yes done. When a taxpayer/customer makes a mistake those banks have no mercy whatsoever, but still expect tax payers to bail them out when they make a long series of now obvious mistakes, that is to anybody not blind with greed. 

This is what they want US to pay for:

FBI Eyes IndyMac For Possible Fraud

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/16/national/main4265897.shtml

Dear Mr. Jackson:

 

Thank you for contacting my office to express your views regarding the banking industry in the United States. I appreciate your taking the time to share your concerns with me.

 

I am concerned that financial regulators under the current Administration have failed to exercise appropriate oversight of our nation's financial institutions, which has contributed to the current economic downturn. Congress has recently held numerous oversight hearings pertaining to the banking industry. Further, multiple policy proposals are pending before Congress that address current banking practices. I will carefully examine such legislation to ensure that it restores accountability and transparency to the banking sector. Moreover, I will continue to promote policies that protect consumers from unscrupulous banking practices.

 

As the U.S. Senate debates matters pertaining to banking, please be assured that I will keep your specific views in mind. I hope you continue to share your views with me and my staff in the years ahead.

 

I would also invite you to visit my website at www.webb.senate.gov for regular updates on issues that are important to Virginia and our nation.

 

Thank you once again for contacting my office.

 

 

Sincerely,

Jim Webb

United States Senator

Sounds like you've gone through a lot of misery over Dr. Horton's profit scheme. I hear from time to time people say they turn thier injustice over to God where all things will one day be made right, and by my personal belief I find real merit and respect for that. It's all you can do sometimes.

But I also think of a story I heard a preacher tell long ago; about a woman who had a home in what was probably a lower end neighborhood. A strip club was built near her home, and her neighborhood became riddled with crime with deplorable characters always roaming the street at night. She prayed and prayed that God would shut down this immoral establishment and clean up her neighborhood.

One day another woman also anchored in faith moved into her neighborhood, and the two of them got together about this problem. They joined in prayer in the belief two voices are exponentially stronger in prayer.

Sure enough, that very night, the strip club miraculously burned to the ground. The first woman thanked God over and over for the miracle, and then she went to the woman who had joined her in her prayer and told her about the miracle they had just created together through God and prayer.

The woman said "Yes, praise God indeed! And, by the way, that night after we prayed, I went and set that strip club on fire."

Not to say that people should solve things this way as a rule, but having faith is great. Acting in faith is often where miracles happen.

They also claim the settlement:


I tried working with my builder and they told me to just try and sue them, because they wouldn't do anything to help otherwise. Having such a large project riddled with sporadic defects, even with that settlement, was still cost effective for the builder's bottom line. The ruling just tells the builder go on and half ass build houses when they feel like it, IMO.

But sure, that was better than most outcomes.  The plaintiff's attorney likely couldn't reply as a result of the gag order the builder had also forced into the settlement. That let the builder put only their spin on the matter, which was misleading. Had these people not joined forces with an attorney, even as individuals, and instead worked with the builder, nothing would have been resolved at all. Chances are they already had worked with the builder, and that's why they went to a lawyer.

HOBB’s cover story, did I read that right? The highly efficient and cost saving arbitration process that replaces the real justice system seemed to be nothing more than an expensive warranty enforcement system. It was not a real justice system, and even went on to block actual justice.

I directly relate to that story in that consequential damages destroyed my property, home, and health. For some reason, when a home builder causes damages though negligence, common legal rights are nullified or unenforceable. I really feel bad for the DR Horton victims. We are practically related by our experiences, as I know thousands also are.

Something I just added to my website yesterday is about this sort of warped justice. I keep seeing the same BS builder comments statically justifying these kinds of homebuyer nightmares year after year. I used my builder’s name, but you can easily plug in your own builder and how justice works for victims. It should be nonsensical, but tell me it’s not true.

JD Powers served a purpose as they started out reviewing cars,.back when the U.S. produced entire lines of defective unrepairable cars.  They obviously used that success to cash in on several other consumer goods. It just doesn't work for houses. Our house would have gotten high marks during the survey period, and of course it became the house from Hell for hidden defects.

