|
Legend Home: Biggest Mistake in My Life |
|
Saturday, 05 December 2009 |
|
This was the biggest mistake and the worse investment I have ever made in my life!
Now I am stuck with a new home that is a piece of junk and I am condemned to a life of debt and a home I will never be able to sell. After 1 year, the entire house started cracking in half. There were large cracks in the brick, the sheetrock, the drywall, the windows, and the hardy plank. The house sustained major structural damage and serious foundation problems. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Hydrogen sulfide gas and formaldehyde emitted from US wallboard |
|
Sunday, 29 November 2009 |
|
Drywall investigation expands into US products
In a report issued Monday, the Consumer Products Safety Commission said its studies found a "strong association" between the Chinese drywall and corrosion. The agency also said it found a possible link between health problems and high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas emitted from the wallboard, coupled with formaldehyde, which is commonly found in new houses. The commission also recently made public a separate 44-home investigation into homeowner complaints, listed on its Web site as a probe into "imported drywall." In fact, 10 of those homes had American drywall. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Thousands to Protest Builders Bad Building and Lending Practices |
|
Sunday, 29 November 2009 |
|
Protests planned at local homebuilder
A couple hundred people plan to demonstrate at Pulte Homes Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, to protest the homebuilder’s lending and construction practices. Homeowners and workers will travel 3,300 miles, stopping in 10 cities across the United States to tell Pulte Homes to stop foreclosing on the American dream. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
A hoax, or at minimum – incompetence, the ‘Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 |
|
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 |
|
American Banking News: Obama’s ‘Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009′ Provides Tax Breaks Worth Billions to Big Business
Nowhere has the bailout funds been seen as useless than the billions thrown around by the Obama administration in the name of creating more jobs. Now that it has been exposed as either a hoax, or at minimum – incompetence, the ‘Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009,’ which was recently signed into law by Obama, offers up to $33 billion in tax breaks to big business under the guise of creating more jobs. In the meantime, unemployment continues to soar while companies use funds and tax breaks for business purpose and not hiring. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Texas State Investigators Set Up Sting At Vacant Home |
|
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 |
|
Sting Targets Unlicensed Contractors
When your house needs repairs, do you know who is coming into your home? Monday on the Nightbeat at 10, it's plumbing, lies and electrical tape...State investigators recently launched a sting operation in San Antonio to target unlicensed electrical and air conditioning contractors. Their goal was to keep homeowners safe. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation set up shop at a vacant house and called contractors and handymen for bids on electrical and air conditioning work. None of the contractors the agency targeted possessed state or city licenses, which makes it illegal for them to offer such services. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
News 8 Tulsa: FBI Investigates |
|
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 |
|
FBI Investigating Home Builder
It's been a month since builder Grant Cole told his employees that he was filing bankruptcy before abruptly disappearing. On Monday, an attorney took action to find out if there's anything left..."From what I can tell, it's in excess of $1 million dollars and potentially up to $2 million dollars." |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
NY Times's Gretchen Morgenson: Home Builder Gifts from Washington |
|
Monday, 16 November 2009 |
|
The New York Times's Gretchen Morgenson: Home Builders (You Heard That Right) Get a Gift
The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law, extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and renewing the first-time homebuyer tax credit until next April. But tucked inside the law was another prize: a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004. The tax cuts will generate corporate refunds or relief worth about $33 billion, according to an administration estimate. This is getting to be a habit: companies that participated on the upside and are now reaping rewards from the taxpayers on the downside. The banks that underwrote so many dubious loans, for example, received government aid to get them lending again. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the result. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Huffington Post: Corperate Welfare Tax Breaks |
|
Monday, 16 November 2009 |
|
Huffington Post
Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders
The New York Times ’s Gretchen Morgenson points out that lobbyists have won another victory that will lead to billions in taxpayer dollars being handed over to firms that helped spur the economic crisis. The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which President Obama just signed into law, contains “a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004,” Morgenson reports. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Builder Neglects Homeowners and Chinese Drywall Problem |
