HOBB Update: Legislative Day at Texas Captiol |
Sunday, 10 February 2013 |
Donât Miss this Opportunity at the Texas Capitol
Attention: Tuesday February 12, 2013 at 10 AM. Your help is needed! Home Owners for Better Building and aggrieved homeowners will kick off Legislative Days and Home Lemon Law Campaign at the Texas State Capitol. Joining us at the Capitol will be Cibolo Mayor Hartman and Mayor Pro-Tem Liparoto.
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City of Cibolo Sets the Higest Stndards in Texas |
Sunday, 10 February 2013 |
Cibolo approves stricter home standards
City Manager Robert Herrera said the new homebuilding standards, approved Jan. 8 by Cibolo City Council, are among the strongest in the area and will help improve the quality of homes being built in the city. I think that speaks well of the city of Cibolo,â Herrera said, âin trying to protect the largest asset most of our residents will have when they live in our community.â The stricter standards require homebuilders or developers to conduct geo-technical tests on each lot and disclose to the city and home buyers the locations of home sites that are constructed on 24 inches or more of fill. |
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Foundation Failure Epidemic |
Friday, 08 February 2013 |
Faulty Foundations: Homebuilders exploit loophole
SAN ANTONIO - How solid is the house you are sitting in right now? For thousands of people in San Antonio⦠that's a troubling answer. Cracked walls and broken concrete are often blamed on the shifting soil of south Texas. But there is often another reason: shifty homebuilders. Your home's foundation may be crumbling underneath you right now. And that may be because your homebuilder took a shortcut when constructing the foundation.
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Thursday, 07 February 2013 |
BR home builder booked on felony theft, misapplication of payments
Quinn Martin, 7912 Willow Grove Blvd., Baton Rouge, was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison by state attorney general investigators on 54 counts of misapplication of payments by a contractor and four counts of felony theft. Martinâs Baton Rouge-based company, QMI Custom Homes, entered into homebuilding contracts, worth a total of $1,865,477, with four different parties in 2012, the warrants say. |
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Countrywide’s Angelo R. Mozilo Arrogance Stings |
Tuesday, 22 January 2013 |
Four paths toward a better 2013 in business
Herewith is a short wish list about what might make it a happy one for investors, taxpayers, home buyers and consumers...Angelo Mozilo - "This is not caused by any act of Countrywide or by any act of MBIA," he said. '`It was caused by an event that was unforeseen by anyone, because if anybody foresaw it, you would never have insured it, we would never have originated the loan. |
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HUD and Homebuilders as way too cozy |
Wednesday, 09 January 2013 |
How Can You Properly Thank HUD for your New Home Foundation Flaws?
Year after year, the U.S. Taxpayer is forced to subsidize shoddy homebuilding. Homebuilders are able to squeeze more profits from each and every house because they are never held accountable by the federal government for the fraud perpetrated on homeowners. Year after year, an incredible number of house foundations fail. |
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Big Centex Homes Business- Nationstar Mortgage Pays $1.3 Billion for $215 Billion |
Wednesday, 09 January 2013 |
Lewisville-based Nationstar buys mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America
Nationstar Mortgage Holdings, which started out as the mortgage operation for Dallas-based Centex Homes, will buy $215 billion in mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America, which has been slashing its mortgage business in the wake of the financial crisis. It will pay $1.3 billion for the portfolio, which will more than double its customer base to 2.5 million. Mortgage servicers handle the payments on outstanding mortgages, forwarding proceeds to the mortgage holder and dealing with loan delinquencies and foreclosures when necessary. Nationstar, based in Lewisville, says it serviced approximately one million loans with total unpaid principal balances of $198 billion as of Sept. 30. It has about 4,100 employees at facilities around the country, including a call center in Lewisville. |
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Centex Avoids Responsibility |
Saturday, 27 October 2012 |
HOA fights for answers
There are more than 200 homes in the Wynston subdivision in Clayton. Recently, the HOA received a warning from the Town of Clayton letting them know the berms weren't up to code..."We didn't even really have an idea that the problem even occurred until the complaint was brought to our attention, some 10 years after the residency was built," homeowner Matt Katlen said. Centex developed the subdivision back in 1999.Katlen did some digging and found a document that dates back to 1999 from Centex's consultants. The letter addressed to the Town of Clayton's Planning and Inspections Department lets the town know Centex did not include the landscaping detail the town requested. The letter even provided a drawing showing the trees and shrubs that should be put in along the berms. The letter states this landscaping buffer will be added to the plans.More than 13 years later, the HOA wants the builder, Centex, to do what they say needed to be done back in 1999. |
