Homebuilders OWN Texas and now will OWN the US.

[johncoby2]

I have been a consumer activist for new homebuyers who buy a home with defects. I am in Texas where the builders pretty much own our State Capitol and they will soon bring their tort reform to the US.

Take a look at what has happened in Texas by reading our newsletter at:

http://www.hadd.com/documents/texasnews.pdf

There are other documents available such as:

New Home Warranties. Deception or Protection?A report identifying extreme limitations and loopholes in new home warranties. The report, analyzes the most popular warranties used by builders in the United States and highlights the limitations, exclusions, and unreasonable maintenance requirements common to each warranty. This is a must read for new homebuyers to understand what limited rights you will have after your purchase.


The Abuse of Arbitration in New Home Contracts. A study on the use of mandatory binding arbitration in new home contracts. If you think arbitration is faster, cheaper, and better than our court system, then this is a must read! Know what Constitutional rights you could lose before you sign your contract for a new home.

John R. Cobarruvias
Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings.

[sonias]

1. This is so sad John

When will the country pay attention and realize that Texas is the training ground for all these bad policies. Deception in tort reform, deception in eduction, deception in environmental compliance. If you want to see how bad the country is going to get come study Texas. They are totally getting away with scorched earth policy here.

There hasn't been a single refund or rollback on insurance rates based on tort reform. In fact the major insurers are suing the state and are winning.

Texas got sold a bill of bad goods on tort reform and believe me they had no mandate. It snuck thorough with a bare thread 6,000 vote win in a state wide election. Their spin was the scare that doctors would no longer practice medicine and this is why your rates on all insurance are so high. Total bullshit.

:mad:

Sonia

[Bridget Burke]

3. And they needed a special election for "tort reform"

If it had been on the ballot in the next General Election, it probably would have been defeated.

Yes, Texas is not totally owned by Homebuilders. The Insurance companies & Oil companies have shares, too.

[kcwayne]

2. Don't buy homes in Texas

I paid 95,000 for a house in Dallas that was 15 years old. It had foundation work done on it (45 piers put under the foundation because it moved around so much on the clay surface) which I though would be good, because virtually all of the houses we looked at had foundation problems. I figured that having had the work done would prevent me from having to do it in the future.

WRONG.

13 years later, I had to put $20,000 into the foundation to level it again, and sold the house for $105,000. So after owning the poorly built home (built by Fox and Jacobs, one of the major builders in Texas) I lose $10,000 on the house. (More than that actually, I made major improvements in the kitchen, roof, and landscaping).

Look in the yellow pages in Dallas, there are about 1000 foundation repair companies. This industry would not be necessary if the building codes forced builders to build a foundation that is engineered for the soil type in the area. It is absurd, and a total ripoff of consumers there.

There were multi-million dollar homes built in Las Colinas that had huge faults in their slabs after just a couple of years or less in some cases. How this could go on is unbelievable.

[crispini]

10. Don't buy NEWER homes in Texas.

Me and my 1942 era housie are doing just fine. Had it inspected by a foundation engineer before buying too.

[ret5hd]

12. yeah, my 1939 fort worth home...

still doesn't have a crack to be seen anywhere. solid as a rock.

[pk_du]

4. and I used to wonder what people like Bob Perry got for their huge $$

donations to Bu$hco.

Looks like this is the answer.

Keep up the fight!

[gorbal]

5. Build a cob house

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/7148/cobpics.html

Aren't they pretty? They cost very little to build.

[midnight armadillo]

7. Downsides to cob...

Cob is great and all but it a) takes a long-ass time to build and b) is difficult to insulate. The materials are literally dirt-cheap but it is extremely labor intensive.

Rammed earth or straw/clay is quicker and cheaper to build...

[jmowreader]

9. Precast concrete is the SHIT, man!

When you order a precast concrete house, it comes as panels on the back of a truck. These panels have a high-R-value styrofoam insulation bonded to the inside of the panel. The window and door openings are framed out with ACQ-treated pressure-treated lumber in standard opening sizes, so you can just buy replacement vinyl windows or wood windows, and standard doors, and install them. There is an ACQ 2x4 bonded to the inside of each "concrete stud" so you can attach your interior wall finish, install more insulation or whatever you want. And they have pipes running through the studding to carry the wiring and plumbing. I got a chance to ask the guy who was selling me on this process whether you could order another pipe to carry network cabling. He said they weren't going to offer that as an option; so many people ordered it this way that now the panels come with the additional pipe as a standard feature.

