This is amusing to me. My roof was leaking a few years back and I went to check it out and it turns out some of the nails were never covered and they rusted through. The roof tar just didn't extend all the way to the edge (flat roof). My electrical outlets kept going out so I went to replace a few and realized they were installed with the wires connected to the wrong leads. I had some LED lights that are supposed to last a very long time go out within a year of moving in and replaced them and discovered the ground wires just weren't connected to anything. My neighbor had their furnace installed upside down. Damn near literally everything we have checked in these townhouses turns out to have been done incorrectly, shoddily, or just not finished and covered up in such a way that an inspector wouldn't notice if they didn't take it apart. From what I hear, the city inspector at the time was 84 and didn't bother going upstairs, so since we have 4-story houses, things like the roofing and furnaces seem to have just not been inspected at all.
It's not like this is some slum. They're 600k townhouses a few blocks from city hall in downtown Dallas. I kind of regret deciding to live in the middle of the city at this point. The builder had to fix our water main for free when it was discovered it had a joint running through where the driveway meets out foundations, causing it to split when the blocks sheered in cold weather. The guy that came out to fix it (the builder's son no less) told me townhouse construction was a joke. It's impossible to find a legit tradesman who will do it. Apparently they all prefer the suburbs. I guess putting up pre-fab houses is faster and more profitable or whatever. So we get the lowest common denominator fraudsters living downtown. I'm kind of amazed some of these guys are still alive. I've been watching a construction project next door for a while. They broke ground three years ago and finally put walls up last month. Instead of a real cherry picker, dude's were using some kind of four-story forklift and had a wood crate on top of it with one wall ripped off and they were using that for work. No safety harnesses. A guy the other day was doing window work on a 60 foot ladder, very top, with one person holding it, and he was reaching a good 4 feet to his left to mess with I think a dryer vent. Again, no safety harness.
I'm reasonably sure "poor quality work" is an accurate description of what is happening here.