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HOBB Weekly Update Message
Monday, 19 February 2007

A message from Janet Ahmad - ‘Never Underestimate Disgruntled Homeowners’

A message from Janet Ahmad
Inspiring articles that send a message to ‘Never Underestimate Disgruntled Homeowners’
The March issue of Money Magazine has an inspiring feature of Susan Sabin and two other families’ who have experience construction defects in their homes.  Susan decorated her home with lemons and lemon lights, put up a website and holds an open house every weekend waiting for Pulte Home to buy back her defective home. See: Her lemon home and website

A
Troubleshooter segment on North Carolina's ABC 11 featured Lisa Daniel who a hired a professional engineer that found more than 30 code violations in her new home. He recommended the house be demolished… Armed with a camcorder Lisa videotaped new Wayne County homes some under construction others just finished and fresh on the market. She went into crawl spaces… Besides videotaping problems underneath homes, Lisa started following the man she says did her wrong, Wayne County Inspector Joe Nassef. She tells Troubleshooter Diane Wilson, "The first day we followed him, he did 8 inspections in 1 hour in 40 minutes from one side of the county to the other." She says she videotaped Nassef doing inspections for six months.  What she and the Troubleshooter found was amazing.

Read these and more news articles featuring DR Horton, Beazer, KB, Custom Dream Builders and shoddy construction.
.

Together we have and will continue to make a difference!  Help us to help you.
Please take a few minutes to post your comments on the H O B B   F o r u m  and write you elected officials.  Your participation is vital.
Thank you,

Janet Ahmad, President
Home Owners for Better Building
 **********************************************************************
NEWS UPDATES:
 

Money Magazine
Dark side of the housing boom: Shoddy work

Less than a year after moving into her new 2,100-square-foot house in Lenexa, Kans., Susan Sabin has strung up lemon lights in her front window. The lemons, she says, go perfectly with the home's most prominent features: jammed doors, warped windows, bent pipes and cracked walls. "The house is essentially splitting in two," says Sabin. At the peak of the recent housing boom, home buyers scooped up a million newly built homes every year while homeowners poured more than $200 billion into renovations. But now stories of shifting soil, leaky roofs, damaged stucco and other construction defects abound. See homeowner’s website
 Read more... 

North Carolina ABC 11- Inspections, What Inspections? 
New Home Inspections Part 2
Troubleshooter Diane Wilson shares the story of one homeowner who was supposed to move into her dream home, instead it's been years of heartache and financial loss. And to this day, she still can't move into her new home. If you look at Lisa Daniel's house from the outside you can see the problems. Cracks through the brick and mortar, cracks throughout the concrete. Inside it's just as bad, as there's cracks in the ceilings, walls, and floor. Read more...

Sacramento - Beazer & DR Horton faulty plumbing
Call Kurtis: Flooded Homes
Roseville family's plumbing burst and their home was flooded, leaving them with a sinking feeling. When they say the builder wouldn't help, they called Kurtis Ming. They were warned about possible faulty plumbing but the warning came too late, and that's when their world burst. Both families got Kurtis involved. DR Horton never returned our numerous calls over the span of 3-weeks. Beazer did.  Read more...

Chicago and shoddy construction
Spotlight on poor development in the South Loop
Discontent is building with the quality of some residential construction in the hyperactive South Loop housing market. Aldermanic candidates are making shoddy construction an issue, and The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, speaking out about allegedly shoddy construction work and developers shirking responsibility, in a couple of Chicago Sun-Times stories today. Read more...

Contractors Lose Licenses
5 Rockland contractors lose licenses since start of year
The licenses of five Rockland contractors have been revoked since the beginning of the year, part of a trend of increased vigilance by both the county and consumers against noncompliance. Terry Grosselfinger, director of the county's Office of Consumer Protection, said there has been a push to keep tabs on Rockland's contractors since the 2005 rape and murder of New City mother Mary Nagle by a contractor's employee who was working illegally for New Jersey-based Coloron Painting. Read more...

