Agoura Hills Acts : Complaints Lock Owners Out of New Tract Homes

Homeowners’ complaints of poor workmanship in a luxury housing tract prompted Agoura Hills officials Tuesday to block occupancy of any more homes in the subdivision.

Officials said Maler Dinow Developers must make repairs to inhabited houses in its 79-home Village of Oak Creek project before buyers will be allowed to move into the last four unoccupied dwellings.

Residents began moving into the subdivision’s handsome, two-story homes two years ago. Since then, they have charged that the company has been slow to act on complaints of leaks, structural cracks and plumbing problems.

They also contend that 15 homes are threatened by an 800-foot-long concrete-block wall at the front of the project that may topple into backyards.

But company officials denied Tuesday that the wall and the homes are structurally unsound. They said they are taking steps to speed “cosmetic” repairs to the houses.

Workmanship Complaints

Agoura Hills Planning Director Paul Williams, who ordered occupancy permits withheld, confirmed that most of the homeowners’ complaints have centered around workmanship--painting problems, scratches on doors and wall patching. He said such cosmetic repairs could take up to three months.

There are no known major structural problems with the tract, Williams said.

The workmanship dispute is the third in the past year at an Agoura Hills residential development. The other problems have involved condominium projects, including one where homeowners ended up selling their units back to the builder and moving.

Tuesday’s action by the city was protested by Bobby Kleiman, Maler Dinow’s marketing director. He said the occupancy ban will hurt buyers who were scheduled to move into the homes--which cost up to $285,000--in two weeks.

“The houses have been sold and people are waiting to move in,” Kleiman said. “I don’t think it’s fair to penalize someone else for our mistake.”

‘Honoring Warranties’

Kleiman blamed the slow repair work on staffing problems with his company’s two-man maintenance crew. The workers were supposed to handle all complaints registered during a one-year warranty period on new houses.

“We’ve doubled our maintenance staff and started collecting lists,” he said. “We are honoring the warranties beyond that one-year period. The homeowners feel we’ve been negligent in completing repairs and, to an extent, they are rightfully angry. We’ve had changes in supervisors and maintenance men.”

The company assigned workmen Tuesday to investigate problems with the stucco-covered block wall, which is perched atop a 20-foot slope and shields homes from traffic on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

William Whyte, project superintendent, used a hammer to chop into the 3-year-old wall to look for interior cement and steel-rod reinforcement. He found both, although neither was required by building codes in effect at the time of construction.

Whyte said soils experts will be called in to explain why the wall is cracking and apparently beginning to slide into backyards along Oakpath Drive.

“It doesn’t give you a very good feeling when there’s a three-quarter-inch separation between the fence and the sidewalk, like you see here,” he said.

More Than an ‘Eyesore’

The slippage is alarming to homeowner Charles Dearman, who lives below the wall. “Until now, I thought the biggest problem was it’s an eyesore,” he said Tuesday.

Dearman said he is among those who have become frustrated dealing with the company on repairs. “It took a lot of effort on our part to get the things done that we got done. I had to give them three formal lists and lots of little notes. They kept changing foremen and losing the lists,” he said.

Such was not the case with another Agoura Hills project where homeowners’ fears of collapsing walls prompted developer Hilbert Chu to buy back his $100,000 units this summer. Structural repairs are now being made to that project, Westlake Villas on Colodny Drive.

Unhappiness over landscaping and cosmetic structural repairs at another project, Chateau Park town house development on Canwood Street, pitted residents against Dale Poe Development Corp. last December. That dispute eventually was resolved, according to residents.