Dallas-Based Bella Vita Custom Homes Goes Belly Up After Branching Out in Austin

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Bella Vita Custom Homes set up offices all over Austin, but failed to deliver on their promises to clients according to an investigation by KXAN.

Bella Vita Custom Homes set up offices all over Austin, but failed to deliver on their promises to clients according to an investigation by KXAN. (Photo: KXAN)

According to a brand new investigative report from KXAN in Austin, Dallas-based Bella Vita Custom Homes has declared bankruptcy. The builder, after failing to pay subcontractors and losing vast sums of client money, has permanently closed and remains a target in lawsuits.

Bella Vita was founded in Dallas in 2010, with its trademark white crest on a navy blue background popping up on lots all over Dallas and the Park Cities. But just after Tracey and Joel Lackovich selected Bella Vita to build their custom home in the gated community of Spanish Oaks just outside of Austin in Bee Cave, construction slowed and problems began to crop up. That was in 2015, and since then, the Lackovich family has dealt with one nightmare after another.

But what can be done to protect a homeowner from a less-than-honest builder? Not much, the story alleges.

First, let’s do some disambiguation. There are three major custom homebuilders in Dallas that use “bella” in their names. First, for expediency’s sake, there’s Bella Vita, which is now defunct. East Dallasites will recognize Bella Vista, which has quite a presence on this side of the city. And then there’s the cream that rises to the top — Bella Custom Homes — which does extremely high-end construction on bespoke luxury properties. (Full disclosure: Bella Custom Homes is a CandysDirt.com Approved Builder and has a long track record of outstanding work and trustworthiness from some of the most discerning clients in North Texas and beyond.)

Before branching out in Austin, Bella Vita Custom Homes won many awards, including "Best Builder" from D Home and "Best of Houzz."

Before branching out in Austin, Bella Vita Custom Homes won many awards, including “Best Builder” from D Home and “Best of Houzz.”

So, Bella Vita is going belly up, leaving some custom home buyers, including the Lackovich family, in a lurch with either no completed home or a whole lot of bills for work that was never completed and subcontractors that were never paid. The company officially filed for bankruptcy in December of 2016. Bella Vita founders Mike and Andy Clem were forced to speak at a civil hearing, KXAN’s report says. Their reasons for declaring bankruptcy?

When addressing creditors, CEO Andy Clem said the overhead costs were too great. “The project managers, the interior designers, [and] the architects we employed, their expenses were too high and they spread across all the jobs. So, they started going negative,” said Clem. “On top of that, we had a severe period of price increases from our subs [subcontractors]. So a lot of our jobs were way over budget.”

U.S. Trustee Robert Yaquinto said total liabilities for the company are listed at more than $9 million. Prior to the filing, Andy and Mike Clem paid themselves a salary. During January’s bankruptcy meeting, Andy Clem said he was paid $132,000 annually and Mike Clem, was paid $120,000. Also during the meeting, Andy Clem said that around the time the company filed for bankruptcy, he began doing contract work in the Dallas area with concrete and construction consultation sales.

More than $9 million in liabilities with some clients under contract for homes priced at $1 million? Something’s not right here.

But for those homeowners left paying for things two or three times after checks bounce and vendors threatening to sue — the Lackovich family effectively paid for their custom door three times! — what can they do to seek justice?

“To have wasted three years of my life, and be in the hole that we’re in and try to climb out, I think after today, we realized that our system is broken. The homeowners are not protected,” said Tracey.

In 2003, Texas state lawmakers created the Residential Construction Commission to oversee the homebuilding industry. But, the agency was dissolved shortly after it started. In a final review of the commission, it was decided that the then-regulation of the residential construction industry was “fundamentally flawed and [did] more harm than good.”

In addition, according to the report,

“The Texas Residential Construction Commission was never meant to be a true regulatory agency with a clear mission of protecting the public. It has elements of a regulatory agency in its registration of homebuilders, but this program is not designed to ensure that only qualified persons can enter the field – the way true regulatory agencies work – and so does not work to prevent problems from occurring.”

Have you done business with Bella Vita Custom Homes in Dallas? We want to hear from you. Email [email protected].