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Pulte-Centex Force Homeowners to Binding Arbitration |
Tuesday, 23 October 2012 |
Rivermist owners look to arbitration
Home Owners for Better Building warned Rivermist homeowners about getting suckered into forced binding arbitration. Now after all these years wasted⦠The claims against Pulte Homes Inc. were dismissed in June after the court found that the parent company itself doesn't perform work in Texas. The case against Centex was dropped in September because the homeowners are subject to a binding arbitration agreement with the home builder, the court documents state. This latest decision affected Pulte Homes of Texas. "We have no choice at this point," Vick said. "It's either that or appeal the ruling on arbitration, which we don't intend to do. I don't agree with the court's ruling, but we certainly are in the process of going to the arbitration side." |
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Cibolo Mayor and council seek to reign in shoddy homebuilding |
Saturday, 13 October 2012 |
Raising the roof over homes
For months, several homeowners in the Falcon Ridge and Bentwood Ranch subdivisions have claimed the home builder sold them defective houses, and already the City Council has taken steps to protect its residents by drafting a stricter building code. Since the beginning of the year, the city of Cibolo has put in place code that requires home builders to conduct more soil testing and that requires engineers to certify a building's design fits with the soil test results, Mayor Pro-tem Stever Liparoto said. Cibolo Mayor Jennifer Hartman is one homeowner whose house has foundation issues... âThere seems to be a big difference between the home builders and the engineers (as to) what constitutes a failure,â Liparoto said. âMy thought is that if it costs the homeowner money or decreases their value, it's a failure.â |
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D R Horton Homeowners Ask Cibolo City Council For Home Lemon Law |
Wednesday, 26 September 2012 |
Cibolo homeowners ask city hall for more home builder regulation
For years now, people have complained their homes are built on poor foundations that are crumbling and sliding beneath their feet. Until lately, the fightâs been with individual builders of those subdivisions but now the battleground is shifting to city hall. |
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Sunday, 23 September 2012 |
More Pulte Construction Defects
Like a spreading desease Pulte Homes are falling down... Dishonest proved to be highly profitable on the way to becoming giants of the home construction industry. They have gone where no one would dare to go â the swampland, the corn fields, the fertile cow pastures...Under construction - see the first video, Bricks Rock! |
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Contaminated Drywall Safety Act of 2012 |
Saturday, 22 September 2012 |
CONSUMER ALERT:National Association of Home Builders
NAHB and its lobbyist want to make sure Congress does not empower the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) with regulatory powers over its industry. Their objective is to assure limitations of builder responsibility for use of defective products. In a letter drafted with the usual building industry political style to the Speaker of the House over concerns with H.R. 4212, Contaminated Drywall Safety Act of 2012, which seeks to prevent the introduction of unsafe drywall, ... |
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Pulte Wrecking Crew Demolish New Homes |
Thursday, 20 September 2012 |
Pair of Fairhaven homes vanish at hands of Pulte wrecking crew
Itâs not something you see every day in a new neighborhood: demolition crews taking down homes that are less than a few years old. With months of complaints from some property owners about cracked foundations, cracked tile and walls separating, Pulte Homes said it had hired an independent engineer to examine some of Fairhavenâs troublesome houses back in July. Two months later, in a letter to the community that came with the wrecking ball, the company said, computerized testing âfound foundation issues at sufficient depthâ at some locations. |
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Schertz - 2 Year Old Pulte Homes Torn Down |
Thursday, 20 September 2012 |
Pulte demolishes homes beyond repair
It's been an unstable situation for months. In November of 2011 homeowners began to report cracked foundations. The two homes demolished Wednesday morning couldn't be repaired, so for now Pulte is paying for housing for the two families until their homes are completed in December. |
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