Tim Fisher purchased a Vermod ultra-energy-efficient modular home in 2017 for his disabled adult son and a live-in caretaker. He wanted an “instant house” that would be affordable, environmentally friendly and better looking than a typical factory-made home.
But the Cornwall artist says the $134,000 shelter underperformed, and so did the Wilder-based company that sold it to him. By Fisher’s account, windows cracked and doors were hung incorrectly. The heat pump system could not get his son’s bedroom above 50 degrees in the winter. A solar panel nearly fell off the roof. And six months after the house was delivered, Fisher was sitting in the living room visiting with his son when he noticed a potentially bigger problem.
“I looked up and saw that the Sheetrock had cracked, and then I looked down and saw that the floor had sunk,” Fisher said.
Vermod executives disagree with Fisher’s contention about the quality of the home he bought and defend their company’s product and service. “We build a high-performance home. That is the only thing we do here in this company,” said Steve Davis, Vermod’s founder and owner. He and his team point to the accolades the company has received for its innovative product, which combines affordably priced housing with a minimal carbon footprint. Vermod launched in 2013 with support from Efficiency Vermont, a utility ratepayer-funded nonprofit that has funneled nearly $1 million in subsidies to Vermod buyers.
But as the 6-year-old business prepares to finish its 100th home of the future, Fisher isn’t the only customer who is griping. Three others have complained to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office about the company. And in interviews with a half dozen additional Vermod owners and renters, concerns about sagging floors, cracking drywall and moisture problems cropped up repeatedly.
“I would not buy another one,” said Jeff Bushey, a retired school custodian who lives with his wife in a 5-year-old Vermod at the Otter Creek Mobile Home Park in Vergennes. The couple purchased the home from its original owner in 2017 with subsidies and incentives that brought the price down from about $145,000 to $68,000.
With its solar panels, heat pump and triple-pane windows, the Vermod is advertised as a net-zero home that generates all the power it needs to function. It hasn’t quite delivered on that, Bushey said, but it’s come close: Last year, utilities, including heat and electricity, totaled $150 — for the year, Bushey said. In that regard, “it’s unbelievable,” he allowed.
But the modular home has been a maintenance headache, Bushey continued. The couple has spent $8,000 of their own money to replace the flooring, joists, foundation sill and a rear door after moisture problems led to rot and sagging.
Vermod counters that the previous owner created the problem by having a deck installed without proper flashing, allowing rain and melting snow to collect and seep. Further, Bushey failed to do a home inspection before the purchase, which might have alerted him to the problem, said Vermod general manager Kristen Connors, the company founder’s niece. She said the business has been responsive to Bushey’s complaints but that, ultimately, most of them were not Vermod’s fault, and the one-year warranty that comes with a home purchase had already expired.
Bushey says he lived in a mobile home for eight years “that had zero issues” before he moved to the Vermod, “where we’re having all kinds of issues.” He worries about resale value when “all the neighbors are watching the contractors constantly put this place back together.”
Most owners buy directly from the small Vermod factory in Wilder. They choose from several designs and pay their own contractor to put up a foundation, which can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 if it includes a full basement. Vermod delivers the home on a truck and uses a crane to set it on the foundation. It then does finish work to make the house move-in ready. The one-year warranty covers drywall repair, defects in flooring or cabinetry, and some other fixes.
Because modular homes are trucked to their sites, they have to be stiff enough to resist twisting or bending on the road. As a result, they’re less flexible than traditional homes in responding to normal settling and seasonal shifts. “You’re never going to have a modular home without Sheetrock cracking,” but it’s typically nothing more than a cosmetic problem, said Vermod home ownership adviser Ashley Andreas.
Complaints lodged with the Attorney General’s Office show that’s not the only issue consumers have raised. An Indiana man said that the company agreed and then later declined to sell and deliver a Vermod to his out-of-state parcel. LuAnne Rotax claimed the company was slow in finishing the roof of her North Ferrisburgh home, creating the possibility of water damage. And Pennie Wetzel told the AG’s Office in 2014 that the ceiling and walls were cracking in her Vermod, also located in North Ferrisburgh. The floor was sagging so much that “my home is caving in in the center,” she wrote.
Connors, Davis and Andreas say there was no structural problem at Wetzel’s house. “It’s unfortunate that she’s not happy,” Andreas said.
They forwarded Seven Days a 2017 report from an employee at Artisan Engineering who conducted a site visit with Davis at Wetzel’s home. The report noted “no structural” concerns with the floor system. However, it included the disclaimer that a “detailed structural analysis was not performed,” and no finishes were removed to see the underlying framing.
