Complaints against a Colorado home builder are piling up not only from the homeowners and their unfinished builds, but subcontractors who say they are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars from Creekstone Homes. After multiple attempts to resolve the issues, the home owners brought their problems to our newsroom.
Local families have faced months of delays, failed inspections, even threats of foreclosure for Creekstone's mishandlings. I have seen first-hand the unfinished work inside their homes and the lack of response from the homebuilder.
“We did not receive our front door for months and months and months,” as we walked inside Kelly and Glen Rosser’s home, the issues continued. The builder tried to install a recirculating hood vent, which is against the building code. The Rossers also showed us the cabinets, a microwave and dishwasher that were botch installations. Outside the Rossers point to holes in the stucco and unfinished deck posts. The required certificate to build their fence was missing. The family had to rehome their puppy after learning Creekstone never filed for the paperwork.
To make matters worse the Rosser’s received a lien over Christmas time because Creekstone failed to pay subcontractors for their work and the family was threatened with foreclosure. Kelly Rosser explains, “So you can imagine, even though this is not our doing and no fault of our own and we certainly didn’t owe the subcontractor money. They obviously wanted their money and they had a right to that money and Creekstone wasn’t really making any effort to remove the lien from our property until it went into a threat of foreclosure.”
The issues the Rosser's have had are echoed by other Creekstone homeowners. Stacey Courtney tells me, “Well, the trouble started kind of immediately. The communication is pretty much zil. You email somebody, they don’t email you back. You try to call, they don’t answer. The warranty company is just a joke as well.”
I talked to six families in the Wolf Ranch area, it is one of three Colorado Springs communities where Creekstone builds. The families all have major issues when it comes to communication and getting items fixed on their new builds. Ryan Schlosser tells me, “Six months of time went by that we couldn’t get orientation items fixed. I am talking about even the littlest of things like a screen for the basement window.” Schlosser says Creekstone failed to mitigate runoff from an unfinished property next to them.
“These are not issues where there’s been defects. These are not issues where something has broken since moving in. These are things that were not done upon closing, and they have record on a punch list.” Kelly and Glen Rosser have been sure to document everything through a paper trail of emails between them and those at Creekstone regarding incomplete work and missing items.
Stacy Courtney says the unfinished items on her home were consistently marked as complete when they had not been fixed, “Then we’d have to go through and dispute it and be like this hasn’t been completed and then a couple days later they would mark it again as completed when it never has.”
Courtney and her husband were also threatened with foreclosure after Creekstone failed to pay the concrete company that poured their driveway. Courtney questions, “Why should we have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for a lawyer to fight this lien? It should be all on Creekstone.”.
This prompted me to look into just how many liens currently exist with Creekstone Homes. A lien is a legal claim placed against the property because of unpaid debt. It can put owners at risk of losing their property if the debt remains unpaid. A simple search of public records on the El Paso County clerks and recorders website shows more than 100 liens against Creekstone- from granite companies, to roofing, concrete, electric and flooring. I reached out to 17 of the subcontractors on this list. All but one tells me that they have had to fight tooth and nail to get paid from Creekstone.
Guys Flooring is in an active lawsuit against Creekstone Homes, seeking $270,000 in unpaid debt. I spoke with the senior vice president, Brian Routzon who tells me that after multiple attempts to get paid and rounds of mediation, Guys Flooring filed a lawsuit.
I reached out to Creekstone by phone and email nearly a dozen times. They did not return calls, only emailing, “We would love to talk about CreekStone! Lots of good things happening here!
If you would like to send over some questions we will do our best to answer them for you.”
Creekstone has bare foundations that have been sitting for years in the Wolf Ranch neighborhood. So I reached out to Norwood, the land developer to ask if they plan to continue working with Creekstone and they sent me this statement:
“As the developer of Wolf Ranch, we are aware of the unfinished homes that are owned by Creekstone Homes. We have been in contact with Creekstone representatives for many months trying to resolve the state of these houses. We have been told that construction is likely to resume in the coming weeks. It is our desire to see this situation resolved as quickly as possible.”
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