Endless delays at Noma

Maggie, a first time home buyer, writes in about her experience at Noma hoping to find out if there are more delays and how others have been treated. I’ve spoken to several buyers at Noma and her experience appears to be pretty typical of the bunch; copper theft, wrong size windows and bad communication:

The delays are horrendous, even by new construction standards, and the lack of communication between the builder and the management team (thereby affecting communication between management and the buyers) is practically non existent.

It was originally set for completion last September (first closing dates were then) and they spent all summer telling us to expect a small delay, but ‘we’ll schedule a meeting with all of you.” They waited until end of July/August to tell us they hadn’t been able to work on the building much all summer because the windows came in the wrong tint, then when the SECOND shipment came in, they were the wrong size. So they had to reframe all of the windows to fit.

So with a month to go, they tell us of a small delay. Two months later, they suddenly changed their tune (rumor has it it was from copper theft) and the new closing dates started in February. In mid-February, I asked the
management team if we would make my March 22nd closing date. They said of course, with a couple weeks of delay at most.

Two weeks later, they came back and delayed another two months, this time with only a 15 day closing cushion for the builder, since they knew no one would re-sign the addendums with another 60 day buffer.

I ended up backing out- they were unwilling to pay my increase in rent (as a result of going month to month for the delay) and when I threatened to back out, they said that’s fine- they had a list of people waiting for one bedrooms and they could re sell it for so much more.

So I backed out, at which point they fell over themselves to get me to come back. They said I “must have misunderstood” about what they would concede to compensate me for the delay, then asked if I would consider going through with it and flipping it myself.

It should be pointed out that it took them a month to put it back up, and they did indeed jack the price up by 50 grand. But another, better, 1 bedroom came back up at the same time, (only 2 grand more) meaning I would have competed to flip it.

With the new closing dates set through May and June, I’m hearing a rumor there is now another 2 month delay “at least.”

Who is developing Noma? What other projects are they doing/have planned?