|
Sunday, 15 November 2009 |
|
Homeowners feel abandoned by builders who used Chinese drywall
About 10 families in The Oaks development west of Boca Raton gathered at a neighbor's house last week to commiserate about the tainted Chinese drywall contained in most of their homes. The homeowners have contacted their builder, Albanese-Popkin Group, hoping the company would pay to fix their properties or find them rental housing. But they say the builder has abandoned them – while at the same time marketing deeply discounted homes for sale in the upscale community along Clint Moore Road. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Horrors of Chinese Drywall |
|
Saturday, 14 November 2009 |
|
Chinese Drywall Causing Literal Homeowner Headaches
CPSC has received 1,897 reports of problems with the drywall from residents in 30 states, the District of Colombia, and Puerto Rico, but the product was most widely used in Florida where it is estimated that as many as 35,000 homes may contain the product, and Louisiana. Those two areas were rebuilding after devastating hurricanes so many of those storm victims have now been hit with a double whammy. The drywall was also used extensively in new construction, especially in 2005 and 2006. Reports of the problems caused by the stuff read like a horror movie. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has been investigating these reports and nothing conclusive has been proven, but the lawyers have been lining up for months, suits have been filed, and homeowner insurance companies are scrambling for ways to deny damage claims. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
John Wieland Homes fined $350K for stormwater violations |
|
Wednesday, 11 November 2009 |
|
Wieland Homes settles Clean Water Act violations with EPA
Atlanta home builder John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods Inc. will pay $350,000 to the Environmental Protection Agency to settle alleged violations of the Clean Water Act stemming from five years ago. A Wieland Homes affiliate, John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods of the Carolinas Inc., also is a part of the settlement, one of the largest levied against a home builder this year. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Mark Eberwine: New Home Warranties....Beware! |
|
Monday, 09 November 2009 |
|
New Home Warranties....Beware!
Your house develops cracks in the brick walls, the interior walls, ceilings, floor tiles, etc. yet, according to the warranty company representatives, their company is not responsible for repairing your new home. You can't believe your new home can develop so many cracks so quickly, yet your Homebuilder says "the cracks aren't big enough; we are not required to repair them". |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Builders Mortgage Steer Homebuyers to Foreclosures |
|
Saturday, 07 November 2009 |
|
Home builders' perks helped lead buyers to bust
Experts especially liked Lennar's "Everything Included" business model, which steered prospective buyers toward the company's lender, appraisers and Realtors, and away from anyone independent. Try telling that to residents of Carriage Pointe, where half the homes are in foreclosure. Lennar provided the mortgages for 162 of Carriage Pointe's 380 homes. Since 2007, at least 74 have had foreclosure actions filed against them... In 2006, Morrison Homes took $15,000 off closing costs if buyers got their mortgage from Morrison Financial Services. M/I Homes offered a super-low 4.75 percent interest rate for people who went with its lender. And Pulte Homes told buyers "you can stop pinching" thanks to its offer of a zero down payment and no closing costs through its mortgage arm. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
More Troubles for KB Home |
|
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 |
|
Florida class-action suit accuses KB Home of inflating prices
A Florida class-action lawsuit filed Friday accuses KB Home, among the bestselling builders in the Tampa Bay area, of inflating home prices by hundreds of millions of dollars. Also named as defendants in U.S. District Court in Orlando were Countrywide Financial and LandSafe Appraisal Services. Florida home buyer Stephanie Sullivan claims the three companies employed a "well-planned scheme" to manipulate home appraisals to justify higher prices during the housing boom. Sullivan paid $426,000 for her Orlando home in 2006 and subsequently lost it to foreclosure. The law firm representing Sullivan, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, has filed several lawsuits against builders with the backing of the labor unions trying to organize KB's workforce. In those previous lawsuits, builders have denied wrong doing. |
|
|
RYAN HOMES STIMULUS FOR FRAUD: COUPLES GOT THE MONEY BUT NO HOUSE |
|
Monday, 02 November 2009 |
|
Couple says Ryan Homes misled them: Received tax credit before bought home
A serious allegation against one of the nation's top ten builders. Unhappy clients who called 12 say they got government money they were not entitled to, and they blame Ryan Homes for giving them bad advice...They claim Ryan Homes instructed them to apply for the first time, homebuyer's tax credit with no loan pre-approval..."I'd rather expose them, Ryan, for what they did, than to accept $2,500 just to keep quiet," Jerron said. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Home 
