Waterdown home build delayed for years

If you plan on buying a new home in the near future you’ll want to pay attention to this story.

Today CHCH News spoke with a family that put a $20,000 down payment on a Waterdown house from developer Sunfield Homes in 2009. They were given a move-in date of 2011 – but they say so far the company has done little to show they plan on building: that is, until we started asking questions.

It was never the plan for Muhammad Khan and his wife Zobia Jawed to be living in cramped quarters in a central Hamilton apartment for this long. In 2009, the couple sold their downtown Toronto condo and purchased a new build in Waterdown to accommodate their growing family….they were told they could move in by May 2011.

But Khan says in 2001, “they actually told us there was an issue with water in that area.” That was the first delay. There would be three more before developer Sunfield Homes, would tell the couple they were putting in an application to build.

“It’s now more than six months and we are still waiting. There is no update when the construction is going to start.”

Jawed says the delays are hard on the family. “We cannot plan out anything in terms of career growth or kids schooling.”

Sunfield’s Spring Creek development off Parkside Drive looks the same today as it did a year ago, according to Khan. When CHCH News spoke with the company’s president Larry Lecci this morning, he told us he’d love to go ahead with development, but they need to wait for a bypass to be approved by the city before they can start building – and right now, it’s undergoing an environmental assessment for an unknown period of time. “Any development within Hamilton that is affected in one way or another by the bypass is put on hold.”

Lecci told us the company had draft approval so they went ahead and sold homes with closing dates that seemed realistic: “until of course things were hampered and delayed by the process”

“It’s costing me every day that goes by because I’m not allowed to do anything. My costs are still growing”

Lecci told us he didn’t plan on even applying for building permits until the environmental assessment on the bypass had been approved. But when CHCH News called back later in the day for clarification, Lecci said he would now be applying for building permits for phase 1B where Khan and Jawed have purchased a home. He now says that phase is not affected by the assessment.

The homeowners said they were notified later today that their house is now being built, but it could still be up to a year and a half before they move in. There are still 40 homes that have been purchased that are in limbo in the development pending the completion of the environmental assessment for a bypass.