Mark D Williams Custom Ho

Shortly after our family purchased our dream land and met with an architect to design our dream home we began interviewing builders. We presented our project, along with sketches and scope of our build, to Mark D Williams. His excitement and eagerness for our job were unparalleled by other builders. He assured us he was capable of building our home and shortly after we signed a contract with him to build our forever and dream home. Although the excitement that Mark brings to the table is infectious and makes part of the building process fun I have to share our heartache with you. We feel duped. The building process should be about professionalism, craftsmanship, integrity, building for the clients needs and transparency. What Mark brings is shoddy work, dishonesty, coverups, and some of the most horribly unprofessional behavior- all covered up with his infectious smile and sneaky marketing skills that make his name look grander in the building world than it should. Mark should stick to the <1.5 million dollar homes that he was skilled in building before us. Our project put Mark on the map to burst into the 5 million dollar estate builds that he is wholly unworthy of attempting to construct. Please people- do your research. Here are some of the issues we have dealt with 1- We surprisingly met the new project manager (first one was fired before our build really began) after construction had already started on the home. We were told- "oh he is your new project manger... the best in the business! He was hired specifically for your job and will be only working on your project". Sounds good right, we felt so honored to be given such a privilege to have our own project manager- well it goes south VERY fast. Keith S was barely on the job. There were times that subs had to come to us to say "what should we do here" I was flabbergasted- we did not Hire a general contractor and pay for a project manager to have to do their job! NO SIR. This is never acceptable in the construction world. Subs literally told us that the reason we had so many problems on our job was due to the lack of oversight by "said" project manager and Mark. Having a subcontractor privately come to you to raise concern over your project manager is pretty concerning. Having him call me from the barstool while I worked in an ICU is appalling and shameful and further defines the problem. To top that off- Mark had such little oversight of the project that he never seemed to know what was going on. He was too busy pitching other builds. 2- On Christmas we had a major construction emergency- with a leaking roof (around electrical I might add). It literally dropped raindrops for all of Christmas and the following several days until they could get someone out to inspect the roof. Keith immediately blamed the electricians, the electricians confirmed it was not their fault- come to find out... the whole dang roof wasn't even insulated to code! How in the world does something like that happen! It wasn't insulated right, somehow was missed by the project manager and approved by the inspector- and we are just supposed to believe that? Maybe it would have been excusable if it were the only problem we had... but it was not. FYI do NOT call or text Mark and Keith on weekends, Holidays, or evenings... even if your house is leaking from the center beam down the living room and entryway. 3- Windows warped so badly that you could feel a draft. Will Mark believe you when you raise a concern? No- he will not. He will try to blame it on something else. "We live in MN and it is the coldest part of the winter. What do you expect?" We expected for the massive estate and cost we put into our home that the windows wouldn't be drafty, that the front door wouldn't ice up with frost (ON THE INSIDE).... and we expected that if we said there was a problem that we would be taken seriously. Well guess what- after a long argued out process Mark's friends from Pella (who, by the way treat Mark to special trips on their private plane) finally came out and confirmed- WE were right and Mark had to eat crow. This seriously went on for months (starting in the fall and not concluding until the following spring). Mark never even once apologized, not even for the inconvenience. 4- Need a septic installed? Mark has just the crew- they will happily install one too few holding tanks and put them in backwards! Thankfully we had a phenomenal septic company (who just so happened to have been the designers of the system) catch the catastrophic error. Somehow- the improperly installed tank and one too few of tanks passed the inspection... I see a trend here. But seriously- who does this?! 5- How about having to have your master bedroom, bathroom, AND mudroom completely gutted and put back together? I bet that is any home builder's dream- Design your dream master, master bathroom, and mudroom, get some shoddy workers in from MN Custom Drywall, and as a result have 20K plus worth of damages that are irreparable! That certainly wasn't our fault but guess what- not only were we inconvenienced with a remodel basically before we even could move in but we were told we had to pay more for this to be done. Something that NEVER should have happened in the first place. Maybe if that project manager would have just been on the job that day.... or maybe even just that week. We are left with a house that is not finished, things are damaged, 30 day and 1 year punch list items left unattended to. After Mark put us through this whirlwind he decided to hold an order for new doors (to replace the originals that were damaged by his subcontractors) hostage. He feels he is in the right to withhold completing the job- It is amazing to me that he can justify this given the circumstances. The one blessing in this- it happened to us and not to you. Turn around as quickly as you can. I will, with a heavy heart from disappointment, share photos, videos, and even recordings to show anyone who needs a reference for Mark D Williams. Don't trust the crafty marketing- he will literally invite his friends over for a pool party while you are gone.... I can't blame him though- that was the videographers fault.... Insert giant eyeroll here- and yes this truly happened after we explicitly said no! We were cunningly deceived to choose Mark D Williams as a builder and I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone.

Mark D Williams convinced us to build our dream estate, promising us he has built many homes of the caliber we presented. Shortly after hiring him and paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars, we realized he lied. He demanded that we pay him thousands of dollars to meet with another builder who has ACTUALLY build homes like the one we had designed, so that this builder could teach Mark how to build our home. How shady can you get?! Our estate resulted in us paying Mark 5.1 million dollars. The “completion” date was well over a year ago, and Mark refuses to finish the build. He has abandoned it altogether and refuses to respond to any of our attempts to contact him. It is important to note that the positive reviews Mark has are from his subcontracts (who he pays). They are not from clients for whom he has built homes. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars in work that Mark has refused to complete. For anyone interested, we have hundreds of pictures and videos of the incomplete work and damage that Mark continues to ignore. If you choose to hire Mark D Williams to build your home, you should know what you’re signing up for. After living in our home for 3 months, our roof leaked on Christmas. Water literally poured down from the ceiling. Additionally, when he found out that he only installed one septic tank instead of the two that we paid for, he and his project manager Keith Schaehrer, did everything in their power to cover it up and not have to fix it. Whenever something goes wrong with Mark, he blames his customer. One month after moving into our 3.8 million dollar home, we had thousands of bugs in our home. We were cleaning up hundreds a day. When we told Mark that our doors and windows were faulty and bugs were getting in, he blamed us. He said that we have kids and they are keeping doors open, allowing bugs to get in. He also said we live in the woods, so it is expected. We were finally able to get his friends from Pella to our home to inspect and demanded smoke tests on all of our windows and doors, and found that the majority of them were warped and should have never been installed. Mark’s team had not taken proper precautions during the build to protect materials, resulting in them failing and our home being infested with bugs. Mark never apologized and continues to somehow thing it is our fault. The last three years working with Mark has been hell. His project manager, Keith, would frequently calls us in the evening and middle of the night in a drunken stupor. Keith had no problem sharing our families private financial and personal information with strangers, who ended up reporting the unprofessional behavior back to us. Mark lied to us more times than we can count. We were taken advantage of. His own employees have told us that he has no problem taking advantage of us because he thinks he can get away with it, because we are young. Be warned. Any of the other major builders will not treat you as horrendously as Mark D Williams and his team have continued to treat us.