 

Joanna England is the Executive Editor at CandysDirt.com and covers the North Texas housing market.

28 Comments

  1. Reality Check on February 17, 2017 at 10:14 am

    Rogers Healy partnered with them. Not surprised. I’m sure my comment will get deleted.

    • Candy Evans on February 17, 2017 at 10:19 am

      No, I am not deleting because we are all about transparency here as well as civil discourse. Other agents did as well, and Bella Vita built two beautiful homes on my street. It’s tough to balance expansion and growth in furious markets, and I think we need to dig into this deeper to see what went wrong.

      • I'm with you on February 22, 2017 at 10:16 am

        I share the same sentiments as Reality Check. I have first hand experience with both parties. Sad.

    • Jared on February 1, 2019 at 8:05 pm

      Rogers Healy lost 1 million dollars with this company. He personally told me they stole 1 million dollars from him

  2. Former Employee on February 17, 2017 at 11:04 am

    The owners of Bella Vita are currently doing home building under a new name, Intelligent Home Design in Dallas (already taking on jobs, just not advertising yet). Same leadership, different name. They bounced payroll to the staff & vendors on numerous occasions and then stopped paying employees altogether…I find it interesting the CEO managed to pay himself and his father such a large salary.

    • Joel Lackovich on February 17, 2017 at 6:12 pm

      Please contact me via FaceBook! – Joel Lackovich

    • Selina on February 22, 2017 at 9:03 am

      I can verify this comment. These people need to be stopped.

  3. Belinda Lozano on February 17, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    As a victim of the Bella Vita “nightmare” I can tell you this has effected many people….. it is crazy to think they were able to conduct business for so long without anyone stopping them earlier.
    Thank you for what you are doing to get some answers for the victims of Andy and Mike Clem

  4. Candy Evans on February 17, 2017 at 10:58 pm

    Curious: Theoracle Rodger and Matt have different emails but the same IP address. Not deleting your comments, and we hear you. But please refrain from creating false commenters. Thank you.

    • Oracle on February 18, 2017 at 7:39 am

      Delete those comments. I shouldn’t have wrote themcc

    • Oracle on February 18, 2017 at 8:59 am

      Ur right u can take down comments. Apologies

  5. Former Employee on February 21, 2017 at 12:39 am

    Bella Vita advertised, recruited & hired dedicated, hardworking people with great talent. The Employees were never privy to the whole picture of what was going on because it was very much a family company & the financial situation was kept private. The Employees trusted Andy & Mike Clem too. The cost of hiring Project Mangers, Designers & Architects on board was less expensive than hiring that work out. This is a case of mis-management of human and financial resources.

    • Clementine on February 21, 2017 at 11:01 pm

      To the Former Employee. This is a complete contradiction to what Andy Clem, the CEO of the Company, said at the Bankruptcy Hearing. His excuse was that the cost of hiring in-house Project Managers, Interior Designers, and Architects was too expensive. Still not sure how you can blow through nine million dollars on just staff members, unless they were all paying themselves very very very very well, which is probably the case.

      • 2/21 Former Employee on February 23, 2017 at 12:44 am

        Yes this was in response to AC’s comment/excuse. Generally speaking with a company this size you cant unless it is always loosing money on projects & spending a disproportional amount of money on marketing. The company owners were responsible for running the company and all the finances (deciding on how much to pay employees and how the incoming money is handled.) The company grew too big too fast. If you don’t have the money to hire employees then conservative people don’t hire them. Employees choose to go to work for companies they believe in and count on. Like the Clients, the employees counted on the Clems to be good businessmen. My point was Bella Vita hired hard working people across the board- it is a shame they could not run the business with the talent they had because this situation hurts them too. The employees were not aware of how the money was being handled and wanted the projects to be a win-win for everyone.

  6. Joel Lackovich on February 24, 2017 at 8:45 am

    Show me one good hard working Bella Vita Custom Home employee, and I will show you a broken promise, a half finished house, or a house falling apart built by a hard working Bella Vita Employee employee. With that said, I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you as I am writing a book and would appreciate hearing more about the employee’s side. Message me through Facebook or LinkedIn. For your information:

    New Book: A BEAUTIFUL LIE
    Coming soon to bookshelves and Amazon!

