Brantley Properties LLC

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At first, things went very well. The payment schedule was broken down into 5 20% payments, with the first at contract signing and the last scheduled for completion of the final punch list. Work proceeded smoothly through the foundation, framing and drywall. The vinyl flooring install, which should have taken a few days, stretched into weeks across the Thanksgiving holiday. We had them install matching flooring in our kitchen as part of the contract, so this was inconvenient (weeks with no flooring). The delay was due to the subcontractor used by Brantley, but Brantley did not stay on top of the progress and was very difficult to get hold of for status reports. This had been true prior to this, but it hadn't caused much of a problem as work was moving along at a good pace. This should have caused us more alarm than it did, but, as I mentioned, things had been going well. Before the flooring was installed, Brantley requested that we break the final 20% payment into 3 parts (40%, 40%, 20%) so that he could more easily order the flooring materials. Again, this should have been a huge warning bell to us, but things had been going so well... Once the flooring was finally down the painting subcontractor came in and did a terrible job. Twice. This took well over a month. By this point we were 4 months into a project that had been estimated at 3 months. The contract stated that penalty payments started at 4 months, at $25/day. Not much, but we were hoping it would "inspire" Brantley to get the job done. More worrisome was the fact that the HVAC had not yet been installed. By splitting the final payment into 3 pieces the effect was that we ended up paying for work that was not yet completed. Specifically, the final payment owed to Brantley was not large enough to cover the $2500 mini-split system. At that point, we had an addition with a really bad paint job, no HVAC, and a bunch of small jobs left unfinished. Brantley stopped responding to attempts to contact him. Weeks went by without any sort of status or response from him. Finally we fired him so we could move forward with completing the job ourselves. Brantley took several thousand dollars from us without performing the work he was contracted to do. The amount of money was not large enough to warrant going to court/arbitration, but it is a significant amount of money to us. Equally important, we contracted with him on good faith, believing he would be a responsive and honest contractor. We were sorely disappointed on both points. We ended up contracting with the HVAC firm ourselves to have the mini-split system installed, effectively paying for it twice. As far as the "per day penalty payments", we never saw a dime of that. Our "turn-key" addition took 5 months before we fired Brantley Properties, and we're still working on finishing it. If you do decide to contract with Brantley Properties, please allow me to suggest the following: - Brantley is a very, very nice person, and has a lot of good ideas. He was terrible at keeping us up to date with status reports, though, and was mostly available only through email. If you desire/require better progress reports, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. - Do not break up the agreed upon payment schedule to accelerate the rate at which he is paid. His interest in our job peaked before each check was due, and fell off very rapidly after. - Keep a sharp eye on the subcontractors to make sure the work is being performed properly. If we hadn't asked a bunch of questions to the flooring contractor it would have been put down incorrectly. One of the reasons we hired a general contractor is so we wouldn't have to do that. - Where possible, directly pay the subcontractors yourself, rather than funneling the money through Brantley properties. That ensures the money goes where it is supposed to. I wish we had done that with the HVAC subcontractor to start with. If, after reading the above suggestions, you wonder what benefit you derive from hiring Brantley Properties as a general contractor, that is exactly what we are now wondering, too.

The job went very well. Brantley's team was able to complete the work in a couple of weeks. Brantley was hands-on... very helpful in picking materials, and making suggestions, based upon his experience. He is very detailed oriented. He vistied the home frequently to check on the work. HIs team of roofers, framers and painters were very serious about their work. As a result, I have a new look on the 30 year old exterior that should last for many years.