As a real estate professional who has served the Atlanta market for more than two decades, I am deeply upset and concerned. The accusations levied against my building company, Muffley Homes, are very serious, and I have worked incredibly hard to resolve all matters to the best of my ability, and in the timeliest manner possible. In that vein, it is important I lend some additional perspective.

When COVID-19 hit several years ago, many worldwide industries and companies were dramatically and adversely impacted. Muffley Homes was no exception. The pandemic caused supply chain shortages, labor shortages, and extended permitting timelines which all resulted in inflated costs and several financial hardships for everyone involved.  In fact, the combination of factors caused many building companies to go out of business, file for bankruptcy, lay off employees, and stop construction completely. Sadly, some company owners simply left town and intentionally placed everyone in untenable positions, and some consumers may never recover. At Muffley Homes, however, we worked continuously throughout Covid. Our team remained steadfast, and we completed new homes for eight wonderful clients during the most difficult of times.

As Chief Executive of Muffley Homes, I can assure you our team worked tirelessly to ensure our company survived this horrible period; and, we pledged to do everything possible to live up to the expectations of our customers. While the overwhelming majority of our customers are very happy with our work and the new homes they now live in, clearly we fell short in some areas. We have been working through the proper administrative and legal frameworks to resolve a small number of customer issues over the past year and will continue to do everything in our power and authority to satisfy our obligations.  Let me be very clear, there is nothing more important than customer trust.

I am not in any way relieving myself of ultimate responsibility. I recognize that my bookkeeping and accounts payable team was not up to the task of maintaining strict control over the day-to-day operations of a large corporation engaged in multiple building projects.  I have replaced my acting financial controller who oversaw this department, and I have hired an entirely new team with significantly more experience in these tasks.  As the leader of Muffley Homes, I should have been more directly involved in overseeing this department and ensuring that payments were timely and properly documented in our accounting system.  Now, I am.  I take full responsibility and apologize for any uncertainty and confusion this may have caused.

I remain firmly committed to each customer who trusted us with their new home or renovation project and will do everything in my power to mitigate their outstanding issues. Again, there is nothing more important than customer trust, it’s what we’ve built our reputation on during the past 20 years both as a local business owner and member of this wonderful community.