Unlike cars, they are doing absolutely nothing to save people from lemon houses, unlike the lemon cars from the past. What a great scheme though, cashing in on consumer goods by just sending out surveys and billing the company for their stamp of approval.

IMO, that’s not what has been going on in Republican politics. Not praising Dems as the ultimate answer, as I lean more to left than right on many things, but I’m not hard locked on parties anymore.

Overall our current elected group will eventually acknowledge a problem with endless pounding, but will put up a bogus solution that serve the people who caused the problems to begin with, and make it appear they are listening to constituents.

That’s what the TRCC is, as is the housing bill, our energy policy…so on. Sure, it’s the corporate cash that really runs the show now. But researching the issue a long time, it seems that back in the late 60s and 70s the feds really created the pattern of placing a <buy me> button on politicians.

Through the IRS, they cracked down on people who sometimes had great wealth and more political influence than whoever was in office. It wasn’t just about tax evasion, the IRS was/is a weapon. They destroyed people, and so big biz people learned if you want to do business in America you got to pay up. That’s never been more true than today.

We’re also very polarized and divided as a nation now, as well. I think people recognize they are all caught up in schemes and scams no matter what, and there is this enormous sense of disillusion in anybody that pays any attention. people don't know what to believe, and many who are sure they do know are in denial about what's really happening.

Doing nothing is not an option though. I sort of liken the situation to our mold problem. We had five HEPA filters running to filter out the mold, but the house was so contaminated, the filters were just white noise. The contamination had to be removed to begin to fix the problem. Half the problem was understanding the problem that needed to be fixed, sorting past a lot of bad information. I think our government is much the same. But you’re right, only outspoken political will can change anything, and is has to be changed.

From what I've gathered the Housing bill is really just for banks and to try to boost the homebuilders. While one would think a government office would want to help THE PEOPLE, it appears that the deal actually encourages banks to foreclose more. At sub levels reporting as much loss as they can create increases their access to the bail-out funding. It's much like the Patriot Act, in that it is nearly the polar opposite of what was advertised.

To think that anyone would even think of voting an older but equally useless Bush in again is unreal. The republicans thing "change" will occur if we keep doing the same thing. That's most people's definition of stupid! I'm not pro-anybody in the upcoming election, just saying.

City-data is dropping in visibility, and I think it is best we not post there, nor post much about them here, as they use some self serving scum bag tactics to create hype and gain promo, including censorship. Negative press is still good press to them. They will not allow HOBB on their site, but my site is on their somewhere, as it shows up in my website reports.

seriously I need an answer if anyone knows how to prevent foreclosure. I know not a simple thing, and I can look it up until I find valid info (for TN). I just thought maybe one of our posters might know more off hand. I was looking for info via search engines, and just found loads of schemes from lenders and builders to get business. (i.e. builder incentives to match any governments new home buyer incentives.)

My sister is on the brink of losing her home. She has daughter near six months old who was born with a birth defect that will take years of treatment to overcome. She's not been able to work full time any more due to its special care requirements. The father, her So, is laid -off from work...again. Ironically he's in the construction business.

We (Carmen and I) are planning preventative steps for our personal situation, but our own foreclosure risk may become insurmountable after the holidays, as things stand. I could have helped My sis and my Mom as I used to. in their hard times, had my home not wiped out most of my resources. Just another reminder, a builder defect isn't just an inconvenience.

Does anyone understand how the new housing bill helps people in crisis with their mortgage? I see the big stupid lenders getting huge bailouts for their carelessness and fraud. I see new home builders running ads that the “bailout” helps you buy a new home. The actual victims are seemingly an after thought in the bill.

Part of the bill gives huge tax breaks for those who just bought or will buy a house over the next year. How the hell does that help the with mortgage crisis? The part that helps people in trouble must be in the fine print?

Sounds like that wasn't Tyvek wrap, or it was put on wrong. It would block most moisture but not lock in water vapor as it dried, in theory. Some don't like Tyvek either way, and I wouldn’t know the best house wrap.

