Mold and Shoddy Work Keeps Mirasol Homeowner Away
A mother of three says she had to leave her home because of mold and shoddy work. Then she was forced to move her family from the hotel the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA) put them up in. Now, she finds out her home she's still paying for is still not fixed. And some furniture in a storage unit is ruined. See photos

Sundance Trails Residents Say KB Home Lied
See video of Protest

Businesspeople sue KB Home subsidiary
A group of local businesspeople is suing a subsidiary of KB Home for $60 million, claiming the homebuilder reneged on promises to install streets, sewer and utility connections needed for a commercial development in Henderson. Integrated Financial Associates, a mortgage brokerage firm in Las Vegas, is suing KB Home Nevada Inc. The mortgage firm alleges it made a loan to a developer based on promises from KB Home Nevada that infrastructure would be built for an 83-acre development in the Inspirada Town Center, an area designated for commercial development in southern Henderson.

DisposableKBhome.com  
This home builder seems to specialize in shoddy, building with zero accountability. In spite of its bad reputation, KB home continues to suck consumers into their web of deception and they continue to build inferior homes at the expense of the consumer.KB Home has been fined more than once for admittedly ignoring Federal consent order with the FTC. Our story is one of thousands.
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Residents miffed at builder’s plans
Residents of a new suburban community are fuming over their builder’s decision to add smaller, lower-priced homes to their neighborhood now that the economy has taken a turn for the worse. Homeowners in KB Home’s Sundance Trails and Sundance Ridge communities, located off Potranco Road outside Loop 1604, say the cheaper homes will bring down their property values and ruin the aesthetics of the neighborhood. See Photos

Mirasol hope may flicker out
Bad timing has left some San Antonio Housing Authority residents scrambling to try to buy a home in one of the toughest mortgage markets in years...The idea was to create homeowners. But the “purchase” part of the lease-to-purchase program expires in January, which means residents must buy homes now or lose the credits they've built up over the years.In some cases, the so-called “capital accumulation account” tops $20,000. George Alejos, a League of United Latin American Citizens official who has worked with many Mirasol residents, said most families are at risk of losing their accumulation. “Now that the mortgage meltdown is happening, these people cannot get a loan,” he said. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of these people won't qualify for a loan.”...Patricia Cabrera and her children left their mold-infested home and lived in a hotel for a while, until SAHA stopped paying the bills there. Now the family is scattered, living with various relatives. Cabrera does not expect to be able to tap into her capital accumulation.  See photos

Genesis of “Affordable” Homeownership at What Price?
Policies Mr. Cisneros authorized while at HUD shaped the agenda of an unchecked industry that encouraged builders to carelessly throw up shoddily constructed homes overnight in the name of “affordable” housing... Forgotten was the lack of respect for those who were to live in these homes...The sad part is that Cisneros carried the water for some of the worst giants of the industry, giants like Countrywide and KB Homes. He facilitated federal policies that became the bread and butter of the building industry; a market made up of young first-time homebuyers and families that could not afford homes that were venerable to the deceptions of predatory lending... Overcompensated greedy CEO ' s and the building industry are the sole beneficiaries of the failed policies of Henry Cisneros. In his zeal, Cisneros forgot the little guy. See: New York Times Article -  Building Flawed American Dreams

Area foreclosures continue to rise
Himant Pandit bought his house two years ago, and has been and has been frustrated by the drop in his home's value. He said many of his neighbors have lost their homes to foreclosure. Pandit said he has seen six foreclosures on his street in the last three months. He lives in a KB Home subdivision where he purchased his 3,200 square foot home two years ago for $385,000.

Karatz is back
The former CEO of KB Home had disappeared from public view after being forced out of the company in an accounting scandal. But after settling government charges of illegally backdating stock options worth $6 million, Karatz has surfaced. He's quoted a couple of times in Sunday's NYT story about his ties to Henry Cisneros, who was on the board of both KB and Countrywide. The two companies worked closely in coordinating sales and lending, a connection that generated huge revenues at the height of the boom. Actually, Cisneros, Karatz and Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo might be described as a sort of unholy trinity.

Building Flawed American Dreams
As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before. Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial — two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices...The causes of the housing implosion are many: lax regulation, financial innovation gone awry, excessive debt, raw greed. The players are also varied: bankers, borrowers, developers, politicians and bureaucrats...For the three years he was a director at KB Home, Mr. Cisneros received at least $70,000 in pay and more than $100,000 worth of stock. He also received $1.14 million in directors’ fees and stock grants during the six years he was a director at Countrywide. He made more than $5 million from Countrywide stock options, money he says he plowed into his company.  See relates article:Henry Cisneros on the hot seat  Related Times Topics: Gretchen Morgenson

KB's Karatz Pays Small Price for Stock Fraud although Martha was Sent to Prison
He settles charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of taking part in a scheme to backdate stock options for himself and others at the Los Angeles-based home builder. Karatz, 62, was a three-decade veteran of the Los Angeles-based home builder and one of the nation's highest-paid executives when he left the company in 2006 under pressure from the SEC probe. In his last three years with KB Home he collected more than $232 million in compensation, much of which came from cashing in stock option grants.  See related article

KB Home's Toughest Market Competition May be Its Owner
This is really remarkable!  Let me see if I have this right, KB is in using this very odd promotional spin to compete with the “highly competitive foreclosure marketplace.”  A foreclosure market that most likely is glutted with the very same KB cookie cuter models, cheap!  If the housing and financial market collapse wasn’t such a far-reaching disaster I might fall off my chair in laugher reading this article.  If I understand this unique advertising angle it sounds like KB Home is desperate to effectively compete with this giant competitor (85 percent of the market); the very same predatory lending foreclosure scam it was highly instrumental in creating. My… my…KB’s creation is now its strongest competition?

Homeowners deal with flood damage
Families flooded out after this weekends storms say the companies connected to what happened are now trying to pass the buck about who’s to blame. The two homeowners say KB Homes owns the land right behind their property. That’s where they say there’s a retention pond that busted through a wall and into their homes.

Home video captures destructive flood
The dramatic footage shows knee-deep water flowing over the wall of an empty lot and into a house near 98th and Gibson. In all, four homes were evacuated, with two families being put up in a hotel by the Red Cross. The flood carried with it mud which now cakes the yards and homes of residents. It also knocked out power to several houses in the area.Antonia Chavez says she rushed home from work to find her house destroyed.

Veteran Protests Taxes on KB Home
Disabled Veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that served her country for 3 years in the United States Army and 12 years in the Army Reserve took her list of defects to the Tarrant Appraisal Review Board. Now her KB Home property is devalued $72,200.00...