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hotel nursing home built during COVID. Multiple construction teamsm started stopped multiple times.

We've found a crowbar in a drainage pipe. Ethernet going nowhere. Air conditioners fucked anytime the air changes.

Not surprised it is the same for residential. Unfortunate

As someone who recently built a new home (not with DR Horton because they are complete trash), the solution to this issue rests in the inspection process.

Especially with a builder well-known for shoddy workmanship, you have to have every single phase of the house inspected and you need to be onsite regularly to point out things to the builder. Also, while builders are giving such incredible incentives on spec homes with like 4.5% rates, sometimes, it isn’t worthwhile in the end because you miss out on the option of having the house inspected at every point.

DR Horton has a neighborhood a few streets from mine and I could have had a bigger home for possibly cheaper, but I refused to use them. I had an inspection at just pre-drywall and pre-close, but a DR Horton home requires inspections at the initial dig, pre-foundation pouring, post-pouring, framing, electrical and plumbing, pre-insulation, post-drywall, flooring installation, pre-close, and then an 11-month inspection, too. And, if the builder says things like “the inspector can’t go onto the roof” or “we don’t have to fix anything that the inspector finds” walk. Regardless of the incentives, the headache is not worth the offer.

Late stage capitalism, the enshitification of everything.

Cut costs, hire untrained, uninspired, underpaid laborers and scurry off into the sunset with the other rats with all your ill-gotten gains.

The cancer that is private equity can really optimize this for you too if you need help fucking over your customers and employees even more.

We're in the midst of a housing crisis and the few houses that are being built are utter trash. Fuck.

Just watch a few clips from CyFy Home Inspections. Many home builders doing shady work and refusing to support the home owner and their own warranty.

You dont find this shoddy workmanship in homes built before 1945. All the shoddy houses before 45 are gone now, and only the good ones remain.

Oh man, let me tell you. We built our house a few years ago and it was an ordeal. After a while I just stopped asking the builder to fix things because I knew it would be faster and better to fix them myself or get someone else to fix them. It has added tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of the home, and all of that has come out of our own pocket, we didn't get to roll all those extra costs into the mortgage loan.

Some of the corners they cut were unbelievable. They didn't put any insulation in our attic. None. Our master shower drain was just draining directly into the crawl space, not hooked up the drain pipe at all. There was also no insulation in the crawl space, nor was there a vapor barrier. Poor workmanship everywhere, the floors especially are ass.

Several people have told me I should sue the builder, and I probably should, but I'd have to pay for a lawyer, and it would probably take months and months. It's an expense and a hassle I don't want, so instead I just tell everyone to never, ever use Taylor Homes of Nashville. Ever. Even though, every other builder is probably just as bad.

I definitely experienced some of the stuff mentioned in the article.

• The pressure to buy or else you lose the discounts.

• Showing you only the homes that are near completion so you’re forced to buy those even when you’re not in a hurry.

• The rep saying they’ll grab their tools in the truck to fix some of the blue tape stuff immediately, then seeing the same blue tape still there when you move in.

• Going out of their way to try to avoid warranty claims.

Thankfully we haven’t had the severe issues the people in article have that make their homes literally unlivable. If you’re a first time buyer, get your own 3rd party inspection and make sure the builder follows through with the issues found.

As the article mentioned, these builders (at least for the more affordable homes) hire the cheapest subcontractors they can find, so brand doesn’t really matter much. It boils down to the quality of the subcontractors in the area you’re in. So make sure to get an inspection. If you can get in early enough where the walls haven’t gone up yet, better. If you can afford it, do 2 inspections, before (when foundation is poured and no walls yet) and after (actual pre-closing inspection on the completed house). We were only able to do the latter, and thankfully we haven’t had any major issues yet.

Edit: Don't forget to also have an inspection done on your 11th month, to get any work done before the first year warranties expire. You'll have more power to get stuff fixed if you have a report from a licensed inspector.

It’s not just homes. I was working at a place when it moved to a newly built office. Plagued with dumb mistakes. Most striking was when we got into summer. First really humid day, AC stopped, wouldn’t turn back on, and then we realized water was seeping from the ceiling in the bathroom. Room was drenched. Turns out, the original building plan was for AC to use a water drain, but the building or fire inspector said it needed to be pumped. The builder did order a pump installed, but because it wasn’t in the plans, no electrical was built for it, so it was never plugged in. Just blatantly sloppy.

Between that and the condition of friends’ new homes we’d seen, we bought an older home, which has its own problems from age and previous owner workarounds, but we know any hidden and/or structural builder errors are long revealed.