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Monday, 12 June 2006

N.J. lawmakers react to new-home nightmares
Lawmakers in New Jersey are planning to change how developers build and buyers purchase new homes in reaction to frightening tales of shabby construction... The committee is taking up the issue after a state investigative agency reported bewildering episodes in recent years of watery, tilted, badly measured, ill-fitted, leaky and fire-prone new-home construction.

Home-buyer protections sought
N.J. lawmakers react to new-home nightmares
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 06/9/06

BY TOM BALDWIN
GANNETT NEW JERSEY

TRENTON — Lawmakers in New Jersey are planning to change how developers build and buyers purchase new homes in reaction to frightening tales of shabby construction.

"We are going to work to tighten the holes up," state Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, chairman of the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee, said Thursday.

The committee is taking up the issue after a state investigative agency reported bewildering episodes in recent years of watery, tilted, badly measured, ill-fitted, leaky and fire-prone new-home construction.

"The new-home nightmare is something I have seen," said Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck, R-Monmouth, addressing the committee.

Many horrors reported by the State Commission of Investigation, or SCI, popped up in Beck's district, where growth has been bearish in communities such as Manalapan, Marlboro, Freehold Township, East Windsor and Hightstown.

Beck later said, "I have heard a lot of complaints. My district, especially in the west, has seen tremendous growth."

Rice has fostered three pieces of legislation that create a new-home owner's bill of rights, enhance protections for home buyers and beef up state building codes.

Beck and others have introduced more than 20 similar bills.

It was Rice's three bills that the committee discussed Thursday. Members did not vote on anything.

Rice, in fact, said he planned public hearings in Gloucester, Monmouth and Essex counties to try to harvest ideas to create better legislation, a process that will likely take months at least.

"It will take some good things to make the bills better," Rice said.

"This legislative package constitutes a substantial move in the right direction," said SCI Chief Counsel Charlotte Gaal.

Patrick O'Keefe, chief executive of the New Jersey Builders Association, called the SCI report "profoundly disquieting," and said his group wants to work with the committee to shape the future. "We applaud your initiatives," he said.

Two Republicans on the committee — Sens. Leonard T. Connors Jr., R-Ocean, and Nicholas Asselta, R-Cumberland — and Sen. Fred Madden Jr., D-Gloucester, bore down on Gaal and the SCI report.

Connors complained the report hammered builders when inspectors were also to blame.

Holding up the report, Connors asked, "Isn't it also an indictment of those who inspect these homes?"

Asselta, whose family has been building homes for a century, said buyers have to take responsibility.

"It's the responsibility of the consumer, in this case the home buyer, to do their homework," Asselta said.

Madden called the report "a Band-Aid" that did not, as the Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel agreed, explore the permitting process that allowed for new-home developments on unstable ground.

Tittel said New Jersey is "sprawling out" development across its available land faster than any other state, at a rate of 1 percent a year.

He compared that with other states he said are "like one-tenth of a percent."

 

Tom Baldwin: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

 
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