Would-be home buyers want money back from builder
Eyewitness News: The customers say they tried to get their earnest money returned, but nothing was happening, that's when they called us.

The dream house Lasundra Deloach had all planned out never got off the printed page, even though she signed a contract and paid her developer earnest money.

She said, "We gave him $1,000 in cash. He gave me the receipt and said we are going to start building in July."

Deloach says days and then weeks and then months went by without any work being done on the lot she selected. So Deloach wanted her money back.

"Kept calling him, no answer," she said.

Gwen White says she gave the same developer $1,000 for a home in the same subdivision, and it too was never built.

White said, "He promised us six months ago that he would start building in area two and that's when we put our money down and was promised a house."

White says she also is having trouble getting a refund.

"He won't return phone calls," she said. "He won't return any kind of correspondence to give us our money back."

We found at least a half dozen people who say the same thing happened to them with the same builder. With no luck getting a refund on their own, they turned to us.

So we went to the developer's office to find out why. We were told the owner was out. But within days of our visit to the offices of KNM Developers, the customers received full refunds. We wanted to know why it took our involvement.

"Partially it is true about you coming in and intervening," admitted Dan Roberson, owner of KNM Developers. "The reason the homes were not finished or started is because credit issues we had to resolve before we could go forward."

Roberson says some of the clients in question had low credit scores and that delayed the process of them getting fully financed. Roberson also says some clients changed plans, even lot sites.

Roberson says in the end those clients were unwilling to wait to resolve the issues, opting instead to back out of the deal. But Roberson admits things could have been handled differently.

"I honestly should and could have been more communication, a better communication with them," he said.

Roberson says some of the clients did not deserve refunds, but he has given the money back anyway to everyone who requested it.

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