Texas Politics - Homeowner: Too late to start over
Homeowners from San Antonio's Northwest Side neighborhood that underwent a landslide had a few minutes apiece before a House committee today. The committee is considering the issue of consumers being required to agree that they'll take any claims to arbitration in deals such as home-purchase contracts. Janet Ahmad of HomeOwners for Better Building said the San Antonio homeowners' contracts had such clauses for all disputes. "I live in the Hills of Rivermist... The sliding Hills of Rivermist," said Charles Cervantes, saying when he bought his home, he thought he'd be protected by a warranty if anything went wrong.

Express-News: Homeowners speak against binding arbitration
Homeowners distraught about their safety and property values after a retaining wall collapsed in their San Antonio neighborhood told state lawmakers Wednesday they feel hit again by a binding-arbitration clause in their purchase contracts.T he clause, common in home contracts, requires purchasers to go through an arbitration process with the developer and builder to settle complaints. “A homeowner has practically no rights (from) what I’ve heard here today,” Terry Lisherness, 62, a resident of the Hills of Rivermist, told the state House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee. “I’m very upset and I’m very scared.”

Subdivision watches and waits as rain falls

National, State & Local News - Pulte/Centex Coverage on Landslide
A San Antonio planning official says a retaining wall designed to hold up the land beneath a group of homes that now sit precariously on a crumbling hilltop did not have a permit.

Read all the latest news coverage

No permit for failed wall
Centex, the Texas-based developer that Pulte Homes acquired last year, did not have a permit for “an improperly constructed retaining wall” that collapsed Sunday, causing damage to at least three homes and forcing the evacuation of dozens of families, according to city officials.  About 300 homeowners from subdivision, many now angry, frustrated and living in a hotel, left the meeting with the builder, saying they still had plenty of questions about safety, future property values and possible rains later this week.  “We got a bunch of runaround,” subdivision resident Richard Gutierrez said. “We just want a guarantee that this won't happen again, and they can't even do that.”  “Everyone was asking them, ‘Would you stay in these homes?'” resident Belinda Riggs said. “‘How can you guarantee that our kids won't be hit by those rocks that are crumbling?'”

Homes evacuated as retaining wall crumbles
San Antonio Planning Director Roderick Sanchez said Centex Homes was required to get a permit for the wall — but no permit was acquired... One neighbor who was among the first homebuyers in the subdivision set among rolling hills said Monday he was initially told no homes would be built on the crumbling ridge because it was too steep.  Romeo Peart, 32, said one retaining wall failed several years ago before the current one was built and homes were constructed above it.  "They can keep the view now," Peart said, shaking his head as heavy equipment stuffed dirt beneath an exposed foundation. "And they paid an extra $10,000 for those lots."

PULTE/CENTEX Creators Increasing 4” per Hour
The failure forced the evacuation of 20 homes on Sunday. Fire officials said the incident started Saturday night when residents began hearing sounds around their homes. Fire officials said they came out Sunday morning and saw land beginning to shift and separate underneath three homes.

Homebuilders' engineers evaluate land shift
San Antonio Fire Department officials on Monday continued to keep residents out of about 80 homes in a Northwest Side neighborhood, where engineers working for homebuilders were shoring up a steep hill that partially collapsed, threatening homes above and below the growing gap... Authorities Sunday said crevices measured from 12 to 15 feet deep, and from 6 to 8 feet wide, although fire department spokeswoman Melissa Sparks said it remains unclear Monday exactly how much the land shifted overnight. At last check, authorities estimated the ground was moving at a rate of about 1 inch every 15 minutes, Sparks said.

'Slope Failure' Causes Evacuation
San Antonio fire officials spent Sunday night monitoring what they are now calling a "slope failure" in a northwest side neighborhood...some places the earth has shifted causing openings 8 to 10 feet deep and several feet wide... the ground is still shifting at a rate of 4 inches every hour and that it was a possibility that some of the homes could collapse. "I wouldn't be surprised to wake up Monday morning and see some of these homes broken and falling down part of the hill," said Kidd.

