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If Mike Morgan is the voice for defective homeowners, then his website is his megaphone. Morgan says he gets 10 to 15 thousand hits a month on www.defective-homes.net. âThose hits come from consumers that are having problems. They also come from a lot of people that are looking to buy homes that are researching Lennar.â
The Florida real estate broker says he created the website after former clients of Lennar said they bought defective homes. Now, he collects complaints from homeowners from across the country, like John Saunders in North Charleston.
Saunders also blames North Charleston code inspectors because they over-looked the dangerous roof construction and missing square footage in his home.
Another code violation Saunders says city inspectors missed, is the width of his upstairs hallway. Itâs supposed to be 36 inches, but actually 32.5 inches. A narrow hallway can be a fire escape hazard.
âThey either knew or they should have known that these homes were not built to code. There's truss issues, there's hallway size issues. There are major defects.
Lennar's division president Michael Bottoms says homeowners, like Saunders, are not allowing his company to fix the problems. Saunders wants Lennar to buy his home back.
âWe have to be given the opportunity to do the right thing,â said Bottoms. He says he has never seen Morgan's website. Bottom says any complaints Morgan posts, is a small fraction of the thousands of happy homeowners it helps every year.
Morgan says the state needs to pass a housing lemon law to protect homeowners who buy defective homes. Texas state legislature may pass the first housing lemon law in the country this year.
North Charleston city inspectors says the code violations found in the homes were not life safety issues.
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