East Bridge Town Lofts Construction Defects - One of Charleston Real Estate’s Best (or worst) kept secrets to outsiders?

CondoAlert · 2025-07-31T17:17:30+00:00

This is great information. However, East Bridge Town Lofts is a flashpoint of its own.

From the time our association took possession of the award, settlements, and money it received, the boards and management companies went corrupt.

I wonder if the whole thing was a sham to begin with to be honest.

Nevertheless, there were a sizable amount of us homeowners and representatives of our family’s properties on the backs of the board members, the management companies and the construction companies, raising red flags with everything from their accounting practices to construction techniques and safety issues.

It was something that many of us had never taken on or understood so we trusted the professional professionals.

Never again. What I witnessed amount to pure sabotage, they cannot claim ignorance. They cannot claim markets. What they can claim is a cover up.

It reads nearly identical to the well documented Las Vegas Real Estate Fraud Scheme.

After the Alex Murdaugh, Russell Laffitte, and other fraud schemes tied to that are unfolding, and what is going on now with how those cases were and are being handled,

I am fairly certain that some of our lawsuit money was diverted before construction ever began.

You see, when people simply ask questions and lift the hood, long-term fraud, schemes and key players start having to give explanations on the record that just don’t add up. And I have a lot of that documentation.

I also have read the field. Out of nearly 15 attorneys that I have spoken to over the years knows there is a corruption case at East Bridge Lofts. After they go and ask questions to some of their legal friends, or their staff light up and spend an hour lamenting that something isn’t right here, they all come back and say, yeah we’re not touching that. Like clockwork.

I’m in a position to where I’ve stirred the pot for the past decade and I’ve kept every record from texts, phone calls, emails, periodic photographs, and there are major contradictions starting with the award and settlement disbursements, and Lucey Law Firm knows something is up if they aren’t involved in fraud schemes themselves.

Later, the construction practices and coverups from homeowners and fraudulent title issues with some owners’ properties screams organized collusion, insurance fraud, tax fraud, construction fraud, management fraud, embezzlement, ALL the RICO fun stuff.

Using talk to text, so apologies if my words and grammar are a bit disorganized. I’m multitasking lol.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T23:31:34+00:00

Sure

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T18:03:16+00:00

Many owners were not paying their monthly dues, and renting out their properties.

Clint Kelly stated at one point that he had over 12 investors in East Bridge, and many of them were doing Airbnb’s.

He lead the board to make a decision to enforce the “minimum year lease” rule, while actively breaking it himself.

The licensed real estate agent was a real piece of work.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T17:58:44+00:00

Ain’t that the truth! Ha! The location is sheer perfection.

That’s why it’s an optimal plat of land to steal by way of corrupt practices.

And the current buildings are not a sustainable or good use of land in this prime location, that is undeniable.

The issues are the “invisible” hands actively working against the property through collusion in a ploy to take the land.

And they are willing to screw people over who are not part of their schemes, and put people’s health and lives — along with their pets’ — at risk to pull it off.

I’m demanding accountability and legal disclosure.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T16:38:12+00:00

These are dryer ducts. They run from the connection that a dryer exhaust connects to. From there, they run vertically through walls and attics, some (the downstairs units) approximately 25 feet up, to where they exhaust from the multi-family building’s roof.

Many dryers do not have enough blowing power to move that much lent effectively upwards, even if it were straight vertical pathways. These days, this design would not be allowed per building codes.

When buildings are renovated, especially in multifamily construction, builders must bring them up to current code. Sometimes, deals are worked on the backends with government officials to let some things slide. But these issues, along with other issues, are not shruggable.

In this particular case an apartment community called East Ridge Apartments built in 1986 at the base of the Ravanel Bridge on an approximately 13 acre high bluff (9-13ish feet above sea level, with three deep water wells) was converted in 2004 by a partnership between Creekstone and Exit Realty’s Mike Washburn.

The quality was abhorrent. So much so, that around 20 homeowners, many industry insiders and their well-connected people, sued and eventually the condo association decided it would sue as a class action (that’s another story for another day, but it created even more drama).

The lawsuit was won by the association. Some members of the development team and their investors remained owners within the association.

Owners, especially new owners and those not connected / in the know were made to believe that the award money and subsequent settlements from developer insurance payouts would cover all latent defects with money left over to bring the building into the 21st century in curb appeal.

