Her four-story, custom-built house sways, and when the wind rises, Deborah "Susie" Burgers and her family get out.
Annalee Francis paid $45,000 for lumber, then had to hire an attorney to settle a lien after her builder failed to forward the money to the lumber company. She and her neighbors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars extra to complete their new homes after their builder abandoned the job.
"This was going to be my dream house, and it's cost me a fortune," Francis said. "I have no retirement fund, no savings, and my credit cards are maxed out."
All are complaints against Altieri Homes, a family-owned business that has built hundreds of houses in Maryland and Pennsylvania over the past decade but now faces numerous lawsuits and complaints. On Friday, Maryland's attorney general announced charges against the Columbia-based builder for either failing to start or finish construction of at least 20 homes in Harford and Howard counties after taking deposits and payments.
Against the backdrop of a recession and the worst real estate market in decades, the homeowners' battle provides a cautionary tale.
"What they did was to steal people's dreams," Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said of the months-long investigation. "These people took advantage of innocent consumers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're now being held accountable. They got their hand caught in the cookie jar, just as Bernie Madoff and many others have as the economy sputtered."
A builder out of cash
Altieri Homes, saddled with mounting debts and plummeting property values amid the housing crunch, ran out of cash and closed last year, an owner said Friday.
In an interview, owner and operator Greig Altieri blamed the economy for financial troubles that forced the company out of business. Interest rates on loans doubled to 9.5 percent, going from $250,000 per month in interest to $700,000 a month, he said, "and it sucked everything out of the business." The company ended up owing more on its properties than they were worth. He said he and his brother, Daren, the firm's president, co-owner and operator, stopped taking a salary after April 2005 and are now virtually penniless.
"I don't even have a checkbook," Altieri said. "In the end, vendors didn't get paid, but we didn't pay ourselves for three years."
