Home Plans And Home Designs - Is contract price fixed?

We confronted our builder about his honesty and ethics after he used the floor plan design that I created exclusively for our home in a custom home ½ a block down our street without our permission or any financial compensation. We had suspected that our builder overcharged us for our home, but he repeatedly refused our requests to show us copies of bids/invoices. Now more than a year after we moved into our home, the builder reluctantly gave us a copy of our spreadsheet. We have calculated we were overcharged at least $7,000. Our builder claims the contract we signed was for a fixed $204,000 so the extra charges he added are irrelevant. The contract we signed states: Owner shall pay Contractor for the performance of this contract $204,000 subject to additions and deductions in any subsequent change orders. Our builder regularly gave us a breakdown showing the additions and deductions, the total changes +/-, contract amount, difference and final changes. Because $204,000 was higher than we had hoped, we opted for less expensive choices, i.e. poplar interior doors vs. the maple doors that were in the bid – a savings of almost $800.

The builder led us to believe the changes listed on the breakdown were the only changes +/- to the contract price. The spreadsheet shows many of the bids from which the contract price was based were inflated and builder accumulated a significant credit. Instead of passing these credits on, our builder increased his General fee and added expenses that were not our responsibility to bring the price back to the $204,000 contract price. Do we have any recourse to recoup this overcharge?

Nancy, I think you're probably talking about enough money here to want to get an attorney's opinion for a couple of hundred bucks. Be sure to consult one who specializes in real estate matters. All it may take is a phone call from the attorney to get some action. He may also be able to advise you on the apparent misappropriation of your building plans. At the very least I would think you might consider lodging a formal complaint with whatever builders association the guy belongs to (if any).

nancy2756,

There are many questions that need to be asked and like Tow Guy mentioned, seeing a lawyer would be the first step.

The below is what is used as a guideline in Copyright Law. You can read this and then procede to get legal counsel before doing anything else.

http://www.aepronet.org/pn/vol5-no2.html

Hope this helps!