FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — It's become a pattern. Residents living in homes built by Richmond American Homes continue to reach out for help and share their complaints with First Coast News.
Residents of the Amelia Walk community in Fernandina Beach have spent months begging for repairs to crooked windows, broken outlets, and cracks in the structure of their homes and unfortunately the list is getting longer.
“We have called over and over and over again to have these issues resolved,” Homeowners Doris and Joe Willey said.
About eight months ago Doris and Joe Willey moved into their home built by Richmond American Homes and blue tape keeping track of all the issues still hangs around the Fernandina Beach home.
“They're not minor issues, I have to live in this brand-new house that costs over half a million dollars,” Doris Willey said. "Okay, I have issues, I have things that I didn't order."
Real Estate Attorney Michael Feinberg says the reason many homes are missing details is that finishing touches aren’t required for a home to receive a certificate of occupancy.
“You need to have a roof, the roof needs to enclose the interior of the building envelope of the home,” Real Estate Attorney Michael Feinberg said. "You need to have windows, you need to have plumbing. But the fact that there isn't a door that doesn't render the home inhabitable. So unfortunately when it comes to the issuance of the certificate of occupancy, it doesn't address a lot of concerns that homebuyers will have."
Feinberg advises any homeowners currently building with any builder to discuss their contract with an attorney before signing.
“Even though there is the warranty, you want to make sure that all of your legal rights are preserved,” Feinberg said. "And again, I want to emphasize that you want to make sure that you have the right to be able to go to court and not be bound to arbitration, you want to make sure that you have the right to potentially recover your attorney's fees."
Doris and Joe Willey say they just want the home they paid for.
“The entire corporate attitude, beginning with a sales rep, onto the construction people, onto the warranty people, they don't care,” the Willeys said. "Nobody takes ownership for the work. They're all trying to push it off onto somebody else and it reaches the point where the whole system is flawed. We want what we paid for that's just plain and simple. We want to hopefully help all the other people that are waiting for their stuff to get fixed, get the same thing."
First Coast News reached out to Richmond American Homes numerous times but have not gotten a response.