Vermod has patched and painted minor cracking but not much else, Wetzel told Seven Days last week. Her daughter now lives in her Vermod, where the company installed a support brace under the hot water heater. Wetzel thinks the home needs three or four support beams, and she wants Vermod to install them — but the company has refused, she said.
“Is my house ok? No. My house is cracking.” Pennie Wetzel
The other problems have continued, too, Wetzel said. “Is my house OK? No. My house is cracking,” said the part-time UPS employee. “The floors are separating. It’s pretty much junk, and I pay for it every month.”
Outside of Vergennes, a 14-unit Vermod modular home park opened in 2016. It was the first of its kind in the state, with 10 two-bedroom, two three-bedroom and two one-bedroom units. It replaced a derelict mobile home park and today is an attractive neighborhood with green space, decks and energy-efficient Vermods.
But at least two homes have had significant moisture and mold issues that required flooring and walls to be replaced. Further, many of the units at the affordable housing development, known as McKnight Lane, have cracking in the drywall, said Elise Shanbacker, executive director of the Addison County Community Trust, the nonprofit that owns and rents the units.
While she confirmed the issues, Shanbacker does not view them as major. In fact, she says the trust would do another Vermod project.
“We definitely had some cracking and settling. That was sort of the biggest issue after they were delivered. But it was purely cosmetic and, for the most part, has been addressed,” Shanbacker said. “Some of the finish work that was done on-site, we’ve had a few problems that we feel like we’ve been able to adequately address,” she continued.
When a Seven Days reporter visited the park in late October, several residents cited the cracking drywall problem and, in one case, the moisture problem.
Andreas, at Vermod, said installation errors caused the moisture issues. “We took full responsibility,” she said. “If we make a mistake, we correct it.” Although both problems cropped up after the one-year warranty, Vermod covered all costs on one repair, according to Andreas, and a subcontractor’s insurance paid for the other, she said. Vermod also repaired cracks that occurred within the one-year warranty period.
Despite the problems, three residents told Seven Days that they like the development and their Vermods. That’s a sentiment Shanbacker echoed.
“We have a lot of demand for them and not a lot of trouble leasing them,” Shanbacker said. “They’ve been pretty much occupied straight through since they were placed in service.” There’s a wait list and one vacancy that Shanbacker expects to fill soon.
Vermod backers such as Efficiency Vermont remain fans of the company. It’s given at least $823,500 in subsidies to Vermod buyers. Incentives to low-income buyers average $12,409 over the past five years.
The subsidy flows under Efficiency Vermont’s Zero Energy Modular program to incentivize low-cost, energy-efficient housing.
“There’s more and more of a demand for small, energy-efficient, healthy, affordable homes,” said Peter Schneider, a senior consultant at Efficiency Vermont. “So we are working really hard to support these collaborations.”
Fisher, the Vermod owner in Cornwall, doesn’t think the company should be receiving what are essentially public funds.
“I don’t know who, if anybody, Efficiency Vermont is accountable to,” he said.
Vermod says it has been accountable to its customers and has made changes in response to some complaints. After windows broke in a few homes, the company switched to a different window maker. Vermod also changed the roof design because the early version may have contributed to floor problems.
The company has also responded to individual customers, including Fisher. Vermod visited his Cornwall home several times to make fixes, according to Connors. Fisher acknowledged some of those repairs, saying the company paid to add a convection heater and corrected various problems with lighting and fixtures.
Both sides also acknowledge a payment dispute. Fisher says he’s withholding $9,000 or so because the company still hasn’t delivered on the house as he ordered it; Connors says the balance is closer to $14,000. But, she added, the company has basically given up and told Fisher, whom she called “unreasonable,” to keep his money.
Despite the growing pains, the company of 17 employees says it plans to keep innovating as it begins building the next 100 Vermods. Connors is gradually taking over ownership from her uncle, Davis, and the goal is to expand the promise of affordable, super-efficient homes. As Andreas put it, “We want to continue to provide this type of home for everybody.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “The Cost of ‘Affordable’ | Complaints build against Vermont modular home maker”
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2019.
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So Efficiency Vermont has funneled nearly $1 million in subsidies to Vermod on LESS THEN 100 homes .Enough ! Stop picking winners and in this case losers . What a waste of money .
My husband and I are interested in potentially buying a VerMod home. We have experienced nothing but excellent and personable customer care from Ashley Andreas. The owner, Steve Davis took us through the build area and showed us several homes in process and we resonated with his commitment to ongoing research to find the best components to creat an excellent product. The homes looked well built and I liked the fact that they remain under cover during the build process so as to minimize weather induced moisture problems. I am aware this is a young company and every company has some issues. However some of the testimonies you cited were rather weak and I would like to see you do your due diligence in contacting a significant number of remaining VerMod customers to see if they have had similar problems. It would only be fair to cite some of the raving testimonies from satisfied customers. Finally, we have friends who spent half a million on a designer, green home only to find a plethora of significant problems with the house. So please widen the scope of your inquiry. I’d be very interested to read a follow up article. Sincerely, Mary
Any home built on a weak or distorted foundation will exhibit many of the same vagaries as listed in this article. I have personally known Steve for decades and he is not one to shirk from responsibility. The article is seemingly one sided and does not consider unstable work done by outside contractors especially site preparation.
