Tiny Heirloom Faces Dozens of Lawsuits Over Delays, Undelivered Homes

Dozens of customers who paid up to six figures for custom tiny homes from Portland's Tiny Heirloom watched a company-promised March 2026 resolution deadline come and go while civil dockets across Oregon and beyond received new filings as recently as April 2.

That deadline originated from company president Jeremy Killian. In a statement issued February 24, Killian said Tiny Heirloom was "actively working to resolve all remaining builds and settlements" and that wrapping everything up by the end of March 2026 "remains achievable." Court-tracking services showed docket activity continuing past that point, with complaints, motions, and status updates still live across multiple jurisdictions.

The litigation trail stretches to 2019. Since then, more than two dozen individuals, lenders, and companies filed civil suits against Heirloom Inc., Killian, and co-owner Ryan Donato. Among them: a 2023 federal case filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon by Preserve Partners, Inc., invoking RICO statutes and alleging the company entered a construction agreement for six tiny homes in June 2022 and failed to perform. Separate suits appeared in California state court and Oregon Circuit Court in Clackamas County, with the Internal Revenue Service named as a creditor in at least one Clackamas filing. The Oregon Department of Revenue had already listed Killian, Donato, and the company itself among the state's highest delinquent taxpayers.

The pattern documented across complaints was consistent: customers paid large deposits, often representing most or all of the purchase price, for custom builds that were then delayed by months or years. Some homes that did arrive were incomplete or structurally problematic. The frustration crystallized in one phrase that circulated among affected buyers: "DOJ, where are you?" — a direct call for the state Department of Justice to treat the complaint volume as grounds for a formal investigation, not just civil litigation.

Killian told KGW that Tiny Heirloom built 46 homes in 2025 and, at the time of that statement, had six customers still awaiting repayment. The active dockets through April 2 suggest the accounting did not fully hold.

For buyers evaluating any custom tiny-home builder right now, the Tiny Heirloom record is the most detailed cautionary document in the Pacific Northwest. The biggest structural problem visible across complaints was the deposit arrangement: buyers paid full or near-full balances before construction began, with contract language that gave the builder broad cover for delays, including blanket COVID-19 and material-shortage clauses that could absorb almost any setback without triggering liability. Before signing, demand milestone-based escrow, where funds release only when verifiable construction benchmarks are met, never on a schedule the builder sets unilaterally.

Run a contractor lien search on any builder's known worksites before writing a check. Liens filed by subcontractors, which are public record, are often the first indication a company is failing to pay its labor chain, a reliable early signal of the cash-flow problems that eventually stall customer builds. At least one BBB complaint against Tiny Heirloom flagged a licensure claim the company could not substantiate; verify licensing directly with Oregon's Construction Contractors Board or your state's equivalent agency before any money changes hands.

Finally, demand a hard completion date with financial penalties for delay and a specific definition of "substantial completion" in writing. Vague language in that section of a contract is not a technicality; in the Tiny Heirloom cases, it became the fault line where customers' recourse ended and years of litigation began.