BRANDON CUSTOM HOMES INC

It started off rough from the get-go and pretty much was an arduous haul the entire journey. At the outset they went to the wrong county agency (were in the City) to secure the permit which delayed things 1 month at the outset. What was quoted to be "6 to 9 months" ended up taking a year and 6 months. 18 months! Delays were often due to the inability to get subcontractors as many will no longer work for Brandon as he has a deserved reputation for VERY slow payment to his subcontractors. The subs that would work for him would often not show, I suspect, until previous payments were caught up. There was a month and half (6 weeks!) of absolutely no work being done ". . .waiting on the concrete contractor." Mr. Brandon stated he would only work with this one guy but I'm sure it had to do with what I just mentioned. Surely there's more than one concrete contractor in Brevard county. His "preferred" concrete contractor had drunks showing up at my house on a Sunday wanting to know if I wanted to sell my boat. I declined but it was stolen within a few days after this along with my lawnmower and leaf blower. I had a lien placed on my house due to non-payment by the contractor for stucco materials. Painting contractor was VERY slow and wouldn't show and stated he was "leveraging me" to get paid. I thought it really stank that the painter would put me in the middle but I guess I was the only leverage he had. All subs but one (the most professional - the plumber) complained of slow payment to them. While this isn't something I think the subs should be mentioning to the homeowner, it gave me insight into why the project took longer than it should have. We hired Brandon due to the professional front they put up with the office, starched white shirts, etc. thinking that the job would be professionally executed. No project plan was ever put in place which resulted in some things getting done out of sequence (we had to patch the stucco twice because it was done before other activities were completed) and lag times between most subs. In was basically a project of "OK, now that's done. Let's see, what's next?" We have no complaints on any of the quality of the work being performed except for one shortcut by the drywall crew. For the cove-lighted ceilings trays, they just laid in scraps of overlapping drywall which made the rope lighting look pretty bad when turned on. Mr. Brandon himself is a very nice person and I never saw him get angry no matter how the conversations went. This is a big plus. We had discussions midway through the project to replace him with another contractor but decided it would probably be better to just stick it out. We asked repeatedly for an estimated move in date and never could get one. Can we be in by my birthday(June)? "Good chance!" It never happened. Can we be in by Thanksgiving? "Absolutely!" Never happened. Finally after never getting a clear answer as to when we could move in, we said we're moving in on December 23, 2010 which is what we did.