Posted on 08/23/2007 5:40:40 AM PDT by Hydroshock
She wasn't an investor. She didn't have a subprime mortgage. But when Jordan Fogal's house became uninhabitable, the 62-year-old grandmother says foreclosure became her best alternative.
Fogal's troubles began when she and her 72-year-old husband, Bob, moved to a new housing development near Houston in 2002. That first night in the new house, the dining room ceiling collapsed. Bob had pulled the plug in the Jacuzzi tub upstairs, and 100 gallons of water came crashing through the ceiling downstairs because the plumbing drains were not connected.
"That was a preview of coming attractions," Fogal says. Later, the roof and windows leaked, the yard flooded, the shower walls started bowing out, the floor in the kitchen started sinking, and mold began to grow all over the house. The smell was terrible, she recalls, and eventually Fogal's doctor ordered her to leave the house because of the dangerous mold levels. A construction company hired by the Fogals estimated that it would take $150,000 to repair everything. "I could afford my mortgage payment, but I couldn't afford $150,000 in repairs," says Fogal, who had a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at the time. The home appraised at $408,000 the day the couple bought it ended up selling for $234,000 at a foreclosure auction.
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I saw horror stories a couple of years ago already about how the builders were so hot to build that they used 2x4’s that were far too green to be suitable. Within weeks of the house being built, the studs would twist so far that they’d break through the drywall, all over the house. Etc.
This is part of the bargain we are getting using cheap labor. Why couldn’t the contractor be held responsible. Could it be he is in Mexico right about now. Just asking!
Probably one line in one of the fifty forms they have you sign at closing, after refusing to provide it to you beforehand.
Anecdotal evidence can prove anything, and is usually the tool of choice of fear-mongers. Certainly there are fly-by-night builders who make a quick buck and leave town, but this is not representative of 99.99% of the building industry.
I’ve heard stories like the following;
Developer builds 200 (pick a number)houses and sells them, most to people who use a 2/28 to buy them.
Many of these buyers later find themselves trapped and vacate, or worse, squat on the property.
Some buyers leave, but not before stripping the property (appliances, primarily).
Now you have a development where 1/3 of the properties are vacant or for sale, an indeterminant number of properties are vacant AND damaged, and the rest of the people are freaked out.
Oh, and loans are kind of tough to get.
Ugly.
This reminds me of the Condo boom of the late 80’s.
Didn't a plumbing inspector check out the house? Was there a final inspection? Isn't this the reason a Building Inspection dept even exists?
My family has been home builders and contractors since teh mid 1960’s. I worked this for years. And I have seen the lack of quality on the new houses built in the past ten years. I have talked to my father, who for the past decade or so before his retirement last year was doing cad, scheduling, and estimating for a large residential home builder and contractor in the Houston area. He has told me many a horror story and he for one echos my opinion to the nth degree. When a man who has 40 years of experience in something and has run jobs with over 1000 hands on them tells you something is bad you might want to listen.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
My built a house and supervised closely. Even so, mother said it always takes a year to fix the glitches. Most of the foreclosures must be on speculators who bought to flip. Otherwise we would be flooded with sad sack stories.
If I remember correctly, this same thing happened during the last building boom in the late ‘80s. Developers were in a hurry to throw up cheap condos. For a while, “townhouse” was a dirty word.
Some do, but if the inspectors get to tough they find that they don’t get work.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Illegal alien workers with slave driver bosses who profited handily during the housing boom. With many of these slave drivers being Hispanic. Legal Hispanics hire a huge part of the illegal Hispanic workforce
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
That would be like me taking a used car I wanted to buy to a mechanic to check it out while telling him, “Don’t tell me if anything’s wrong.” Just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The question is; does Houston even have a building code? I know that they did not have zoning in the past. Has that situation changed?
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