    Bella Vita Custom Homes filed for bankruptcy in December 2016 after robbing victims of over $30 Million+ in loss and damages in Austin and Dallas, Texas. In an elaborate façade, those affected were families, investors, realtors, and sub-contractors. With at least 41 law suits, 350+ creditors, and multiple homes unfinished, Bella Vita Custom Homes did not build dreams for the families and investors they promised to build homes for, they built nightmares. In the end, Bella Vita Custom Homes left a trail of liens, tears, foreclosures, and a black eye on the State of Texas, and many victim families with no where to go. A BEAUTIFUL LIE retells the true story, and experience, of contracting with Bella Vita Custom Homes to build a home. The experience and the lessons learned are articulately captured, and serves to educate the reader how to detect the warning signs of a deceitful home builder early on in the process. This book is a must read for anyone thinking about building a home!

    • JY on March 9, 2017 at 10:03 am

      Thank you so much for doing this for all of the victims. I am one of those and waited so long to hear your positive voice. I am seeking justice too. Of course book is good, but nowadays website is more stronger and faster way to alert other future home owners to avoid dishonesty builder. I can help you by providing pictures and lies about my unfunished BV nightmare home.

      • Joel Lackovich on March 14, 2017 at 5:12 pm

        Hello JY. I am so sorry to hear that you were part of the BVCH nightmare as well. Please connect with me at [email protected]

    • Anonymous on August 28, 2017 at 5:29 pm

      Joel, You didn’t see the day in and day out operations of the corporate side of Bella Vita and what everybody was going through to try to make things happen on a hair string budget. There was Mike Clem who had absolutely no idea what he was doing, Andy who was always running around trying to find the next investor to pump money into a sinking ship, and everybody else acting and treating it like a corporate business that they want to succeed. There was plenty of talent there that could run any kind of corporate business efficiently, but without the upper management doing the right thing for the company, it started to crumble, financially. At the bottom of the totem Pole was the sub contractors building their product, who got screwed, and after burning bridges had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and got crap work in their houses. That is ultimately what you saw and others did as well, but that stems from lack of management from top people in the company not controlling money. The former employee was referring to all the people getting together in their own meetings, emails, conferences, trying to figure it all out and make it work with what they had from what Bella Vita was giving them. You show me a broken promise, half finished house, or a house falling apart and I will point to Andy and Mike Clem, not to the actual employees that they hired who were from professional and corporate backgrounds that tried to make it work…..

    • Selena on April 5, 2018 at 1:52 pm

      Id like a copy of the book.

  7. rb on February 24, 2017 at 9:30 am

    Never cared for the design of Bella Vita homes. They always were unattractive and cheap looking, IMO, despite having very high price tags ($1M+). There are two Bella Vita homes on Lovers Ln in the Park Cities that sat on the market for at least a year, in part to their poor design.

  8. David Morgan on April 3, 2017 at 8:40 pm

    For a home builder to go bankrupt in this market is nothing more than mismanagement. You can bet the salaries they reported of $120 to $139 K were only for tax purposes. $9 million in debt is small for an average sales price over $1 million, Make be wonder what is really going on here?

  9. Matt on August 16, 2017 at 3:33 am

    Those punks had me do a/c work with no intention of ever paying me. And appearently they bonded around my lean. I lost a lot of money.

    • Candy Evans on April 21, 2018 at 11:08 pm

      It was Bella VITA

      • lc on April 22, 2018 at 1:52 am

        my bad. thanks for the correction.

  10. Curious on February 6, 2021 at 2:35 pm

    Who was their project manager?

  11. Rick Baker on October 19, 2023 at 1:56 pm

    We are a local construction company although we are focused on landscape construction and masonry and I say to my clients all the time that I wish homeowners were better protected in Texas. They are not even protected from us and we have been in business since 1979. The law needs to change. The process is just two difficult to follow when you realize that you may be headed for trouble. It’s really sad.

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