What is the name of your state? - Kansas
Just finished building a new home that we contracted ourselves for the most part. We did use a friend to help line up some contractors but he did not serve the role of General Contractor. One of the contractors he did line up was the excavator. About halfway through the excavation, the contractor told our friend that he found sand on the site and a engineer would be required to sign-off on the job. We verbally agreed to this but were lead to believe that it wouldn't be a huge incremental amount of work. One month after the work was completed we received invoices for over $36,000, more than 5 times the original estimate. I asked another engineer to review the invoices and he thought that we were severely being taken advantage of. We requested support for all the charges(i.e.invoices, bills of lading, engineering reports, etc.) from the contractor as support for the work and never heard back from him. Six months later, after we have already closed on our house, I get a letter from the contrator's attorney threatening an unjust enrichment claim. I still question whether the charges are valid given the shoddily constructed invoices, but am also wondering why a change order or a formal scope change wouldn't have been necessary for such a drastic change in work and price. Also curious if the lateness of the timing has any validity of his claim. Had he been responsive and we cleared these charges 3 months ago I could have done something about it. Since we moved forward, after not having heard from him, and closed the loan I don't have any means to pay. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Just finished building a new home that we contracted ourselves for the most part. We did use a friend to help line up some contractors but he did not serve the role of General Contractor. One of the contractors he did line up was the excavator. About halfway through the excavation, the contractor told our friend that he found sand on the site and a engineer would be required to sign-off on the job. We verbally agreed to this but were lead to believe that it wouldn't be a huge incremental amount of work. One month after the work was completed we received invoices for over $36,000, more than 5 times the original estimate. I asked another engineer to review the invoices and he thought that we were severely being taken advantage of. We requested support for all the charges(i.e.invoices, bills of lading, engineering reports, etc.) from the contractor as support for the work and never heard back from him. Six months later, after we have already closed on our house, I get a letter from the contrator's attorney threatening an unjust enrichment claim. I still question whether the charges are valid given the shoddily constructed invoices, but am also wondering why a change order or a formal scope change wouldn't have been necessary for such a drastic change in work and price. Also curious if the lateness of the timing has any validity of his claim. Had he been responsive and we cleared these charges 3 months ago I could have done something about it. Since we moved forward, after not having heard from him, and closed the loan I don't have any means to pay. Any guidance would be appreciated.