ Reality Homes(RH) is unique as they are not a turn-key home builder. They build from the concrete to the roof and all other items are considered “Owner Items”. This provides a level of complexity with getting a construction loan that was at no time explained to us by FHW at the time that we signed a contract and paid then a $5,000 deposit. During the process of getting the home loan we paid out of pocket for the deposit, which included re-engineering of the plans with our changes, the septic plan and permits, excavation of the home site and building the dirt pad, and the building permits. When we applied for the permits the county informed us that the footers on our plans were too shallow. FHW/RH then re-engineered the plans to account for the extended turndowns for the footers. This was done in October 2019. Then Covid hit and everything slowed down. We were finally closing on our loan in October 2020 when FHW/RH informed us of a price increase of around 12%. We approve the price increase. In January 2021, our bank called RH for final numbers for the loan and were provided with the same numbers and were told everything was on track for us to close. There was a slight delay with Title being behind. This is the only reason this all didn’t happen after closing. RH contacted us to tell us there would be an additional $20,000 increase and since we already closed on our loan, they will take personal payments from us. We tried contacting RH for an explanation. It took them 6 weeks to return our calls. Their explanation is that they did not account for the additional footers, which are on our re-engineered plans we received in Oct 2019, which we paid for permits for. When we explained we did not have an extra $20,000 sitting around they actually contacted our bank to see if they could have the funds allocated for “owner items” (Items we are responsible for paying for, that are part of the build). The bank said no. The one agreement we came to was that we could reallocate the full foundation and footers to an “owner item” and see if we could get a lower bid. They confirmed 3 times that if we did that, they would remove the amount they originally quoted for the foundation and that would move to an “Owner Item” just like the excavation was. They gave us 3 weeks to do this or they would cancel our contract. We did find a lower bid. When we asked for an addendum to be drafted they informed us that if we contracted our own licensed and bonded contractor for the foundation (as they told us to do) they would void all of our builder warranties. But if we let them hire the contractor and pay RH an additional $6,000+ then they would honor the warranties. When we said no their argument was “It’s only $6,000.” They stated we could keep the plans and have someone else build it, or they would return our $5,000 deposit if we returned the plans. We have already paid over $20,000 in permits and excavation that is attached to building this house. I want to be clear that our complaint is not due to the cost of materials increase, which we approved, or even in their lack of up front communication. Our complaint is that we have plans provided in October 2019, and a price updated in October of 2020 and they will not abide by that. At no point did we ask for anything more than was on the plans provided by FHW/RH for the agreed upon price. We made a complaint to the Attorney General and RH responded by threatening us, saying they will take legal action for US breaching the agreement by not paying them an additional $20,000 over the agreed upon price. There are other complains with similar issues to the ones we have had. https://www.yelp.com/biz/fairway-homes-west-tucson?hrid=kMokbleq_gHiXgFWOsWWgg&utm_campaign=www_review_share_popup&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=(direct) https://www.bbb.org/us/az/tucson/profile/home-builders/fairway-homes-west-inc-1286-20029903/complaints#0 https://www.bbb.org/us/wa/tacoma/profile/home-builders/reality-homes-inc-1296-27030679/complaints