Choose your developer/builder wisely

I suspect this business has closed down. If not please ensure not to do any business with them! I wont go into details but the just is that they did not complete my build and left me stranded after taking 90% of my loan. Getting a new builders quotes to complete left me with an additional 50% of the funds required which means they should have only taken 50% of the original loan but instead was awarded 90% already. Other than that we are talking about a small 90 square meter house and after 3 years could not even complete it. They were clever in building my house in 5 months to where it is at right now and then taking 90% of the loan. Then left it for 2 years not doing anything and after pushing it was always just excuse on excuse and then promises on promises. I was given 3 times my 1 month occupation which never materialized. That placed me in sticky situation as my funds were finished so I could not chase them away and get another builder, so was between a rock and a hard place. In my attempt to get support from my bank FNB, NHBRC and the estate lead to nothing. Bank said they only handle pay out and I signed before they did. In my own defence here I bought from a developer with a set plan in Wedgewood golf estate and they did plenty of these same looking plans so were never questioning the process and hence signed when pay out was required assuming my bank ensured it was correctly inspected and approved. I have no knowledge of building a house and the process thereof and understand the risks involved but again based on the golf estate and fixed plans i felt the risk to be low otherwise I would never have done it. Nontheless I learned some lessons here and own up to my own mistakes merely as illiturate and expecting professionals to guide me. The NHBRC said they could do nothing as there was no bad building done, merely bad business being done. Turning to legal advice again just pointed out there is no way I could prove they took money for something they have not completed and the fact that I signed for the payments. Lastly the estate just said it was a contract between me and the builder. I hope this will help you to learn from my mistakes if nothing else. When building ensure you understand the process, the payout mark and get an external valuator involved to ensure the pay outs are correctly managed. The most important part is when signing the contract ensure they also specify a completion period in the contract to keep them accountable as well.