"A beautiful home on an acre of land - everything felt so right about it, so cozy," Gerena said.
Construction was to have begun in April, builder Frank Inzanni told the Gerenas. Instead, on April 22, Inzanni sent the couple a letter in which he announced that Signature Homes was "closing its doors indefinitely," the result of increasingly difficult financial times affecting the housing market.
The news did not seem surprising to many in the South Jersey residential-construction market. In 2005, Signature sold and completed 125 homes. In 2008, that number was down to 25. Up to the point the Gerenas received their letter, 2009 had brought only 14 contracts.
Thus far, efforts to contact Inzanni have been unsuccessful. His voice-mail box is full; requests to speak to him, left on his receptionist's line, have not been acknowledged. Signature's Web site consists of a sparse home page, with no links to current projects.
An in-person visit a few weeks back was no more fruitful: The door was locked, and no one answered; activity indoors was not visible because of a tinted surface on the door. In an April 24 e-mail, another buyer, who did not give a name, wrote that the reflective tint had been added the week before - a day after he had visited to ask about his house, which remains "sticked out and roughed in," with nothing else done on it for more than two months.
A check of legal filings showed the builder had not filed for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
The Gerenas moved to Glassboro from an apartment in North Jersey to be near Alex's mother, Luz, when his father, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Miguel Gerena, was assigned to Iraq.
"We thought about buying our own house pretty much from the start, and for a year and half, we really looked intensely for a place but found nothing we liked," he says.
