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It is difficult to summarize our experience with Brandon Weiss and Evolutionary Home Builders (EHB) in this forum, since it goes back to at least September, 2014, but here's my attempt (note: a more detailed version of events will be made available elsewhere on the web):
We signed up with Brandon in September, 2014 to build a Passive House. We put down $30,000 and signed a contract that would start the process. We were given a preliminary budget ranging from $375-410,000.
After some delay on their part, they finally presented us with a Build Budget of $500,000 in November, 2015, even though very little had changed since the preliminary budget numbers --- and certainly nothing that would justify such a drastic leap in cost.
We explained that we could not afford this, and we requested that our Design/Build contract be canceled. In addition, we asked that Brandon give us a partial refund of $15,000, while also releasing the copyright on the drawings, and voiding the clause in the contract that stated we could not build on our own lot with any other company for two years. He refused.
Back in early March, 2016, Brandon contacted me via voicemail and email letting us know he was interested in settling our dispute with him. This occurred, we believe not coincidentally, after he learned I had been in contact with his former clients, the Illinois Attorney General’s Consumer Fraud Bureau, and Katrin Klingenberg, founder and Executive Director of Passive House Institute US, in addition to leaving a review of EHB on the Houzz website. He claimed he was willing to meet all of our terms, the same terms, in fact, that we had offered months ago --- a partial refund of $15,000, release of the copyright on our drawings (so we don’t have to worry about a frivolous copyright infringement lawsuit), and releasing us from the (absurd) PSA demand that we not build with any other contractor on our own lot for two years.
It became clear, after some back and forth, that Brandon was willing to settle, but only if we were prepared to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and only if we met with him in person. He was insistent on this last point.
Brandon claimed it was because I had made public our exchanged emails and other documents pertaining to our case. We believe, however, that his intentions were to get us in a room in the hopes of intimidating us into accepting altered terms, or pressuring us to sign an agreement immediately, without the benefit of our legal counsel having a chance to look over the document.
After our lawyer asked Brandon to provide verbiage, meaning ‘what exactly do you expect us to sign’, prior to our meeting, Brandon disappeared --- ceasing to respond at all --- which, once again, only confirmed our suspicions regarding his real intentions all along.
Why disappear after we requested something so straightforward as seeing the document prior to our meeting? Who would be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement without having their lawyer look it over first? Why do we have to sign it immediately, without ample time to review it? If normal real estate transactions can occur with only a client's lawyer present, why not in this case? We feel Brandon has been less than transparent or fair with us, so why would we want to sit down with him in a room ever again?
Our original lawyer gave up on this as a lost cause, so we hired a second lawyer to contact Brandon one more time. Brandon's response: same terms --- and, no, you can't see the document beforehand.
Why not meet our demands, which are pretty basic and more than fair, and move on? Why, instead, does he continue to take such a hyper-aggressive stance? Why be so ruthless?
Furthermore, if Brandon is so sure he’s done nothing wrong, why is he so afraid of the paper trail documenting our experience with him and EHB? Why the lack of transparency and obsession with secrecy, and insistence on the need for a non-disclosure agreement, if Brandon feels he can defend what he's done to us?