MONTGOMERY & RUST INC

Summary: We have been in the market for a new house in the Shadyside/Squirrel Hill/Point Breeze areas of Pittsburgh, PA since Spring 2014. After seeing many properties, we decided to build at Summerset at Frick.Montgomery and Rust are the builders of the single family homes in that sub-division. Detailed Timeline: We have been in the market for a new house in the Shadyside/Squirrel Hill/Point Breeze areas of Pittsburgh, PA. We received word on June 26, 2014, through our real estate agent that a lot in the Summerset at Frick Park development of Pittsburgh (ZIP code 15217) had opened up for building. We arranged to meet the sales agent, the same day. At the meeting, we were told that a previous buyer from Boston had decided to withdraw, and hence the lot became available. We signed the Lot Reservation Agreement, though I had certain concerns about the text of the Agreement - that were later vindicated. At this time, we paid our $5000 deposit to secure the lot. The builder was Montgomery & Rust, and our point of contact was Mark Rust who we met shortly after paying the deposit. We were told by both the sales agent and Mark on multiple occasions that although the lot agreement indicated a two-month deadline to finalize plans, as long as there was active communication between the two parties, the two month deadline was not set in stone. Since commencing the planning process, we had a sequence of plan revisions - versions 1, 3, 4, and 5, beginning on July 14. No version numbered 2 was provided by Mark. He was out of town from July 28-August 8. We were out of town from August 13-September 2 and barring that time-frame we were in active communication with Mark throughout the process. An email trail is available on request. Around the time we were provided version 3 of the plans, we realized that there was no real aesthetic or design input being incorporated in the plan version. However, we were fortunate to have help from a family member who had an architectural design background and continued the dialogue and the process moving in the hope that relevant design input might be provided by Montgomery and Rust at later stages. Throughout our engagement with them, we provided Mark with detailed sketches, pictures and images of our specifications to help with the designing even though this was primarily their responsibility. We never once met an architect or were provided contact information of an architect. We also found out later on that this was inconsistent with experiences some of our friends who built there had. We know of at least one family who was provided with an architect / designer to help with the planning. We had been assured by the sales agent, Melissa, that we would have design input available through the process. This never occurred. Even though the process was getting one-sided with us doing more of the design thinking, we made ourselves available in person to meet with Mark on multiple occasions. Despite this we noticed many mistakes being made in latter versions of the plans being sent to us. Not once did we receive a phone call from him or anyone from their office asking for clarification on any of the issues that we would bring up. This was frustrating because the same mistakes often occurred in each subsequent version of the plans. On October 28, Mark provided version 5 of the plans. At that time, he indicated over email that he would be happy to meet to discuss the plans. We briefly inspected this version of the plans and saw that the issues that we had raised in version 4 had not been addressed properly. At this time and after 4 months of dealing with this lack of attention to detail, we expressed our frustration with the version-control that we had been dealing with all along. We did not hear back from him at all. On October 30, we wrote to him again to ask him to clarify why the issues had not been addressed. At this point, abruptly and without any warning, he wrote us back and said that he was going to terminate the Agreement because we were frustrated and that "building a home was not for us". To us, this was a bolt out of the blue - we had some issues with the process, but at no point did we feel or had expressed that we wanted to back out. In fact, for much of our engagement with Montgomery and Rust we had kept much of our frustration to ourselves. We wrote him back, trying to reason with him, to no avail. He was absolutely rigid in his decision. Our real estate agent also tried to get some information from the sales agent at the Summerset Sales office and was told that once he made the decision, it was hard to revert it and even if he did, it would be an unpleasant experience for us. To us, this sounded somewhat threatening and extremely unprofessional. There doesn?t seem to be any kind of proper governance or accountability on the part of Mark Rust or the company. While we realize that we have lost our dream of building a home in the Summerset at Frick community, we are lodging this complaint in the hope that others who are considering building a home with Montgomery & Rust get some insight into their unprofessional and inconsistent behavior.

basement walls have structural issues after only 6 years. multiple cracks and bowing. still using block as opposed to poured walls. designed closets with windows in them?? Why?? No imagination when it comes to design.