Oxbow couple describes ‘nightmare’ in building new home

OXBOW, N.D. (Valley News Live) – From a quick glance, Tom and Katie Webster’s newly-built home looks pristine, but upon closer look, you’re greeted with a different picture.

“From the day we signed, it was one thing after another… after another… after another,” said Katie, as she described the process of building her dream home.

Closing the deal on March 9, 2023, the house that sits on the corner of Westview Lane still has 37 projects that either needs to be finished or completely redone. Currently, the home has dented and ripped siding, crooked walls, unfinished trim, and poorly installed windows.

The Websters said the home’s floor tracking was originally put on backwards, as well as several walls wrongly put up, having to be redone three times. Heavy rain caused their home to flood, creating a domino effect of issues they had to focus on, something they both called, a “dream come true turned into a nightmare.”

Footprints can also be seen in the driveway, from workers walking around on concrete that wasn’t dry yet. Cracks, chips, and tape are also visible from the front two pillars.

Tom, a retired veteran, previously started his own home inspection business, which allowed him to stop the building process whenever he saw a problem arise. He said, “It’s just crazy because I was paying them to watch and supervise their work, but really, I ended up having to watch many times. Had we not had that knowledge, we would’ve been in an even worse situation.”

Katie explained, “They found 87 different regulations that had to be finished before they could move onto the next part…” after a different inspector came and looked at the current state of the house.

The next part, however, never seemed to get better.

“The framers who worked on the house were arrested on our property for having a party and smoking illegal drugs, and another was arrested and extradited back to Texas,” said Tom.

The family explained the lot size also decrease from the time they signed the purchase agreement, to the time they began putting sprinklers in. In the purchase agreement, the lot size is listed as 41,000 square feet. Tom said when he tried installing sprinklers, somehow, it changed to 32,000.

They said there are other things in the purchase agreement they were promised, but don’t have, such as a dual zone heating and cooling system.

With so many issues that arose, bigger projects were delayed, creating stress on the family’s future plans.

As a veteran, Tom received a VA home loan for the house, who’s now at risk for losing some of his federal backing, as a result of his mortgage company learning these projects are not getting completed.

Over a year and a half later, they’re left fixing a lot of these issues themselves, and putting extra money into repairs that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. “The quality of work is what really saddens me because we’ve put our entire life savings into this home, expecting this to be our forever home, and right now, we just don’t believe that’s the case anymore. We can’t keep putting more money into this,” Katie said.

The $1.1 million dollar house was built through Spire Custom Homes, who the couple says has little to no communication when it comes to their complaints.

Today, August 6, Valley News Live went to Spire’s office in Fargo to ask about these complaints, to which a woman said, “There is nobody here available to comment.” Also today, in a phone call with Brandon Block, Spire’s General Manager, he refused to comment and stated, “This is not my problem.”

Frustrated, the family contacted the North Dakota Attorney General and hired an attorney who’s been helping them send demand letters to the contractors, which is putting even more of a financial burden on them. One letter has already been sent, with a second on the way, hoping to get builders to come back and finish the job.

The Websters are now advocating for anyone who might be going through this, or anyone who’s on the lookout to build a new house, to learn from their story, and are also hoping nobody else has to go through anything like this.

Trying to stay positive, they said this situation is the reason they’re now close with their neighbors. Katie said, “We have our neighbors calling us all the time, asking about some situation that’s going on with the building, which is kind of embarrassing. It’s embarrassing being ‘the corner house with all the problems,’ but it allowed us to meet some really great people!”

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