My wife and I bought a VerMod home in 2015. We have been very satisfied. No moisture problem, no sagging. Low utility bills. Comfortable to live in.
Some pictures of the damage to these units would have been very helpful for this article.
Steve Davis sounded like he was yelling “Fake News!” when confronted with these complaints, which is obvious denial on his part, but bigger and more transparent frauds have pulled it off these days.
The other part of the selling point of these units is that it has no energy costs because it generates its own power. Which is true as long as electric companies like GMP continue to do net metering and give credit for power generated by these homes back to the grid. But it would be foolish to think that GMP will continue to give away money when they could just as easily stop the policy. GMP has proven they are not above screwing folks , just ask the folks in Lowell about how those wind turbines were shoved down their throats.
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Is it me, or does feels like very one sided story?
Any new stick build house is subject to dry wall cracking, especially the greener the wood. Houses need to breathe. They expand and contract in the temperature differences here in the north. We are building houses to be air tight for energy efficient reasons but are creating a separate problem of mold because the houses are not allowed to breathe.
What I see happening in this article is unethical and irresponsible. It’s hard to wrap my head around Seven Days allowing it.
Perhaps this writer has a personal beef with Vermod?
Or maybe she’s taking her cue from our national “leaders” who use false generalizations—“Everyone says so”—that give the extremes a voice which is not representative of the many, as though it is? It certainly looks like it.
The writer found 2-3 vocal complainers. That’s 2-3% of Vermod’s customers. A reasonable number for a business. Besides those, she lists an out-of-stater who really wanted a Vermod but couldn’t get one (hardly a complaint!), renters—since when are renters 100% happy with their rentals?—and a staff member at ACHT who corrected her dogged pursuit of “cracks as problems”.
On that topic, has she never been in a Vermont house? They have cracks. Our freeze and thaw cycles mess with anything on and under the ground. That means houses. All houses.
With that as “evidence”, she black-marks a business that has 97 other customers who have no voice in this article.
If she had actually talked to the more typical, satisfied, Vermod owners, she might have written “How Vermod builds new lives.” I know this firsthand. My Vermod took a team of agency folks collaborating with Vermod staff. They put their hearts into it. It’s a gem and a technical marvel. I am warm and housing-secure, when I haven’t been for years. It has changed my life.
[For those folks upthread who seem to think people like me are benefitting unduly from tax dollars, quickly disabuse yourselves of that notion. We are now contributing property taxes to local towns for lots and homes that never drew much or any revenue before.]
How does one customer dominate the stage here? The issue raised while unfortunate for the gentleman is pretty pedestrian in the construction business, the story you glanced over while giving so much attention to one Vermonter is the challenge that Vermod and Steve Davis have attempted to take on — build an energy efficient affordable home! It may be impossible but Vermod is trying and has done it 100 times! He is challenging the mobile home industry that fabricates homes that are not at all energy efficient but appealingly affordable. However, Vermod is taking the next step and factoring in how the operational costs of a home — energy costs — impact Vermonters! It is a noble goal and a challenge that your story totally neglected…over cracked sheet rock? Mold? Sagging floors in 2% of the homes they have built!? Come On Seven Days you are better than this!
If you ever want a lesson in biased reporting, read this article. I’ve been looking into the possibility of buying a Vermod Homes for several month and made an appointment to visit their factory/model home. A few days before the appointment, friends alerted me to this article. It certainly took me aback–it’s a scary article–I almost canceled my appointment. Then I read the article again and realized it didn’t jive at all with my experience with the company so far. It also seemed incredibly one-sided, presenting a couple of experiences as the sum total of the company, and offering no other take on issues to balance things. It felt like the author had an agenda to malign Vermod. So I visited the showroom. I raised all the issues raised in the article. Ashley, the lovely young woman representing the company to me, was not flustered in the least. She graciously answered all my questions, explaining in detail why the home issues in question had occurred, and what was being done to correct them. In all cases, there seemed to be a very plausible scenario explaining why the problems weren’t caused by Vermod, or were being horribly distorted by a crank. Shame on this reporter for presenting such an unbalanced article. I would not hesitate to do business with Vermod. They offer a great product at an affordable price. Do not be put off by this article. Go to the showroom, raise the issues, and see for yourself.