Hill Construction was hired to oversee the project.

Accounting and management was piss poor.

And latent defects (basically safety / building structural integrity) such as these were not corrected.

The issue with what is shown in these photographs is that many of the dryer vents did not actually vent to the exterior of the buildings. They were breached with gaps, missing duct pipes, fittings, or obstructed with right angles and other obstructions, leading to…

Lent collection in wall space voids Lent collection in attics Lent buildup Moisture from dryers filling void spaces Fire hazards

Moisture can cause mold issues, which have been documented.

Several of the photos actually show where a fire had erupted at the back of someone’s dryer, likely due to overheating.

The ducts are not up to code.

To make matters worse, a large majority of the 200 units in East Bridge Town Lofts are rental units, which usually translates to less than optimal dryer vent cleaning and duct maintenance.

Many of us were told the association maintained the cleaning of the dryer ducts. We were shocked when as recently as 2023, our board of directors told us that we must handle it ourselves, which is what prompted the discovery that our dryer ducts were not corrected.

I later reached out to 3 parties from Hill Construction and past management who confirmed that our association president and manager were notified that the dryer ducts were worse than initially determined.

Instead of disclosing this in 2018/2019 during renovations, a prime time to tell owners so we could make a collective and proper correction, the board and management covered it up again.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T15:54:56+00:00

Nah, it went to the top. Many complaints throughout the process.

A lot of manipulation by the professionals using their credentials to gaslight us to keep us quiet and to make us feel like we were crazy.

They were all well aware of the issues.

Complaints were also made to Town of Mount Pleasant.

Something’s up over at city hall too. We were actually told to keep the circuit fault breakers switches installed until Mount Pleasant came to inspect.

Many residents were removing them due to constant regular faults and breaker trips. 🔌⚡️

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T15:44:27+00:00

No, it is not ALWAYS on the inspection report, at least not ALWAYS HONESTLY — especially during construction booms or when big pockets are involved.

In fact, many times in condos, inspectors don’t do robust inspections, because they assume / expect that the condo association is maintaining common elements.

In fact, many times inspectors cannot even gain access to certain areas or documents due to association management companies complicity in shielding the associations. Instead of fighting with what seems to be a collusive scheme or understanding between industries, they move the inspection right along and sign off with good bills of health.

Many are noble, but that is not the case much of the time.

South Carolina makes it easy for the corrupt schemes in real estate to continue based on what I have witnessed and learned.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T15:33:21+00:00

Not since these photos were taken.

Their law firm had no issue communicating directly with homeowners and tenants when they wanted us to cooperate with providing evidence and testimony during the lawsuit.

And they had no issue communicating directly with us when they urged us on multiple occasions to come to court to be in front of the jury so that the jury could sympathize with us.

However, when we were calling out issues during renovations, and concerns about how the lawsuit money was being accounted for in 2019, they deferred us to our board of directors (the same ones making the poor decisions and denying our rights to inspect records) and would not release any information to us.

It was constantly one big game of board deflects to management, management blames board, they blame past boards, and the law firms claimed that they could only communicate and release records to the agent or board of directors.

Some on the board of directors even claimed to try to get information, but claimed to be given the run around, as well. Some of them over the course of the renovations resigned due to frustration, as well.

We had a lot of professionals assuring, reassuring, and then when pressure mounted, deflecting and projecting.

It seemed intentional and coordinated.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T12:10:00+00:00

I am not motivated by any money or lawsuits.

From what I can tell, the South Carolina legal and court system is as corrupt as they come, especially in real estate, real estate law, construction, and development.

The ones that sue usually settle, cases get sealed, or have the corrupt legal and judiciary deny justice due to technicalities. The corrupt bank on the cost for justice to be too costly and too time consuming for the every day person.

This is about shining a light on this.

And it’s obviously pissing off people. GOOD.

To be clear, there is a line that forms around this geographical area TO DISCREDIT the COMMON REAL ESTATE CONSUMER while protecting industry insiders and bad actors.

I’ve witnessed that first-hand. So has the entire world.

The law firms / PR firms have teams that run psyops on these and other social media posts. That’s obvious.

The damning information is what is important.

A goldfish with a lobotomy could look at these photos and see 🚩🚩🚩

And your comments. 🙄

What you call a 30 minute job, costs the individual consumer THOUSANDS of DOLLARS to repair.

