Orlando Sentinel - 11/18/04
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-asecnohelp18111804nov18,1,4640379.story?coll=orl-news-headlines
Homeowners seek legal help for leaks
Angry owners band together to demand that builders fix water damage from the hurricanes.
By Dan Tracy
Sentinel Staff Writer
November 18, 2004
Sections of wood floors have been ripped out of two rooms in Sandi Williams' $211,000 house, revealing dried swirls of glue and the gray concrete foundation pad. She constantly checks for mold in her partially rolled-up carpeting and along the baseboards.
"It has been a complete nightmare. If we can make it through this, we can make it through anything. It's the problem that won't go away," said Williams, a 36-year-old legal assistant whose family moved into a new house built by M/I Homes in Apopka less than a year ago.
Like an estimated 2,000 or more homeowners in Central Florida, she discovered her house leaked -- most likely through the concrete-block walls -- when three hurricanes swept through last summer.
And like almost everyone else with wet interiors, she found no one was willing to help. The builder refused. So did her insurance carrier -- which contended the seepage was the result of construction defects. And the government officials who license the builders and enforce the building code say they're powerless to act on the homeowners' behalf.
That left her with two options: Fix everything herself, which easily could cost more than $10,000, she estimated. Or hire an attorney.
She chose the latter, joining 60 or so other unhappy M/I homeowners who have retained attorney Guy Haggard, who works in the same Orlando law office as Williams. "I was in tears and in a panic. . . . I had no choice," she said.
Williams is one of a growing number of aggrieved Central Florida homeowners banding together with an attorney to fight their builder. Homeowners in 12 different neighborhoods built by the Ryland Group Inc. are uniting behind an Orlando firm. As many as 1,000 owners are eligible to sign up, said Guntis Lambergs, who owns a Ryland-built home and helped organize the effort. Another, smaller bunch -- 10 to 12 owners and growing in Lake County -- has a lawyer to do battle with Levitt and Sons.
None of the homeowners has filed suit.
The idea is to convince M/I, Ryland, Levitt -- or any other builder balking at repairs -- that it is cheaper to fix the homes than go to court and defend against multiple lawsuits. "We want to give them a chance [to fix the houses]," Haggard said.
Water made its way through masonry walls of houses all over Central Florida during hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne. The Orlando Sentinel and WESH-NewsChannel 2 have logged more than 700 complaints.
But only nine of the big production builders in the Central Florida market have agreed to fix water-damaged houses, with most repairing only those still under a one-year construction warranty. Another two dozen have refused to help, terming the hurricane-caused water damage an "act of God" not covered by the warranty.
And as Williams found out, government building officials -- at the city, county and state levels -- say they cannot make the builders fix anything.
* The state Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which licenses and oversees building contractors, won't even acknowledge it has fielded calls from disgruntled homeowners. Florida law prohibits complaints from becoming public unless the agency's board finds probable cause to support the allegations.
DBPR's main function, spokeswoman Kristin Ploska said, is catching and fining unlicensed contractors and forcing builders back onto the job if they leave a home unfinished. She could not say when or whether any water-intrusion complaints might be made public. The board, made up largely of contractors, doesn't meet again until early 2005.
* The Florida Building Commission, which oversees the state's building code, meets in December and could discuss the problem, though it likely will wait for building officials and construction experts to bring up the subject, board member George Wiggins said. "We're open to anything that improves the code," said Wiggins, who also is the chief building official in Winter Park.
But the 23-member board, which includes representatives of building professions as well as public building inspectors, rarely initiates investigations.
* County and city building inspectors say they are powerless to make construction companies fix the leaks because the building code does not cover the most likely causes: paint improperly applied to exterior walls, cracks in the stuccolike coating applied over the wall and sloppy mortar joints between the blocks.
Building officials investigating the problem -- who expect to have preliminary findings late this month -- intend to toughen their codes, said Bob Olin, Orange County's chief building official. He would not say how, but one possibility is what the Winter Garden City Commission did last week. Commissioners required that masonry walls be sealed or that enough paint be applied to waterproof the house.
* Even if the code were changed, it still would be difficult for many cities to hold builders accountable. That's why Orlando wants to work a deal with Orange County, which operates a contractor's licensing board that can stop a builder from constructing new houses until a dispute is settled.
The board, which most counties operate, can revoke a contractor's ability to pull a construction permit for a new house if an impasse is reached with an owner. That happens about three or four times a year, Olin said. Most often the board acts as a mediator, he said, getting the builder and the owner together to work out their differences.
Rather than create another board, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said he is asking the county if the city can bring cases to the existing panel. The county -- which provides similar service to three small cities -- is amenable to the proposition.
Right now, though, Sandi Williams has concluded she is on her own, leading her to an attorney.
That could prove to be an expensive and losing proposition, said Paul Wean, an Orlando real-estate attorney and chairman of the Florida Legislative Alliance, which represents community associations. "You're going to probably end up with bupkis," Wean said.
The problem, he said, is that a homeowner could spend as much as $50,000 in legal fees and investigation costs to get a case to a jury -- in order to recover considerably less in damages. And any recovery could take more than a year.
But Haggard and other lawyers argue that bringing together large numbers of clients drives down costs, making the action affordable. Haggard would not discuss his fees.
Steve Knecht, a Miami attorney dealing with owners of Levitt homes in Clermont, said he is taking clients on a contingency basis, meaning his fees would come out of any potential award or settlement.
Levitt's Central Florida president, Robert Hutson, said he was disappointed that an attorney was involved, adding he has tried to work with the homeowners in the Summit Green community in Clermont.
M/I Homes did not return calls. Ryland would not discuss attorneys. Spokeswoman Lori Booker said: "It's way too early to speculate because we are still compiling reports."
Dan Tracy can be reached at 407-420-5787 or dtracy@orlandosentinel.com.
