JON BROUSE & ASSOCIATES

The worst thing was that we hired him to do a remodel, we met with the lawyer and he said this isn't a remodel, this is a new house. This put us in the category that makes us have to pay more in taxes. With it being "new house" whatever they assess it at we pay around 1%. Instead of paying $1800 per year, it will change to $10,000 to $15,000 in taxes. Workmen he was hiring weren't getting paid, they complained to us. We paid him some up front, and were to pay the rest upon completion. He told me that the house would be finished at the end of 2004. We signed the papers January 10th of '04. By August he had not done anything. We met with lawyers in October of 2004. We fired him in December of 2007. He wouldn't do any job that was needed unless we paid in advance. He gave us an estimate, then complained he didn't charge us enough. He kept adding 20% to everything that we had to pay. His original estimate was around $370,000.00. He started finally putting the casing on the house in November of 2005. He stopped at the end of 2005. The last time I saw him was June 30th. He didn't do a bit of work on it after. He said the inspectors told him he had to finish the retaining wall before working on the house. I went down this year and asked the inspectors down at building and safety what was going on. They said the reason he couldn't finish the rest of the house was because he had to have the windows and gutters installed. The house still (to this day)has windows and roofing that leaks, water coming in, a $30,000 retaining wall that had to be torn down and replaced. The side of the house he had said he would just put up some boards that would hold all of the soil and such. The next person's house was up the hill. The soiling expert that came out told us that we would need to have a retaining wall instead of this. He didn't install any holes to allow rain to go through. He did a terrible job! After he stopped work in 2005 I saw him several times after, he would tell me to come down but he wasn't doing anything. He did, however, put the tiling in the bathrooms. This was one horror story after another.

Our home was to have been finished in 9 months and we were out for over a year. He treated city inspectors arrogantly and failed to find out from the city that we would be required to move our garage, costing us an additional $100,000. He does not pay his subs who, consequently, don't want to show up because he does not treat them well. Two of the supervisors who worked on our home quit for lack of payment. He would set up inspections and then fail to show up and meet the inspector. We failed countless inspections because no one with a contractor s license would be there to meet with city inspectors. I finally took over as the contractor and finished the job myself and found the city very easy to work with. Jon is arrogant, disorganized and horrible to work with. Despite the fact he is a good architect, I wouldn't recommend hiring him for anything. There are other architects in LA. Don't hire Jon.

I would recommend Jon as an architect without hesistation, but I would NOT recommend him as the builder. As an architect Jon came up with a great home design and he's very creative in thinking. His plans were detailed and left nothing to guess work. As far as the build side of his business, I was not very happy. He hires bad sub contractors. The framer he brought in to frame the house did a horrible job. The plumber he brought in did a poor job. I get the sense the plumber never worked on a high end home before basied upon his carelessness. The GC Jon brought in from his office was very inexperienced and did a poor job of managing the subs in a reasonable manner. During the build Jon was very difficult to get in contact with because I feel he has too much on his plate. I ended up taking on most of the GC work towards the end of the project because had I not, I would probably still be under construction. Overall, Jon's building skills are not good and he's expensive.