Southland Properties, Inc.

My wife and I chose Southland Properties, Inc. to build our new home in Homewood, Alabama. We met with Craig Stephens and Durwin Richey (the owners) and were initially very impressed with them. They presented themselves as having numerous years of homebuilding experience and as devout Christians. Unfortunately, after signing the contract with them, things quickly deteriorated. They assigned a project manager named Dave Trucks to our project who was completely inept at managing our build. Southland's communication with us was almost non-existent so we were always having to reach out to them to find out what was going on. Items that we asked for were not done as asked and we would have to remind them constantly of what we wanted or else they would pick out things or do them without consulting with us (and this was a high-end custom home build). Dave yelled at my wife when he was questioned on mistakes and never paid attention to details (he never wrote a single thing down when we met with him to discuss the build). There are so many things they didn't finish on the house and we find new things every day. Our brand new fireplace doesn't work. They ran a nail into a pipe during construction and once the water was turned on, it slowly leaked for 6 months. We asked that they fix their mistake (under the warranty that they provided to us) and they did half of it. We are still sitting with a laundry room under construction 7 months later with a house that is less than a year old. But the worst part is that they sat in our kitchen and bragged about all of their bible study groups they're in but they're the farthest from Christians. During construction, we had to begin documenting every request related to the build. Durwin and Craig would not respond to communications or not respond timely, Dave would never write anything down and what we thought would be a wonderful dream of building our house became a nightmare. By the end of the project, Dave told us he was "no longer working for Southland" so they had to bring in a new project manager. We still have a long list of unfinished items such as missing trim, paint spills on the carpet, plug covers missing, sheet rock patched but not sanded/painted, rust stains in our brand new tubs, gas fireplace does not work, pulls on cabinet doors drilled in the wrong place, etc. (see the picture gallery above). Best of all, they tried to bill us for change orders of work that was never performed (I kept meticulous track of the costs). We sent them a certified letter from our attorney regarding all of the unfinished items but they never responded. We have now had to file a claim with our insurance company in order to get the laundry room repairs completed after the water leak they caused. They initially covered up the leak by repainting the cabinet bases where there was moisture damage. Don't ever use Southland Properties, Inc. or these individuals for your home building or renovation needs. In addition to Southland Properties, Inc., they also appear to own or be involved with a company called Southland Properties Real Estate as well as building homes in a subdivision called Grand Oak in Trussville, Alabama.