Installation is quick and easy--I've seen two houses built with this system, and both were closed-in in less than two days' time. The quickest completed house used metal shingles, concrete interior walls, and drywall. They started by pouring a slab and letting that cure for two weeks. They took that slab from bare-slabness to move-in in six days. You try building a house that fast with any other technology--and this wasn't a slapped-together, half-ass job either; this was a very high quality house. In reality, you'd probably want to take an extra week.

When the homes are done, they look just about like any other home on the market. You can order them ready for lap siding, which means they embed 2x3 furring strips in the out-side of the wall so you can attach the siding, or do what most people do and stucco them. They can have either drywall or plaster interior wall finish, so there's not a problem with interior weirdness. There's lots of insulation in them, so no coldness like you get with concrete block. And you certainly don't have to worry about wood-destroying insects--any wood in the structure is full of pesticides. And construction cost is in line with wood-frame.

Okay, so it's not an "ecologically friendly construction method" like cob or rammed earth, but it has one huge advantage over the Mother Earth News-approved methods: it looks like "regular" woodframe construction when it's done. People will buy these homes without reservation. Tell Joe Homebuyer you want him to buy a home made from straw mixed into mud and he'll look at you..."But they sell them this way in Arizona" isn't much of a sales technique when you live in Seattle. But concrete is an easy sell. Everyone knows about concrete. Everyone knows concrete is good. These homes sell well when they come on the market because people know they don't rot.

[jmowreader]

8. They're pretty, but...

if you build a shit foundation, like these Texas builders do, you would have trouble with a cast-iron house.

A little war story for you...the high school in St. Maries, Idaho, was built on a foundation they dug in 24 inches--two inches below the frost line. That's all the contract would allow, so that's what they did. About three years after they put the school in, the industrial arts teachers started a Building Trades class--and one of their "learning experiences" is to go up to the school and fix the cracks in the walls.

A year later, the school built a big shop where they teach metalshop, woodshop, industrial arts and welding. It gets a lot of support from the loggers in the area, because Henry Sindt, Jack Buell and the other big haulers in Benewah County hire all of its graduates. It's dug in 28 inches and they still get lots of cracking in the slab.

In 1986 they were discussing building a gym out there--the state was going to pull the school's accreditation because they couldn't give PE past ninth grade. I was on leave when the planning was going on and went to one of the meetings. This guy they brought in from some architectural firm was going on and on about how they were going to dig in thirty inches and everything would be wonderful. Fuck that. I got up on my two little feet and explained a few facts of life: that every time they dug down just below the frost line and built, the structure cracked because St. Maries has active soil; that you have to set the building right on the bedrock to make it work right; and that by excavating the site to the bedrock, then dropping prestressed concrete pilings into the holes, they'd have a real sound foundation that wouldn't crack. What they finally settled on was completely digging the site out down to the bedrock (twelve feet!), putting the pilings in, then selling the excavated earth as fill--which managed to bring the project in at something like $8000 under budget because fill prices were real good back then. And the gym hasn't got one crack in it.

That's what you have to do--this shit about making sure the dirt under the foundation retains "constant moisture" means they're sitting above the bedrock in active soil. No house built like that will remain free of problems.

And that's why I like basements so much. Not just because of the added storage and living space, but because I know you have to dig down so far to put one in.

[President Jesus]

6. Boycott Perry homes...now! Look at this insane list of donations

Red state Dems: you want your states back? Well it starts with eroding the power of your oppostion...for instance...

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=TX&last=Perry&first=Bob

[judaspriestess]

11. I work for a homebuilder

I must say my company stands behind their product. If their is a defect which can happen they will fix it.
as far as the arbitration, we have two ways to do that.
one is 10 year NON-BINDING arbitration, meaning you can pursue litigation if you are not satisfied or
12 year BINDING arbitration.
We as reps for the builder DO NOT influence the choice of the buyers.
Personally I would take the 10 year. Surprisingly the choice runs about 50/50.
Anyway, another thing that needs to be taken into consideration.
Is the amount of inspections that the cities allow for the building process. In Texas I think their is only three. This opens the door to widespread defects. The state and counties need to be held responsible also.