Whatever it was, I would hope it was installed wrong. How common that is, unimaginable. People on a homebuilding site who have no idea what they’re doing messing up, that’s easy to imagine. I’ve seen homes where they forgot the moisture protection wrap altogether. That was no doubt a disposable house in the making.

My step father works in commercial construction (30+years). He sees people doing stuff wrong all the time. The site super eventually knows it, but often they just cover it up and leave it.

The companies he works for generally want him to be super on jobs, as he’s often the most qualified, but he doesn't have the patience to deal with the idiots in construction. So he still does the job, but without the title or all the responsibilities.

In a case he became a party to not long ago, a crew poured 1000s of ton of concrete for a nuclear reactor. They didn't follow the very specific procedure for the concrete, and it quickly started to show cracks and signs it would fail.

He made them take it all up and do it the right way, which pissed off a lot of people, but they had no choice. I was impressed that unskilled idiots can even work on pouring nuclear reactor walls, and their incompetence could have caused a national disaster in the years ahead if no one had stepped up.

Had this been a home builder situation, they might have notice the same sort of serious mistakes early on, but for sure would have covered them up and kept on building the house(s). Sure they often know catastrophic failure is inevitable, but it's just a homebuyer that's going to be wrecked. Nobody important to them. They’re building a sale first, a house second.




 

When I talked to the BBB, they said they could put my complaint on file but nothing more. Nobody ever saw it. The BBB didn't matter at all. That is a hard part of being on the business end of this business. While commuting from an apartment to our wrecked townhome, Ryan Homes was building about 200+ more townhomes just like ours or bigger on the roads passed.

It just seemed surreal that Ryan Homes could know they built a disaster just a quarter mile down the road, but just basically flip us off and keep building without any consequences whatsoever. If I drove anywhere near as reckless and careless as they had built homes, I would have lost my license to drive. We’re a nation of laws meant to make us all equal, but those laws are clearly still relative. 

This is moronic. Builders and their associates can unashamedly say they're concerned about consumer protection and keeping "their" TRCC, while not one honest legitimate consumer it supposedly protects wants the TRCC anywhere on record.

Maybe you should take the approach of nationally humiliating the stupidity of Texas law makers through CNN if they disregard common sense and their constituents. I know getting real press is very hard though. But maybe this is absurd enough to get them on.

Here in Virginia they were about to pass a law that fined people $50 if their underwear could be seen in public. CNN ran the planned law before the final vote, and they flipped here to 100% against it out of embarrassment. Still the Virginia general assembly of idiots has gotten lots of really ridiculous stuff through, off the radar usually.

Hoping for the best, though getting rid of the TRCC will only remove a barrier to the continued problem.

True, somebody has to make builders pay for reckless behavior, and acting in general bad faith. I closely empathize with that goal. But I must add, my pursuit to that end from years of trying is not totally fulfilling. Not to say you should stop, nor will I ever stop.

Last year at this time it was thought I could be terminal from the health problems our home nightmare experience created. At least one doctor and nurse speculated I might not walk out of the hospital, after going in to ER in critical condition. And worse, I didn't much care either way at that point, as I am/was so tired of dealing with the endless aftermath a defective home brought.

As for loss, some think maybe we lost some money in making repairs, and then it was over. Not so. First we lost all our savings. Then cashed out all our retirement. We lost health insurance, then our health. We maxed out debt after all else was stripped. We couldn't live in the defective home for over 3 and 1/2 years. The losses that chained are too great to post here.

Our current course is becoming too clear. Bankruptcy, home foreclosure, a near total wipe of assets not otherwise destroyed by the homes defects, we closed our home business, and we will be forced to start a new career likely not of our choosing with impaired health the home defect caused. The life we knew will be completely dead, stolen away so the builder keeps all their profits.

When I stepped into this house thing, I was optimistic and determined, full of energy. The experience has made me feel much older, doubtful, and I lost a lot of faith in the American dream. Builder defects aren't always simply about financial losses.

I'm not saying I'm the only one, or competing for who has the worst builder. Everybody should be able to tell their story.