WaPo: "Couple who renovated D.C. rowhouses agree to pay $1.3 million to fix shoddy work"

Click on the link to read the entire Washington Post article by Ian Shapira.

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Couple who renovated D.C. rowhouses agree to pay $1.3 million to fix shoddy work

By Ian Shapira

June 7 at 8:35 PM

A Northern Virginia couple who sold a slew of renovated D.C. rowhouses that did not meet city construction codes have agreed to pay at least $1.3 million in restitution to the owners of 19 properties.

Insun Hofgard and her husband, Jefferson Hofgard, a Boeing executive, must pay the $1.3 million to the city, which will then distribute the money to aggrieved homeowners who had purchased updated homes without knowing that they posed safety hazards and did not meet construction or zoning standards. The settlement with the city ends a lawsuit filed in May 2015 against the Hofgards by D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, who accused the Great Falls, Va., couple of misleading numerous home buyers into spending millions on shoddy homes in Columbia Heights, Bloomingdale, Petworth and other hot neighborhoods.

The Hofgards are among a wave of developers who have jumped into the District’s booming housing market, scooping up aging townhouses, renovating them quickly and flipping them for big profits.

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