My Contractor Disappeared After I Paid Him

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My income is $2,100 a month. I'm on disability. My savings is $6,000 and on my debt side, I have credit cards for $650. My monthly bills are $688. My yearly property taxes and insurance are $1,700. Now, here's where the twist comes in. I got a construction loan to build a tiny home on my property for $112,000. As a reconstruction, got $30,000 of that. Fees are $4,700, which is a total of $34,000. So I have around $78,000 left. This is a 6.75 interest, but he has bailed on me and I can't find any assets under his name. So I'm not even sure if I'm going to be able to recoup that. I'm sorry. Who bailed on you? The contractor that was supposed to build my tiny home. For $120,000? Well, it was $112,000, but they've only gotten $29,165 so far. Have they done any work? Nothing. They've applied for permits incorrectly. Why did you give them money before they did work? The bank did. I have a mortgage for this. I know, but you have to approve it. Yeah. And the bank said this was standard practice. So now I'm on the hook for $34,000 with nothing to show for it. Did the permits not get approved? No. Why? Incomplete or inconsistent. They keep getting rejected, rejected, rejected, and now all communications have stopped. So the permits were denied because they were filed incorrectly, not because you can't build the tiny house? Yes. Yes. Correct. Why does a tiny house cost $112,000? That's what I've been wondering. Well, I mean, why didn't you wonder that before you signed up for it? Because of like pouring concrete, putting it on a foundation. Where I live, it has to be done a certain way. It has to be like stick built. I thought tiny houses were more like $60,000. They are, but then when you put them inside a city limit, they have to be up on a foundation and then the plumbing and the electric and the sewer and all that good stuff. Which is not another $60,000. 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That's not standard practice. And so, um, no, we don't issue $31,000 to pull a permit on a tiny home. That's asinine. Um, and so, you know, I don't know who's over there at the bank that doesn't know what they're doing, but, um, but I probably am going to just shut the whole thing down and I'm not going to deal with that bank anymore because I think, I think they're incompetent. And, and I think you've been, uh, you you've bought into some kind of a idea here with this tiny home construction, that this is somehow going to be the best thing for you. And, uh, the numbers you're giving us are, they don't, they don't pass the smell test. Okay. Uh, cause the purpose of a tiny home is this is a small square footage thing. They're typically not built. Uh, they're typically rolled in on a trailer and sat there and you're pouring a slab the size of a deck. This is not an expensive process. And yeah, you got to hook into sewer and you probably got some tap fees and you got to run a waterline to it. But none of this is rocket science and none of this should cost, you know, $50,000, not even close. So I don't know this whole thing sounds like it just smells. And so when I run into something that I get into, like you've gotten into here where the whole thing stinks, I just start pulling back and pulling back and resetting what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it. And, um, and that may be that you do a tiny house, but you do it the proper way rather than the way you were trying to do it. Um, and just because it's in a city limit doesn't mean it costs $50,000 to build a slab. That's just not true in Louisville, Kentucky. It's not that it's not that onerous. You're not in California where they've got regulations out there, but, um, this is Louisville. And so they've got regulations, but not like that. So, um, now I, I, I think you've, um, going to have to gather a whole lot more information to decide what your next steps are. And, um, you know, if you have a contract with someone that has taken 31,000 from you, um, and they've done that fraudulently, then I guess you need to see an attorney for that. Uh, but, uh, as if you've discovered the person has no assets, then you're probably going to have a hard time getting any of that money back because you can sue somebody and win that has no assets and you get nothing. It's not worth the trouble, but I would look into the legal side of it as well. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.