Ocoee couple fights Lennar for lot discrepancy

As they stand outside their new home and look to the north, Eric and Chelsea Romano take in the dirt lot with a partially built home sitting on it.

The Romanos’ green lawn abuts the dirt lot, creating a stark contrast between their home — one of the last in Phase Three of Ocoee’s new Arden Park North community — and the beginning of Phase Four. 

The problem, the Romanos said, is that they were never told the new house next to theirs — and the other two directly north of it — were going to be there. In fact, Eric Romano said, they chose their lot specifically because it abuts a conservation area to the east and because the three homes directly north of it were supposed to be open green space.

PREMIUM PAID

Last July, the Romanos decided to sell their Winter Garden home and began house-hunting in Arden Park North, a community built by Lennar Corporation. They set up an appointment at the sales office and were presented with maps of available lots and price ranges.

“We had kind of narrowed our search down to three different houses in that neighborhood — one of which was a corner lot that was a little closer to the entrance of the neighborhood, and the other was just a normal interior lot that had two neighbors on each side and one behind,” Eric Romano said. “The third lot was basically the last house of Phase Three before they started building Phase Four. After looking at the prices, we really liked the last house. … We had a nice view of trees and a lot of open land — there’s a lake back there, so a really nice view. On the north side of the house … according to the maps that we had, it showed green space there. 

“The sales guy really pushed it as a premium lot,” he said. “You only have one neighbor next to you, because they can’t build in the back, you’ve got green space next to you and just one neighbor on the south side of your house. We really liked that.”

Not long after closing on the home in November, the Romanos learned there were supposed to be three lots rather than open space all along. The problem, they said, was the plats were not shown on any maps they were shown, nor were they disclosed to them. 

Eric Romano said they paid about $10,000 more for the lot than their neighbor on an interior lot because of the open space. He sent a complaint to Lennar, he said, and got a reply a few weeks later.

“I finally get a reply saying essentially that, ‘Per your contract, we essentially have the right to change mews and lots and this and that,’” Eric Romano said. “I then reach out to the city of Ocoee to see if there’s anything that they can do, because this clearly was not what we just paid a pretty (large) amount of money for.”

Upon meeting with the city’s land development director, Eric Romano said, he asked to see paperwork to determine whether the three lots were approved by the city and when. 

“The approval from the city will tell me whether those lots had been there the whole time and they just didn’t tell us and still took the extra money for the lot from us, or if those were approved after we signed our contract and they just failed to let us know that something’s changing,” he said. “That second scenario, per our contract, technically they did have the right to change that.”

Eric Romano said the paperwork showed the three home sites were approved by the city in May 2019, two months prior to him and his wife walking into the sales office.

“None of their sales people were telling the potential buyers that they were going to be there,” Eric Romano said.

LITIGATION

The Romanos have hired an attorney and have been negotiating with Lennar since the end of December. Eric Romano said the builder has not been willing to accept any responsibility for the situation. Rather, he said, Lennar told him they already had given them plenty of incentives upon buying the house — including a marked-down price and payment of closing costs.

“Our rebuttal to that was, ‘Well, that wasn’t specific to my family,’” Eric Romano said. “Everyone who walked in to buy a house got those incentives. … Essentially, all we were originally asking for them to do was just give us back that $10,000 difference that essentially makes my lot no different from my neighbor’s. ... We just wanted what we were owed.”

Representatives from Lennar declined to comment due to pending litigation.