CITRUS COUNTY, Fla. — When Madeline Frets made her first payment for a new-build home in Citrus County, she never imagined she would still be waiting for that dream home to become a reality almost four years later.
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“It’s painful to drive by and see it just sitting there,” Frets said through tears. “It’s just sometimes overwhelming. And I’m by myself, so it’s hard to handle.”
The home in Citrus Springs was being built by Van Der Valk Construction, but the Citrus County home builder filed for bankruptcy back in April, leaving Frets and dozens of other home buyers in limbo with incomplete homes in both the Citrus Springs neighborhood and Inverness Village Four.
“The pool hasn’t been done. Landscaping hasn’t been done. I was supposed to have brick facade. That hasn’t been done. The driveway has to be redone,” Frets said of her home. “The septic tank hasn’t even been installed.”
Frets imagines she will need to spend up to $60,000 out-of-pocket to have her home completed.
For Frets and other home buyers, however, there’s now a renewed hope for justice and reimbursement because of a July 1 filing in Van Der Valk Construction’s bankruptcy case.
According to a preliminary report authored by a court-appointed trustee, home buyers were seemingly “duped” through “outright fraud, collusion, or clever contract structuring.”
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The trustee, an Orlando-based attorney, stated that Van Der Valk Construction proceeded with home construction in the Inverness Village 4 neighborhood without obtaining environmental permits and should have been aware of the potential problem.
To this day, the beleaguered neighborhood — where Van Der Valk built many of the homes — lacks both paved streets and a drainage system, so the neighborhood’s rudimentary roads continue to erode with each rain storm. Homeowners in Inverness Village 4 remain in a potentially dangerous predicament.
“There is evidence that customers were told roads would be constructed after the build-out and that the reason the roads weren’t built was so that construction equipment didn’t damage the roads. Similarly, there is evidence that consumers were told the infrastructure would cost around $6,000 or $6,500 per lot. However, according to the report commissioned by Citrus County, that cost could be as high as $109,000 per lot,” the trustee wrote in the report.
The trustee said he also has “substantial concern” that Van Der Valk Construction, as it began to struggle financially, took on new buyers to help complete existing builds.
The trustee is also studying if Van Der Valk Construction inappropriately transferred funds or assets to insiders or affiliates.
In its bankruptcy filing, Van Der Valk Construction reported more than $1 million in liabilities but less than $100,000 in assets.
“The investigation uncovered multiple related parties and certain related party transactions,” the trustee wrote. “These raise significant red flags, but as of the date of this report, the Trustee cannot conclude that they were necessarily inappropriate.”
The trustee said he will continue to study if Van Der Valk Construction and its owner, Chris Matser, committed “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, or gross mismanagement.”
Frets hopes the trustee will keep digging.
“How can he sleep at night knowing that he has damaged — he has damaged — he has ruined — families — their lives,” she said of Matser.
Frets also hopes she will live in her dream home sooner rather than later.
“I should have been dead in 2022 when they told me I had six months to live,” she said.
Frets, a 9/11 survivor, has stage four lung cancer.
“This was my dream — something to leave behind for my kids, for my grandkids, and I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I really don’t know,” she said through tears. “Sometimes, I don’t know how I handle it.”
To Frets, making memories with family in her dream home would help ease the immense pain.
Friday, ABC Action News spoke briefly with Van Der Valk Construction’s owner, Matser, who stated that he was limited in what he could say in his defense due to the ongoing court proceedings.
In his report, the trustee said there is a “substantial likelihood” that impacted home buyers will “file complaints against Matser’s general contractor license with the Florida Department of Professional Regulation” and attempt to sue him for damages.
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