Our Nightmare Experience With Empress Builders

Starting in 2021, we contracted with Empress Builders for a major remodel of our home in Laguna Beach. Our experience with Empress Builders and Imer Bauta has been nothing short of a nightmare, and I would strongly recommend against working with them.

Around halfway through the project (when our house was torn apart and we were pretty helpless), we realized we had already been billed for more than the *total* budget for the project. We raised this with Imer and we got a constant stream of lies and misinformation. He blamed the cost overruns on “change orders”, but he refused to enumerate those change orders. (To be fair, there were some changes, but nothing close to justifying the enormous overbilling.) Bills included line items like “project management” for as much as 60 hours per week; these were not in the budget, were clearly excessive, and this type of work should have been included in the agreed 15% overhead on all other costs as per the general contracting agreement. When we highlighted this and many other issues, there was no willingness to change billing practices, and we received threats – either pay the bills as specified or work stops. The overbilling continued, and in the end we were billed more than double the agreed budget for the project.

In the final stages we got lawyers involved, and we eventually completed the project and reached a settlement which involved a slight discount from the total billed amount (but still more than half a million over the original budget plus agreed changes).

But the truly shocking part is what came next. The tile in the primary bathroom had been installed incorrectly and quickly began to crack. As part of the above settlement, Imer agreed to take responsibility for this and fix the problem. He agreed to pay 14k for the repair (far less than the true total cost, but we accepted this number). We bought the materials as agreed. And then when it came time to collect the 14k check, Imer just went dark and stopped responding to any communication. I even offered to negotiate a lower amount, but simply got no response. The complete lack of professionalism in this behavior is a new low.

If you are considering working with Empress, please contact me and I am happy to share more details and provide clear documentation of all the claims I make in this document. Email me at avoidempress@gmail.com