Abandoned House in a Lost Subdivision

If you're building a new home, be on the lookout for subdivisions, that are not really there.  The Thielges house is built in a subdivision, that was never finished.  We launched an investigation into their problem a year-and-a-half ago, and now there's new information.  We investigate what went wrong with the construction project during that time, and the man they say, is responsible..

So far, the Thielges family has paid 189-thousand dollars on a 275-thousand house they cannot live in.  "It's very depressing," says Lowrie Thielges.  "Everything is overgrown, the house is in deplorable condition.  It's not what we thought it was going to be."

Today, Lowrie Thielges says, she can barely stand to look at her family's dream home, all boarded up, in fact.. it's the first time she's been back to it, since her builder David Sanders abandoned the Crown Vista Subdivision the home was supposed to be in.  Sanders walked away from finishing the subdivision after our investigation gegan a year and a half ago, and when he did, water and sewer lines could not be connected to the Thielges house because of where it is.

"The address was actually on Big Ridge Road," says Lee Norris, deputy administrator to the Chattanooga Department of Public Works, "but the access to the house was planned off a private alley, internal to the 'to-be-built' subdivision."  Although Mr. Norris says his public works division issued a valid building permit for the home, he says, it was Sanders who didn't follow through.  "He didn't have an adequate plan going into this whole thing," he says, "it was not, in my opinion, well-thought out."

We dug deeper into Sanders' activities, since he walked away from his homebuilding responsibilities here.. we uncovered a huge money problem.  We discovered that David Sanders, and his Sanders Construction and Development Corporation is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy.. All of his assets are being liquidated.  Among his 45 creditors, are several banks, the Revenue Departments of both Tennessee and Georgia, and the Internal Revenue Service..

We also went to his last known address in Ringgold, the one that is on his bankruptcy petition.  We discovered the house has been cleaned out.. Not a stick of furniture in it.  That's because the realtor who's SELLING the house, told me.. The bank foreclosed on it three months ago.

Probably the thing that disturbs Lowrie Thielges the most, as she looks at her dream home David Sanders shattered, is the fact that Sanders, still has a contractor's license from the Tennessee Contractors Board to build homes.  "I'm afraid he might do this to somebody else.. absolutely," she says.

Late this afternoon, we did hear from David Sanders. Although his contractor's license is good until the end of next March, he tells me, he won't be building homes anymore, and he blames the Thielges for part of that.  They are listed as creditors on his bankruptcy petition.  He says he is sorry for what happened to the Thielges, but that there is more to the story of his downfall.  In response to a complaint from the Tennessee Contractor's Board, Sanders blamed his problems on two engineering firms that did work on the subdivision.. he is sticking to that story.  Our investigation continues..