Your rights to cancel or rescind the agreement will be in your contract with the builder and governed by legislation that may override the contract. You will have to consult your lawyer to understand your rights. But before that, why don't you just call the builder and find out when he plans to start? Two weeks between closing on the lot and the start of construction is not unusual.

I agree, two weeks without a communication is not unusual when construction has not started.

Call the builder; go to his office; make good faith efforts to contact her/him. In the meantime, read your contract and see what the terms are for default and for cancelling the contract.

Many builders are not very accomplished when it comes to communications, schedules and customer service. Building is their strong suit (hopefully)!

Good luck on your project.

Me and my wife have been calling but not getting an answer. We have been doing a lot of the stuff on own like checking behind him looking for the builders permit which the city has no idea of and saying none has been filed with them. Im glad too know to weeks without contact is not unusual though. Someone yesterday staked the property out with sticks though so maybe that's a good sign. Thanks to all.

Did you check the builders references? If not I would recommend doing so and also ask them what to expect as far as communication and things they wish they had done differently when dealing with the builder.

As was mention earlier, two weeks is not much time at all. What does your contract state for start date for the construction or at least site work? I would be concerned if he does not call you back at the very least, but allot depends on your answer to my question as well because I am certain your not his only client.

The builder would need to do a survey, which would include staking out the footprint (or whatever it is they stake out, I'm actually not sure) before he could apply for the building permit.

It would bother me if my phone calls to my builder were not returned over a period of weeks.

I agree with everyone else. Two weeks is not long at all. It could take that long to go through the building permit process if that has not been done already. However, if you have been trying to get in touch with him for two weeks and he has not returned your calls, I would be concerned. Most contracts have specific language about how a contract can be voided by the owner or the contractor. I highly doubt that you have any grounds for cancelation at this point.

Thanks everyone I will keep everyone posted on how this goes. I haven't talked to him yet, but I'm in touch with the city permit department and he turned in the paperwork, but there missing some items and as soon as they get those they will review the plans. Also the temporary light pole was installed. So here goes nothing.

Once you owe him a good sum of money your communications should improve. Establish expectations for updates/reports and best time/way to reach if not already in contract. After that, make sure payment reflects no more than value of work in place less the retainage.

My advice is to keep a log of all phone calls and communication with this builder. Try to communicate via email so you have everything documented. His lack of communication for 2 weeks is a red flag....here is our story...

We thought if we signed a contract with our builder he would feel the commitment and be more dedicated to our build. Not so....it got worse because I guess he felt like he had our 85k as a down payment for our build.

Another red flag was his lack of answering questions and he never took notes in our meetings. He always said "no problem" about any of our requests or questions.

Yet another red flag was that it took 6 weeks for our build to be approved by our town. Most of our friends said it took 5 days. Come to find out, he didn't include any detail or incorrect details about our build. The town had to keep asking him to resubmit more information.

Other strange things happened such as the tear down of the house on the property cost double what he quoted. He said we would have water and power on the property in two weeks and we caught workers using hoses at our neighbor's houses without permission. We fired him 3 1/2 months later and we still didn't have power.

The last straw is when he tried to convince us that our stem wall looked fine yet it was crooked, and sloppy. It never passed building code or inspection. He also added an extra course of block without our permission.

After all of these red flags, we issued a stop work order. Our attorney explained it would cost a lot of money to sue him, so my husband handled a negotiation with the builder. It worked out pretty good except for the trusses that he said he forgot to stop having them fabricated. They could no longer be used because of the extra course of block he added. The house was too tall for the town guidelines. So we had to pay for the trusses.

Firing our builder cost us some money, buy it was worth it because our new builder is very detailed and we know our house will be much better! I know in Florida the builders are very protected and it is very difficult to sue them.

Good luck and record and document everything!!!!