Posted on 02/14/2007 9:00:35 AM PST by Hydroshock
(Money Magazine) -- Less than a year after moving into her new 2,100-square-foot house in Lenexa, Kans., Susan Sabin has strung up lemon lights in her front window.
The lemons, she says, go perfectly with the home's most prominent features: jammed doors, warped windows, bent pipes and cracked walls. "The house is essentially splitting in two," says Sabin.
Where to go for help If you're buying or fear a problem: These consumer groups post advice for buyers, news about home builders and the latest on construction materials: HomeOwners for Better Building (hobb.org) and Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings (hadd.com). If you need a pro: You can find a home inspector in your area at the American Society of Home Inspectors Web site at ashi.org. If you suspect fraud: Complain to regulators. Find out how to reach your state attorney general's office at naag.org; reach the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov.
At the peak of the recent housing boom, home buyers scooped up a million newly built homes every year while homeowners poured more than $200 billion into renovations. But now stories of shifting soil, leaky roofs, damaged stucco and other construction defects abound.
Though many builders have worked to improve the quality of their houses over the past decade, says Alan Mooney, president of Criterium Engineers, a national engineering firm, the building frenzy also opened the door for unskilled labor, unscrupulous contractors and untested products.
"When everyone is out there building as fast as they can, that does result in more defects," he says.
Contractor problems rank among the most common consumer complaints, according to the Better Business Bureau, and a recent Criterium Engineers study found that 17 percent of new residential construction projects inspected by the firm in 2006 had at least two significant problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
LOL. I'm pretty sure that no contractor, architect or engineer ever woke up in the middle of the night screaming "Why did I build it so strong? Why?"
You can't blame illegal immigrants for the cheap materials, for the developers building as fast as possible with no regard to long term quality, with no quality assurance. The fact that all new homes are built by Illegals is just just another sign there is no regard to quality and craftsmanship and that most new homes are a joke in terms of quality, sadly Americans are paying over a million for the modern McMansion. The real funny thing is the modern yuppie who lives far away from work in a distant exurb and commutes in over an hour each way, so they can enjoy their McMansion on converted farmland stuffed with houses.
When the inspector came out to check before the pour, he almost died when he saw the mesh at 12 inch and a double stack for an eight inch pour. We have a lot of heavy equipment out there and needed a place to work when cold or wet.
In most of Montgomery, builders have to contend with Black Belt soil, which is great for farming, but a nightmare for builders. The stuff expands and contracts so much with the weather that it tears up foundations, roads, water mains, and anything else you may want to build unless you really know what you are doing. Shoddy work will show up very quickly as the foundation shifts with each change of season. I have heard many a horror story about brand new McMansions starting to fall apart because the foundation was cracking within a year of construction. The general rule for buying a home is look north of I-85 where there is red clay, but most of the growth, including hundreds of McMansions, is south of there.
They're just doing the shoddy work that Americans won't do.
I bought my current house last year - it's 8 years old and was personally built by the previous (and original) owner, a master mason, who told me it is comprised of a bit over 40,000 bricks. All the windows are 8" deep because the entire house, both stories, are double brick and insulated in between, with 2x6 studs in the walls. It's warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
When you jump anywhere in this house, nothing moves. It'll last forever.
Can't be repeated enough. BTTT.
Just damn. That sounds like the kind of house where I'd like to ride out a storm. Or, for that matter, an artillery siege.
My Cape Cod style house was built by the Amish in 1940, with an addition built in 1955. I think that it would withstand a nuclear blast.
That's about right. The basement has an 11ft ceiling and is made of concrete block and concrete. It's my "bunker" in case of disaster. I've said jokingly that the engineer who designed this place once designed nuclear bomb shelters. Last fall we had a 10" rain/flooding with 50 MPH winds, and all was high and dry here.
The only reason I'll sell this place in the future is to move to someplace where the outside ambient temperature is about 85 deg a good part of the year. (It's 16 deg outside now.)
I thought the house I live in was poorly built, but after seeing horror stories like these, and on shows like "Holmes on Homes" (do you get that in the States?), I now realize that the guys who built our house were only marginally incompetent and/or negligent.
When my dad had his dream retirement home built in Cali, he was at the construction site every day. He was eventually forced off the premises when the contractor threatened to sue. His liability did not cover customers on the premise while work was being performed.
He eventually had to set up pre-determined inspection dates and times during non-construction hours.
Yeah, I think it's probably more of a case that you only get as good of work out of the sub-contractors as the contractor asks, pays, and inspects for. The pay part is important, because while you wouldn't, many would take the job, and then cut corners to keep it profitable. The whole construction industry is full of corruption, cheating, and outright dishonesty. Not everyone in it, but the bad (and cheap ones) tend to drive a lot of the good ones out, and make a bad reputation for everyone involved.
***Does every thread need to be about illegal immigration?***
Would you rather we turn it into a Calvinism thread?
It's terrible. Terri Schiavo is still dead, Elian Gonzalez is still in Cuba, the Confederacy still lost, and Darwinism is still taught.
"A home costs a lot of money. It should be of high quality so it appreciates well if you ever need to sell it. There's no excuse for shoddy or sub-par construction in the home-building business."
If even a modest $15,000 car was built as poorly as many $500,000 and up houses are, the company would be out of business in no time. Actually, I can't think of any cars built in the last 30 years quite as shoddy as many of these houses, with the exception of maybe Yugo and Lada.
We were living in Kansas City about 13 years ago or so, when several expensive houses adjacent to each other in Overland Park collapsed. They backed up to a steep hill and the foundation was not built right. The furniture was still inside.
Only cracks visible from 1000 yards are against code and need to be fixed.
Except most retirees want their "final earthly" homes to last without major problems at least ten years.
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