Shea Homes, San Diego, CA - after paying money for new home while it was being built, the home was sold to another buyer that paid more money

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on November 28, 2002:

From:

RE: Shea Homes, San Diego, CA - after paying money for new home while it was being built, the home was sold to another buyer that paid more money Shea Homes is a major builder of homes in Southern California. After 2 years of being #1 on their priority list to buy a home in their Scripps Highland development in San Diego, the home I wanted was released for sale on April 13, 2002. I gave them $5000 and signed some preliminary papers.

My husband and I had been prequalified 2 years earlier. During the following weeks we paid monies towards a variety of options, we met every option deadline. The house was to be ready on September 15, 2002.

On May 30, 2002, which was 6 weeks into what we considered escrow, we received a letter in the mail from Shea that they were returning all our money and the house was no longer available. They sold it for more money to someone else. We were completely blindsighted.

We had no contingincies. Their CFO along with other higher ups in the company told us to sue them if we wanted, they did not care because they had " 200 people waited in line to pay alot more money than we had paid for it" Greed is pathetic.

We are not the only ones this has happened to. I have all documentation to back up this horrible experience with Shea Homes. We have also been told by numerous people that they do not honor their warranty on the homes. You would think this fraud. They get away with this because they are a billion dollar company.