Man Blames Builder For Home Nightmare

HARLEYSVILLE, Pa. - Wet weather is making life more miserable for a Montgomery County homeowner. He says a bankrupt builder left him with a pile of mud, a bug problem, and a cesspool next door.

Now his problem property needs help.

Chances are that Ed Crotty won't be getting the help he needs, at least not from the builder that sold him his home, reported Fox 29's Claudia Gomez.

T.H. Properties suddenly ceased operations two weeks ago.

Now the company's bankruptcy could mean homeowners, like Crotty, are stuck with problems that won't go away.

"If you look just around the right there, you kind of see my inground pool, otherwise known as 'The Sediment Basin,'" says homeowner Ed Crotty.

Where his neighbors are supposed to be, T.H. Properties promised Ed Crotty they'd fill the basin, and then build two more homes. Instead, the narrow strip of dirt may be the only difference between waterfront property and a landslide.

"Maybe I need a structural engineer to actually give me the very real answer to that question. That's not going to be cheap,” says Crotty.

Neither will all the other work that still needs to be done.

"When the heavy rain really comes, it just kind of gathers where we actually try to drive vehicles through," says Crotty.

He also has an unpaved driveway, a front yard that never got seeded and a nonexistent hand rail by the back door.

"Unfortunately, that was one of the other items that we were supposed to be receiving after our closing date," Crotty tells Fox 29.

The neighborhood abandoned by construction crews is called "Biltmore Estates," but it looks more like a war zone.

"There was actually someone that I met that called this 'our little slice of Iraq,'" says Crotty.

It is complete with swarms of mosquitoes from the pond, attracted by the lights inside his home.

"All we really want, and I think I speak for everybody here, is for THP to finish the job that was promised to people that bought homes," Crotty says.

T.H. Properties hasn't been returning Fox 29’s many phone calls. But in a recorded message on its office line, it says the company is vowing to resume construction in the next few weeks, if creditors allow. Right now, that's a big if.