Massive sinkhole forces evacuation of NW-side homes
About 20 families have moved to emergency shelters after a sinkhole formed in the backyards of a neighborhood near Bandera and Highway 1604. The homes sit on top of a 40-foot-tall retaining wall, but locals say two small cracks in the wall opened up Sunday morning. As the cracks widened, the homes above the wall began to shift, destroying foundations, fencing and man-made barriers.

Growing landslide forces evacuation of 80 families
The city's emergency management coordinator says at least five homes are in danger of being destroyed in a "significant landslide" that is causing the earth to continue to shift on the Northwest Side... The landslide, which was previously thought by some to be a sinkhole, is still growing. It is at least six-feet wide in some places and ten to fifteen feet deep. Crews do not know what is causing the landslide. Chief Kidd says you can hear and see the land moving and the earth falling.

Forced arbitration clauses hide in consumer contracts, but bills in Congress would give consumers more choice: Sheryl Harris
Binding arbitration carries some distinct pitfalls for consumers. Because the company chooses the arbitration forum and rules, upfront costs for consumers can be prohibitively high. Decisions, even ones that run counter to law, often are protected from review by courts. And while parties in court cases can demand important behind-the-scenes records through discovery, those in arbitration don't have the same access.

Pending Home Sales Unveil Troubling Truth
KB Home (NYSE:KBH), D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE:DHI), Pulte Homes, Inc. (NYSE:PHM) and other homebuilders could see trouble down the road after a thought-to-be-expiring housing tax credit led to a sharp drop in pending home sales for the month of November.The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in November, fell a higher-than-expected 16% to 96 from an upwardly revised 114.3 in October, according to the National Association of Realtors... For now, the housing tax credit that caused the drop has been reinstated, meaning that the homebuilder sector should expect better numbers in future quarters. But some investors are beginning to wonder if the government has created a whole new house of cards…  Related Market Watch Builder Incentive Article: Oct. 2006, Home builders up ante to lure buyers

THIS BAILOUT'S FOR YOU!
San Franciscans, and Californians, watched aghast as the federal government rewarded the reckless financial sector with trillions of dollars for causing more hardship than Americans or the rest of the world have suffered since the Great Depression... Lennar and the other uber overbuilders and lenders stepped up for another $33 billion handout in the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which became law on 11.06.2009. Lennar spent $240,000 Lobbying for its share, proving yet again that politicians offer an astounding return on investment, and, prompting NY TImes financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson to ask "would it be so terrible if some builders that lost their heads during the housing mania ceased to exist?"

Trapped – Demise of Texas Residential Construction Commission doesn’t end woes of consumers entangled in the ‘builder protection agency’
“In a homeowner survey conducted by my office, I found that 86 percent of homeowners who responded said their builder failed to fix construction defects in their homes,” wrote Strayhorn, who added, “If it were up to me personally, I would blast this TRCC builder-protection agency off the bureaucratic books.” Keep in mind that Strayhorn is a Republican and winner of statewide races where she was supported by Bob Perry. Her view of TRCC was shared by many in Austin , and three years later when the agency was up for Sunset review, the staff of the Sunset Commission echoed her conclusion and recommended that TRCC be abolished... Alex Winslow of the watchdog group Texas Watch. “The clock was ticking on the legislative session and (the builders) said ‘We don’t have time to get this back to where we want, so let’s just do away with it’ – and all parties said ‘Amen’.”...“Without taking anything away from all the other victims, Dorina Corrrente is the poster child for people victimized by these builders,” said Ahmad. “The way that builder has treated her — I witnessed it in a meeting that we had. It was just a part of the overall scheme to intimidate... Their behavior has not changed when you look at other D.R. Horton subdivisions... While TRCC was in existence, (the builders) knew they had a partner in crime.  See Dr Horton Complaints page 1, page 2