Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Did you hold back funds? Does your contract impose a penalty for failure to complete in a timely manner? These are issues you need to think about before you sign a contract. Your rights are likely governed by the terms of you contract. Start there.

If it is a home remodeling contract, I'll give 100:1 odds that it was prepared by the contractor and therefore contains no penalties for late completion. The simple fact of the matter is that unless there are specific provisions for liquidated damages in the event of late completion (preferably coupled with some incentives for early or on-time completion) contractors invariably finish when they finish. Unless it is causing you genuine, measurable economic damages/losses, or it has gone on so long that it amounts to an abandonment of the project, there really is not much you can do except keep on the contractor to get it done. Furthermore, even if there are liquidated damages, or you have measurable and significant actual damages, there is inevitably a fight over causation of the delay and whether the contractor is excused. In fact, on major construction projects it is often the contractor who is making the delay claim, because their costs go up when a project is delayed and if the owner or the design professionals cause the delay, the contractor is entitled to compensation for additional costs. I have worked on cases where over half a million dollars was spent on experts to analyze the computerized schedules and construction records to give expert witness testimony on who was responsible for what portion of the delay on a project. So the contractor may well push back and say something you did, such as design or fixture changes, access issues or delays, or any one of dozens of other things was the cause of the delay. So unless you really have meaningful losses from the delay, not just the inevitable inconvenience, AND there is no question that it is entirely the contractor's fault (objectively, not just your opinion), OR the delay is SO long that it really amounts to abandoning the project (again objectively), then the best thing to do is just work with the contractor to get it done as quickly as possible.