Cibolo approves stricter home standards
City Manager Robert Herrera said the new homebuilding standards, approved Jan. 8 by Cibolo City Council, are among the strongest in the area and will help improve the quality of homes being built in the city. I think that speaks well of the city of Cibolo,” Herrera said, “in trying to protect the largest asset most of our residents will have when they live in our community.” The stricter standards require homebuilders or developers to conduct geo-technical tests on each lot and disclose to the city and home buyers the locations of home sites that are constructed on 24 inches or more of fill.

Faulty Foundations: Homebuilders exploit loophole
SAN ANTONIO - How solid is the house you are sitting in right now? For thousands of people in San Antonio… that's a troubling answer. Cracked walls and broken concrete are often blamed on the shifting soil of south Texas. But there is often another reason: shifty homebuilders. Your home's foundation may be crumbling underneath you right now. And that may be because your homebuilder took a shortcut when constructing the foundation.

BR home builder booked on felony theft, misapplication of payments
Quinn Martin, 7912 Willow Grove Blvd., Baton Rouge, was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison by state attorney general investigators on 54 counts of misapplication of payments by a contractor and four counts of felony theft. Martin’s Baton Rouge-based company, QMI Custom Homes, entered into homebuilding contracts, worth a total of $1,865,477, with four different parties in 2012, the warrants say.

Four paths toward a better 2013 in business
Herewith is a short wish list about what might make it a happy one for investors, taxpayers, home buyers and consumers...Angelo Mozilo - "This is not caused by any act of Countrywide or by any act of MBIA," he said. '`It was caused by an event that was unforeseen by anyone, because if anybody foresaw it, you would never have insured it, we would never have originated the loan.

How Can You Properly Thank HUD for your New Home Foundation Flaws?
Year after year, the U.S. Taxpayer is forced to subsidize shoddy homebuilding. Homebuilders are able to squeeze more profits from each and every house because they are never held accountable by the federal government for the fraud perpetrated on homeowners.  Year after year, an incredible number of house foundations fail.

Lewisville-based Nationstar buys mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America
Nationstar Mortgage Holdings, which started out as the mortgage operation for Dallas-based Centex Homes, will buy $215 billion in mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America, which has been slashing its mortgage business in the wake of the financial crisis. It will pay $1.3 billion for the portfolio, which will more than double its customer base to 2.5 million. Mortgage servicers handle the payments on outstanding mortgages, forwarding proceeds to the mortgage holder and dealing with loan delinquencies and foreclosures when necessary. Nationstar, based in Lewisville, says it serviced approximately one million loans with total unpaid principal balances of $198 billion as of Sept. 30. It has about 4,100 employees at facilities around the country, including a call center in Lewisville.

HOA fights for answers
There are more than 200 homes in the Wynston subdivision in Clayton. Recently, the HOA received a warning from the Town of Clayton letting them know the berms weren't up to code..."We didn't even really have an idea that the problem even occurred until the complaint was brought to our attention, some 10 years after the residency was built," homeowner Matt Katlen said. Centex developed the subdivision back in 1999.Katlen did some digging and found a document that dates back to 1999 from Centex's consultants. The letter addressed to the Town of Clayton's Planning and Inspections Department lets the town know Centex did not include the landscaping detail the town requested. The letter even provided a drawing showing the trees and shrubs that should be put in along the berms. The letter states this landscaping buffer will be added to the plans.More than 13 years later, the HOA wants the builder, Centex, to do what they say needed to be done back in 1999.

Rivermist owners look to arbitration
Home Owners for Better Building warned Rivermist homeowners about getting suckered into forced binding arbitration. Now after all these years wasted… The claims against Pulte Homes Inc. were dismissed in June after the court found that the parent company itself doesn't perform work in Texas. The case against Centex was dropped in September because the homeowners are subject to a binding arbitration agreement with the home builder, the court documents state. This latest decision affected Pulte Homes of Texas. "We have no choice at this point," Vick said. "It's either that or appeal the ruling on arbitration, which we don't intend to do. I don't agree with the court's ruling, but we certainly are in the process of going to the arbitration side."

Raising the roof over homes
For months, several homeowners in the Falcon Ridge and Bentwood Ranch subdivisions have claimed the home builder sold them defective houses, and already the City Council has taken steps to protect its residents by drafting a stricter building code. Since the beginning of the year, the city of Cibolo has put in place code that requires home builders to conduct more soil testing and that requires engineers to certify a building's design fits with the soil test results, Mayor Pro-tem Stever Liparoto said. Cibolo Mayor Jennifer Hartman is one homeowner whose house has foundation issues...  “There seems to be a big difference between the home builders and the engineers (as to) what constitutes a failure,” Liparoto said. “My thought is that if it costs the homeowner money or decreases their value, it's a failure.”

Cibolo homeowners ask city hall for more home builder regulation
For years now, people have complained their homes are built on poor foundations that are crumbling and sliding beneath their feet. Until lately, the fight’s been with individual builders of those subdivisions but now the battleground is shifting to city hall.