Senate Approves Bill Give Homebuilders Commission Sharper Teeth
The Texas Residential Construction Commission would have more power to discipline problem homebuilders under a bill the Texas Senate approved Monday. Consumer advocates have criticized the four-year-old commission, saying it limits home buyers' legal recourse and lacks the power to enforce its own rules. survey released last year by former Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn found that 86 percent of homeowners said their builders failed to repair home construction defects, even after going through the state inspection and resolution process.

Texas Government's Potemkin Village
Many other builders are deciding TRCC registration isn’t worth the money and are blatantly building without one, according to an Observer investigation. More problematically, some builders whose registrations have been revoked are still working on homes as well. The Observer found that, of the 71 builders whose registrations the agency revoked or canceled last fall, nearly a third were still in business this spring. Moreover, the agency—which has little enforcement power—can’t do much about it. It’s further evidence that the feeble agency, created to protect consumers and regulate builders, isn’t doing very much of either... Lawmakers filed numerous bills this session to reform the TRCC. Consumer groups backed legislation by Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a Houston Democrat, that she dubbed a Home Lemon Law. It would provide home buyers more protections, and it is withering in the House. Instead, the House passed House Bill 1038 by Nederland Democrat, Allan Ritter, who sponsored the original legislation in 2003 that created the TRCC.

Same Pig. Uglier Lipstick
Texas Residential Construction Commission, which exists to protect Bob Perry, David and Dick Weekley, and other well connected homebuilders from lawsuits that previously could have been brought by disgruntled buyers. Apparently one loophole was left open that could have subjected a builder to disciplinary action. Not to worry. The Senate has closed it. Adding the word "court" means that failure to pay a final arbitration judgment would not be grounds for discipline by the TRCC. As far as I know, Perry Homes is the only builder that has been ordered by an arbitration panel to pay a homeowner. He has appealed the decision to the Texas Supreme Court. Oral arguments were heard n March and we are awaiting the Court's decision.  See Related Texas Monthly article: Lipstick on a Pig

Lipstick on a Pig
It is undoubtedly a good-faith effort to improve the process by which home buyers are prevented from recovering money from unscrupulous and/or incompetent builders, and Dan Gattis, who has had buyers' remorse about the TRCC for four years now, put his best efforts into putting still more teeth into the law, and so did Ruth McClendon. In the end, however, it still added up to lipstick on a pig, and not just any pig, but the ugliest, dirtiest pig the Texas Legislature has brought into existence in all the years I have been covering it. There is only one remedy for the TRCC, and that is to send it into oblivion.

House bill targets builders who fail to repair defects
The Texas House tentatively made it a crime for a builder to fail to register with the state, but rejected an attempt to require contractors to buy back houses with serious defects. The sponsor of House Bill 1038, Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, said the Texas Residential Construction Commission has had problems...By 83 to 60, the House rejected an amendment to require builders to buy back houses with defects that create a safety hazard or reduce the home's value 5 percent or more if the defect can't be fixed. Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, said the amendment would add to the cost of everybody's house, but Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, shot back: "I'm not trying to protect unscrupulous builders."

A Citizen’s Lament - Was justice denied in a Fannin County court?
“In June 2005, after helping construct a subfloor for Pat and Bob Egert’s new house in Ben Franklin, Bobby Fines, owner of Cedar Log Homes in Ivanhoe, owed me $530 for my work,” Starkey said. “I called his residence and Vicky Leggett, his partner, answered.  I said, ‘I’d like to have my money.’”...And Starkey was $1500 poorer because of a lawyer he shouldn’t have needed and was still out the $530 allegedly owed him by Fines. See related article: Homeowner convicted for reporting Builder to TRCC & the Better Business Bureau