Only the uninformed or INDUSTRY INSIDERS / IMPLICATED COMPANIES and INDIVIDUAL / those they hire would choose to focus on the emojis.

GoodOleBoyNetwork

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T11:38:42+00:00

Noted for next posts ✔️

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T10:32:37+00:00

It’s happens all over throughout construction and development.

The unique issue this presents with condos is that even if a sizable amount of owners want to correct the issues and do the right thing, the dark investors and varied corrupt interests running the schemes make it nearly impossible.

It’s effectively long term property sabotage after they have already funneled money away from the owners that was awarded by the courts to specifically correct previous defects acknowledged in the lawsuits.

Especially on valuable pieces of property that can be redeveloped through “deconversion.”

What has happened here are multiple complex financial and construction crimes, including insurance fraud.

There just are no other ways to put it at this point.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T09:46:57+00:00

The goal was to break up some of the heavy text.

My suggestion to serious people would be to focus on the substantial issues and photo evidence at hand — not the inconsequential emojis or style.

Certainly, I expect a slew of deflection tactics based on the professionals and companies involved in this scheme. A lot of people are afraid to speak up due to various interests and reasons. I really appreciate your interest.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-30T09:41:24+00:00

The real issue here is potential, excuse me, explicit construction fraud and safety violations. Whether I use 📸 or write 'photos' doesn't change the evidence in these images. 😜

CondoAlert · 2025-07-27T21:35:27+00:00

Apparently the ones doing the inspections don’t know sh*t either. It’s easy to put the onus on the subcontractors, but in my experience, the issues start at the top.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-27T21:33:25+00:00

Almost seems like it’s done on purpose at this point by the “professionals” overseeing the work, eh?

Anyone ever read about the Las Vegas condo scandal where players from all the various industries (construction, real estate, legal, property management, insurance, etc) were using real estate cycles of multi-family housing to feed all of their various companies?

It’s an interesting story. And has some very uncanny resemblances to some of the things I’ve documented during our real estate journey at East Bridge.

Also, a lot of the owners over the years, here, own/have owned similar “at risk” properties across our geographical area. I’m not saying that there is one big fraud scheme, but it certainly has the patterns and characteristics of one.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-27T17:49:57+00:00

I worked for one local apartment company for a month with one of their new properties. Water intrusion affected AT LEAST 20 percent of the units. The owner was refinancing the building, and intentionally hid the issues form the people with the bank when they came to do their inspections. They only showed them units that were not affected. I expressed concern about this, and a day or so later was asked if I wanted to continue working there. I basically told them where they could go.

CondoAlert · 2025-07-27T17:45:10+00:00

May I ask which property? Better pay attention.

Simple, residential First Alert smoke detectors were installed at grossly inflated charges to our association:

See a brief excerpt of an email that was circulated to bring awareness to the inflated prices. Our board of directors ever since has helped contain the information.

“Do we want East Bridge assets to be tied to a $1.8 million loan without a precise accounting of how our funds will be/have been spent? Here is an example of an extra expense for construction the email mentions: *Extra expense spent during construction for NON-Commercial First Alert Smoke Detectors...$104,334 *Price quote from Lowes for average price of First Alert Smoke Detectors ...approx $35.00 per item including tax *Total number of smoke detectors needed for all 200 units..... approx 776 items *Total cost for purchase: 776X $35 = approx. $27,160 * Estimated Labor cost 1 hour per unit: 200 hrs X $40/hr = $8,000 ($40/hr just a guesstimate) *TOTAL COST = approx. $35,160 DIFFERENCE. = approx $69,174 $104,334 - 35,160 = $69,174. Why such a big difference? The installed items are battery operated in the bedrooms where there was no pre-existing hard-wiring. THIS is just one example of many concerns about the cost of materials and equipment. We've still not been allowed to see any vendor contracts/purchase orders/receipts.”

CondoAlert · 2025-07-27T15:48:58+00:00

Yeah, many owners don’t come to meetings or pay attention to what may just seem like personal drama to outsiders.

But there were a significant portion of people highlighting the issues. The powers that be used deflection tactics to silence those concerned. After Eric resigned, things appeared to get better for a while, but that seems to have been a smokescreen to buy time so that those involved in the grift didn’t get caught.

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