Growing up in a broken home
Family's experience with Custom Dream Builders has been a nightmare

The Forbergs said they paid Orland Park resident Thomas Frenkel and his company, Custom Dream Builders, more than $120,000 to remodel part of their house and build a 1,200-square-foot addition. They said they've also shelled out more than $10,000 to hire other people to fix problems Frenkel left behind, including replacing a new roof that leaked. Read more...

Another expensive and lengthy lawsuit
Grounds for litigation
Zornes feels like he got a defective product, and he wants builders Danny and Pam McKee to refund money. To that end, he filed a lawsuit last week in Boone County Circuit Court naming the McKees, developer Martin Builders and the city of Ashland. The lawsuit claims that Ashland building inspectors went to the site and requested a soil study before the house went up. Documents and photographs Zornes obtained indicate one inspector, standing where the foundation was to be poured, pushed a reinforced steel bar more than 4 feet into soggy ground with his bare hands. But the lawsuit claims the builder never did the soil study, and today the soggy ground depicted in Zornes’ photographs is what holds his house in place. Read more...

Seattle Times Editorial on homebuyer protection
The house that Carmela built
Now think of the poor schmuck who buys the place and has to deal with the consequences of inferior materials and the contractor's general ineptness. Washington residents in that boat shared a litany of dream-turned-to-nightmare stories in a recent Senate hearing on a bill to protect consumers better. In Washington state, a consumer who pays top dollar for what is likely their single-largest purchase but gets low quality has little recourse, especially for defects, such as water damage, that show up years later. Sen. Brian Weinstein, chairman of the Senate Committee on Consumer Protection and Housing, is sponsoring bills that give buyers more guarantee of quality and impose some minimum standards for training and licensing of contractors. Read more...

KB Homes creates hot seat for housing authority
SAHA chief to take hot seat after council hears complaints
San Antonio Housing Authority CEO Henry Alvarez has agreed to appear before a City Council committee to discuss complaints about shoddy construction and poor management at SAHA's Villas de Fortuna subdivision on the West Side. "City staff asked us to participate in the Feb. 13 Urban Affairs Committee and we intend to do so," SAHA spokeswoman Melanie Villalobos said Tuesday. Councilwomen Delicia Herrera of District 6 and Patti Radle of District 5 raised the possibility of questioning Alvarez at a stormy citizens-to-be-heard session at last Thursday's council meeting. Fortuna residents in attendance recited a litany of problems with the houses they are buying from SAHA and the way the lease-to-purchase program is being managed. Related KENS 5 Report - Related photos - HUD/KB program,  More photos: Repairs
Read more...

Law suit filed against DR Horton
Empire Ranch homes defective, lawsuit alleges

Owners of eight single-family homes in Folsom’s Empire Ranch Development have filed a construction defects lawsuit against mega-developer D.R. Horton.  Represented by the Sacramento law firm of Anderson & Kriger, the suit was filed in El Dorado County Superior Court in late January. The homeowners’ complaints are numerous: extensive cracked stucco, leaky windows, leaky roofs, and negative drainage, among other things.  Matthew Schoech, an attorney at Anderson & Kriger, said:  “The sheer number of stucco cracks in these homes shocked me.”  Read more...

North Carolina ABC 11 - Inspection reveal code violations
Buying a Brand New Home Dos and Don'ts
Troubleshooter Diane Wilson hears from frustrated new homeowners every day. The complaints include everything from cosmetic issues, drainage problems to even structural concerns. The first home John McClancy looked at was the Wake Forest home of Ana Ruiz. She says she has aired her concerns to her builder several times and just wanted to know for sure what's going on with her home. John looked at her home and says he found several poor workmanship issues, but what alarmed John even more was what he says is a code violation. Read more...

Janet Ahmad, President
HomeOwners for Better Building
http://www.hobb.org
210-402-6800

 
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