Ann Arbor Builders, Inc.

I have been working with Alex de Parry from Ann Arbor Builders for a little over a year now. He has taken over as the general construction manager of a major development project that was stopped due to pure incompetance, as well as outright theft and overcharging by the previous general contractor. He patiently developed a working plan that resolves, in stages, the problems created by his predecessor; oversaw revised architectural plans that are properly designed for the project and sheparded them through the various City and Historic District Commission approvals needed. Once that was accomplished he oversaw the necessary demolition of a portion of the property and is now preparing to make further repairs to stabilize the building before the project can move forward. All I have seen, as well as the principals involved, is a refreshing pattern of honest, experienced advice and consistant information; an effort to keep the project on track and within a realistic budget and most importantly, an extremely high level of integrity not provided by the past contractors. I would recommend Alex de Parry and Ann Arbor Builders as an excellent choice.
Nov 4th, 2020

Mar 10th, 2020

We regret building a house with Ann Arbor Builders. We have found Alex de Parry to be untrustworthy, unwilling to act in good faith to correct serious problems, and uninterested in building a high-quality home. They'll happily build you a "good enough" house though. "Good enough" might be costly to correct, like a poorly installed hardwood floor that is permanently cupped -- enough to be a nuisance, but not enough to violate the home warranty. "Good enough" might be ignoring city design requirements, like just dumping sump pump discharge into our yard instead of into a discharge pipe connected to the storm sewer. Good enough might be not installing the required street lighting and then telling the HOA to leave their garage lights on instead. Or "Good enough" might be disregarding the site plan for the entire eight-house development, failing to correctly grade the backyards on most of the street, and not installing overflow drainage to the street's stormwater sewer. As a result of Ann Arbor Builders shoddy work, they sold us a home so flood prone that we can reasonably expect multiple basement floods each year. We had two in 2019 and one so far in 2020. After "finishing" our neighbors backyard landscaping, two severe thunderstorms two days apart (July 4 and 6, 2019) left us first with 1.5" and then 15" (fifteen inches!) of water in our basement. We were told by Alex a number of disingenuous reasons including a 500-year storm, a 100-year storm (it wasn't even close), or even a jammed sump pump -- the same sump pump that pumped all 10,000 gallons of water out of the basement over the course of about nine hours after the flood waters shattered an egress window and poured in (see attached video). Ann Arbor Builders added some overflow drainage after the fact (three times, since the first two attempts were done incorrectly). And now after a year, they still refuse to offer any evidence that the work they've done is actually correct. Since they "fixed" the problem, we've had another basement flood, after which we started studying the city-approved site plan for ourselves. This is when we found all the problems with backyard grading, a missing retaining wall, and a missing bioswale which together were designed to keep water from inundating our house. Despite being able to walk around the site and point out these site plan discrepancies, Ann Arbor Builders continue to insist that everything is being done correctly. Further, they refuse to actually answer direct questions about the site. And don't take a lack of information/reviews online to be a sign of a good reputation. We know we are not the only people who have had serious problems with Ann Arbor Builders. At least one of our neighbors was guilted into removing a negative review after they ran into significant problems soon after moving in to their home.
Sep 24th, 2019

Nov 17th, 2018