Austin Workers Defense Project - Action Against Centex/Pulte Homes for Unpaid Wages in Austin
Workers Defense Project and community supporters gathered at the Central Texas Division of Centex Homes in North Austin to demand payment for unpaid wages. A group of four workers report they are owed $2,700 for carpentry work they performed on three homes. In May of 2009, Marcos Cuevas, Franklin Barahona, Salvador Gamiño, and Santos Arriaza worked for a subcontractor of Centex to perform carpentry work on Centex homes. The subcontractor never paid the four workers nearly $3,000 in wages.

Point Austin: When a House Is Not a Home
One sign that the housing market is still in pretty bad shape is that when protesters show up at a home builder's office doorstep – it's no longer there. That's what happened Monday for a group of union activists who wanted to send a message to Centex Homes, heretofore locally headquartered out on Highway 183 North. At least, that's where it was until last weekend, when the company's recent merger with Michigan-based Pulte Homes resulted in the closing of the Austin administration office. Centex management has scurried back to Dallas – layoffs and consolidation continue under the Pulte Homes umbrella, now the biggest national home builder after the August $1.4 billion stock deal.

Advisory from LIUNA: Homeowners and Workers Touring Across U.S. Stop in Indianapolis to Tell Largest Homebuilding Corporation: “Stop Foreclosing on the American Dream”
Homeowners and workers will travel 3,300 miles, stopping in 10 cities across the U.S., to tell Pulte Homes – the largest corporate homebuilder in America – to stop foreclosing on the American Dream.  Riding their “Build America so America Works” RV, the tour will highlight the role Pulte Homes and its smaller partners like DR Horton, KB Home and Lennar played in crashing the U.S. housing market. The market collapse has resulted in the loss of 2 million construction jobs, nearly 3 million foreclosures and billions of dollars in lost retirement savings. In Indiana more than 46,400 homes have been foreclosed in 2009 alone. Indiana unemployment is currently 9.8 percent, in large part due to the loss of 29,000 construction jobs since the start of 2007. Leading homebuilders can help prevent another crisis but they are continuing many of the same practices that contributed to the problems in our economy today.

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.

Sun City Anthem resident battles HOA
"Yes, we have construction defect issues, and yes, we are upset and mad about it," McCullough said as he pointed out stress cracks and crumbling exteriors on homes in his neighborhood. "But the real story here is not about the defects in our homes. It's about a board of directors who are more sympathetic to Del Webb's financial well-being than they are for the Sun City Anthem residents." The association hired a contractor to fill in the cracks and paint over them, but not before McCullough took 44 photographs of damaged villa homes on Peoria Avenue, where he lives, and around the block on Harrisburg Avenue.

Industry leaders call for tougher regulation of home builders
The Attorney General’s Office says Katrina fraud cases are tapering off, but complaints are becoming more common in other parts of the state. Cases referred to the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division decreased almost 39 percent from 2007 to 2008, when 423 cases were reported... “We feel like as an industry that it’s hard to understand,” said Marty Milstead, executive vice president of the Mississippi Home Builders Association. “For heaven sakes, you have to take a test to drive a car. You have to have insurance to drive a car, but not to build a house.”

Cindy Marcus Files Lawsuit in Hawaii against Centex Homes and its Agents 
the area was declared a federal disaster area... According to court records, when people tried to cancel their contracts, many people said that they were coerced into closing against their will because Centex told them they would lose their deposits. Witnesses named in the court records have stated that Centex eventually sold the units of those people whose deposits they kept and they enriched their pockets with money gained from other unsuspecting victims. They allegedly kept many people's deposits which sometimes represented people's entire retirement and bankrupted those who had worked hard all their lives for a piece of the American Dream...Janet Ahmad, the president of HOBB, said, "Too many people have unjustly lost their money to Centex. It is time that this issue gains public attention so potential buyers are made aware of the tactics used by developers to enrich themselves at the expense of unsuspecting consumers."

Evaluators say county's building department is improving
More than two years after Beaufort County's Building Codes Department came under fire for overlooking defective roof supports in almost 700 Sun City Hilton Head homes, the department is turning itself around, according to an organization evaluating it...County Administrator Gary Kubic brought in IAS in late 2007 to review the building department after news surfaced several months earlier that trusses -- wooden frames that support the roof and secure it to the home's walls -- were defective. The trusses weren't fastened together securely enough with metal plates and nails or they had too few wooden cross beams to provide adequate bracing. Such defects could have allowed the roofs to fly off in extreme winds, experts said.

Local homeowners accuse builders of deceptive trade
Bill and Connie Consentino thought they were getting a good deal on a Pulte home in the age-restricted Solera community in Anthem. The incentive package for financing through the builder's mortgage lender included free upgrades, new appliances, landscaping and payment of Local Improvement Districts, or money used to pay for neighborhood infrastructure. The complaints call attention to sales and lending practices of some of the nation's largest public homebuilders, including Pulte Homes, KB Home and Lennar Homes, and their affiliated mortgage companies, Alliance spokeswoman Denise Martin said.

Homebuyers File Complaints Against Nation’s Largest Corporate Homebuilder Alleging Deceptive Practices
Nevada homebuyers today called on the Nevada Attorney General to take action on complaints of deceptive sales and lending practices by Pulte Homes Corp., the nation’s largest corporate homebuilder, and by several other builders. Eighteen homebuyers have filed complaints alleging false statements and concealing of important information in violation of Nevada’s consumer protection law. The complaints highlight the role corporate homebuilders played in the housing boom, bubble and bust that led to America’s economic crisis. Pulte and other builders misled homebuyers about the deals they were getting and pushed them into unfair and deceptive mortgages, all the while continuing to buy land and build homes despite clear signs that the housing market was unsustainable.