We are a family
with young kids and had made the decision to knock down our house and buy a
modular home. We liked the modular
concept because it was to be built in a factory (no exposure to the elements) and
put up quickly (12 weeks from start to finish). We entered into a contract with RDA, Inc., (Realty
Development Associates of Sagamore, MA) of which Donald Shulman is the
principal, to provide and complete a Westchester Modular home in Quincy, MA. The contract was signed on July 21, 2011.
We moved out of
our old house in October and the modular house was to be delivered in the
beginning of December 2011. Almost
immediately there were problems: the delivery was delayed 3 weeks. Finally, we had our delivery date at the end
of December. But a few days before
Christmas we received a call that stunned us.
The first check that RDA had written to our foundation company (we had
paid RDA in full for this work) had bounced and RDA was past due on their
remaining payment. The foundation
company was threatening to put a bulldozer on our foundation to prevent the
modular house from being delivered. They
also threatened to put a lien on our house.
It is Christmastime and we were in a panic regarding whether our house
would even be delivered. Don Shulman did
not return our call for days. The only
reason the foundation contractor did not deliver on his threat is because
Shulman promised to overnight checks to cover the balance. Days later, those checks bounced, too. The nightmare began.
And in fact,
after our house was delivered very little work was done in January, until, at
the end of the month, Shulman calls for a meeting. We think, finally, he will give us the
completion schedule and we can get back on track. In fact, what he does is tell us that he is
having financial issues and wants us to pre-pay him more money. We don’t agree because we are concerned that
this money will not go towards work on our house. Things stall even more. We called and e-mailed and pointed out that we
had a contract and deadlines. We were in
the middle of winter with a house that was exposed to the elements: one of the
main reasons we had gone with modular was to avoid that exposure. The house wrap was falling off and moisture
seeping in; we had leaks inside the kitchen.
Deadlines came and went. Don
Shulman continually promised that he would complete our home but whenever we
contacted his office we were told that “they had no money”. Shulman continued to tell us that he was
having financial issues and needed us to pay more money in advance. We tried to work through this, but as the days
turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, we realized we had to make a
hard decision. RDA breached our contract
by not completing the work in a timely manner and we never received a finished
house from Shulman.
We had rented a small attic space in a bungalow because RDA told us we
would be only be displaced for four or five months. It turned out to be a year. The attic was unheated and was stifling when
the weather was hot. But this suffering
was nothing in comparison to what our children felt. For almost an entire year they lost their
parents. Rather than reading bedtime
stories at night, they were told to put themselves to sleep while we worked on
yet another hours-long e-mail that we hoped would persuade Shulman to finish
our house (at some point, he refused to take our phone calls stating that we
could only communicate via e-mail). Or
we prepared for yet another conference call with Westchester Modular. Or another meeting with our attorney. Or agonized over the impossible task of how
we could possibly come up with the money we needed to finish our house. Days would go by where the only thing I had accomplished
was running around acting as GC for our house so that we could get something,
anything, accomplished. And even when we
were physically there, our minds were always someplace else. We were facing financial ruin: the stress was
relentless – there was no let up. What
was to have been one of the happiest times of our lives was the most hellish.
In despair, we finally decided we could delay no longer and fired Don
Shulman. We were forced to finish our
home out of our own pockets at a considerable additional expense. But our decision to “move on” was riddled
with more problems: once we fired Don Shulman, the subcontractors that had done
work on our house, work that we had paid Shulman for, contacted us and wanted
payment or else they would put liens on our house.
We made several attempts to request
that Don Shulman pay us back our money, and pay all sub-contractors. We were never paid back, and to the best of
our knowledge, neither were the sub-contractors.
Our move-in date was the end of
September 2012; almost a year from the point we moved out of our old home. We relay our experience so that the number of
victims at Don Shulman’s hand will not increase.
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