CLEVELAND — Buying a home for the first time can be an excited but stressful experience. However, for two Cleveland families that live just doors apart that stress has continued months after they got the keys. The first-time homeowners allege the company that renovated and sold them their homes has left numerous issues unaddressed.
Sherita Robinson, a mother of two, and Brian Smith, a father of three, both bought homes in the 17000 block of Stockbridge Avenue, which is on Cleveland’s East Side. Smith purchased his home in May 2018 and five months later Robinson bought her home three doors down. Both of the new homeowners purchased their home through Grovewood Properties LLC, a Euclid-based company that renovates and later sells homes in the Cleveland area that require a little TLC.
The previous owner of both homes is Property Improvement Specialists Inc, whose owner is the lead contractor for Grovewood, state business records show.
When Robinson purchased her home in October 2018, Grovewood allowed her to move into her home two weeks before her closing date in an effort to avoid having to both pay rent at her apartment and her first mortgage payment. Robinson said the renovation of her home wasn’t entirely complete but Grovewood assured her that the issues would be corrected.
Robinson said she created a "punch list" of things that needed to be fixed. However, only roughly half of those items have been corrected, she said. In the months since she moved in, other issues have come to light.
“[The lead contractor] tells me that this house was properly done and taken care of, which it’s not,” Robinson said. “Me and this guy have been texting back and forth for six months. I have all the texts and all the pictures and everything. He’s going to tell me that, ‘oh I didn’t know this was happening.’ I told him, ‘you have 6 months of text messages, yes you do.’"
Aside from a leak in the basement, many of the issues are minor or cosmetic in nature. The issues include a loose front doorknob; missing quarter round where the floor meets the baseboard; what appears to be a minor leak in the roof of the garage; back steps that don’t appear to be affixed to the home; loose flooring in the kitchen; peeling paint in the bathroom; a bathroom door that appears to be shaved down to the point where there is an inch-wide gap between the door and door jamb, as well as some doorways that are not fully sealed.
“I will go broke to make sure everything in this home is done, which I shouldn’t have to. You see these deficiencies,” Robinson said. “If somebody is calling you and telling you that they have deficiencies in their home and they’ve only been here for six months, I feel like as you, being a businessman and owning your own business, you should come out and correct the problems. He has yet to do so.”
Over the phone on Tuesday afternoon, the lead contractor and owner of Property Improvement Specialists Inc. defended his work, pointing to the fact that many items on Robinson’s punch list were already completed. The contractor called Robinson’s criticisms unfair because she has not brought those issues up with him, he said. However, Robinson points to her text message history which details numerous items that she brought up.
As for the leak in the basement, the contractor said he told Robinson that the issue couldn’t be corrected or investigated until the spring when the ground softened. The contractor said he will meet with Robinson later this week to discuss the issues, which he insisted will be remedied.
The contractor also told News 5 that he removed a limb from a tree on a neighbor’s property that was hanging over Robinson’s property. That expense, the contractor said, came out of his own pocket.
The contractor reiterated that the issues Robinson brought up would be corrected.
As for Smith, the owner of the home three doors down from Robinson, he said he’s been waiting for the contractor to repair a window in a bedroom as well as finish installing screens on all the windows in the home. In the past couple of weeks, Smith said the lights in the garage have stopped working. The air conditioning unit has also been on the fritz, he said.
“It’s very frustrating actually, especially with having kids and a wife. I wouldn’t call [the contractor] if I didn’t absolutely need to. It’s what they said to do: I call him and [he’ll] come out. They won’t do it,” Smith said.
As part of their purchase of the home, Smith said Grovewood told them the company would handle maintenance of the home for the first year after purchase. Smith believes the company is delaying the maintenance until that one year window is expired.
“It’s a lot of little things, really, little minor things. It doesn’t really seem like it takes much time to come out and do. I feel like they can do it. It’s not like big projects that they have to do,” Smith said.
