Financially Weak High End Home Builder To Customers: Cough Up 15% More Than Contract Calls For To Finish Job Or I'm Going Belly-Up!

In Sarasota, Florida, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports:

• The owner of Paradise Homes, while acknowledging that his company is on the verge of collapse, is hoping to bring in another builder to complete customers' houses.
  
  But owner Jim Butler's plan has a catch: Paradise customers who have already purchased homes and in many cases arranged financing will have to pay up to 15 percent more than their contracts call for to finish the jobs.
  
  On a $600,000 house, a prospective homeowner would have to come up with another $90,000 -- half of it up-front -- before construction would begin again.

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• Donald Staley put down more than $200,000 to build a $957,000 home in the Royal Valley section of the planned community's Country Club East. Construction has yet to begin, and he said he will not pay the builder any more.
  
  "That is like putting bad money on top of bad money," said Staley, a part-time resident who plans to move here from Ohio. "He says there is no money in the bank account. But there should be for my house."
  
  Rob Nielsen, a commercial contractor from the Washington, D.C., area, was fuming after learning of Paradise's problems. He was looking to build a $700,000 home in the Lake Club, another upscale Lakewood Ranch community, and the builder was pressing him just two weeks ago to make a sizable downpayment.
  
  He has hired another local company to build his house.

For more, see Paradise Homes near collapse; home buyers likely stuck paying more.