Alan Mooney, president of Criterium Engineers, a consulting-engineering firm based in Portland, Maine, with offices in 35 states, estimates that seriously defective new homes account for 15 percent of all new-home construction, or 150,000 new homes a year. “That’s a huge number,” Mooney says, adding: “I don’t think many of these houses will last 50 years.”
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| Curtesy: Tom McWilliam |
Mooney and others identify several contributing factors. Builders are under pressure to keep costs down so homes are affordable and profitable. Demands for energy efficiency and environmentally sound products mean that homes today are more complicated to build. During the building boom that began in the 1990s, demand has sometimes outstripped the supply of qualified laborers and quality materials.
Home builders acknowledge isolated problems, but they deny that the rate of defective homes is on the rise.
“We don’t see that there is a systematic or endemic problem,” says David Jaffe, staff vice president for construction liability and legal research at the National Association of Home Builders, whose members, most of them small contractors, are responsible for 80 percent of residential construction. “We’re always striving to improve the quality of homes,” Jaffe says.
Some home-building officials and others blame lawsuits on bounty-hunting lawyers and homeowner associations.
“The real core of the problem is a migration of trial attorneys to construction defects as a lucrative new practice area,” says Clayton Traynor, senior staff vice president of the builders’ association.
But many homeowners say they went to court because builders ignored their repeated complaints or they had nowhere else to turn. Municipal building departments are often too busy to keep up with required permits and inspections, much less investigate problems. State and federal governments have few explicit consumer protections for homeowners.
All of which makes it imperative for home buyers to be vigilant before they sign a contract or go to closing.
“People are willing to pay for Jacuzzis and marble counters, when they should be more concerned about the quality of the house,” says Betsy Pettit, architect and president of Building Science Corp., an engineering, forensics, and consulting firm based in Westford, Mass.
Home builders acknowledge isolated problems, but they deny that the rate of defective homes is on the rise.
“We don’t see that there is a systematic or endemic problem,” says David Jaffe, staff vice president for construction liability and legal research at the National Association of Home Builders, whose members, most of them small contractors, are responsible for 80 percent of residential construction. “We’re always striving to improve the quality of homes,” Jaffe says.
Some home-building officials and others blame lawsuits on bounty-hunting lawyers and homeowner associations.
“The real core of the problem is a migration of trial attorneys to construction defects as a lucrative new practice area,” says Clayton Traynor, senior staff vice president of the builders’ association.
But many homeowners say they went to court because builders ignored their repeated complaints or they had nowhere else to turn. Municipal building departments are often too busy to keep up with required permits and inspections, much less investigate problems. State and federal governments have few explicit consumer protections for homeowners.
All of which makes it imperative for home buyers to be vigilant before they sign a contract or go to closing.
“People are willing to pay for Jacuzzis and marble counters, when they should be more concerned about the quality of the house,” says Betsy Pettit, architect and president of Building Science Corp., an engineering, forensics, and consulting firm based in Westford, Mass.
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