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America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

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Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#31

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100%

While I have no doubt these complaints are real this feels like it's trying to gin up evidence for a position more than anything

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#32

I bought a home a few years ago. We chose an older 1940's wood home near downtown in a California town. Its solid. Meanwhile, friends of ours have bought newly constructed homes with all the modern features, and the horror stories they have...

I wonder what exactly about the 1940's home made it solid. I want to build my own home one day, and I don't want it to fall apart the minute the builder's liability expires.

It's not more solid, it's just had 80 years of corrections.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#33

I feel like shoddy construction/craftsmanship isn't limited to new home construction. My wife and I just wrapped up a 6 month renovation of a >100 year old house. I used to work in industrial maintenance, so I knew how to do a lot of stuff already (electric, natural gas lines, drain lines, etc.) We had to farm out a couple of jobs to contractors we didn't have time to do ourselves. With the exception of one guy, they…

I’ve renovated many parts of my house myself. I hired out 1 time to a contractor and regretted doing so. Similar to your sentiment, I feel contractors don’t have the same care as I do. I’ve come to the realization that no one else will put in the same care as I would nor care about the small details as I would.

Also similar to you, I feel I could become a licensed electrician and start that as my fallback career.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s tricky. Buy 1970s or earlier and risk asbestos and lead issues (look how late asbestos was still used in a few things! It’s surprisingly late). Buy later than about 1985 and all the good old-growth wood was gone so it all sucks in different ways.

Was it actually gone or did the remaining stock get some sort of protection? Like did the entire continent seriously get logged?

It got rare enough that by some time in the '90s they stopped even using solid wood for trim and doors in mid-priced houses.

Before the '60s or so, you'd see a lot of narrow-ring old growth flawless, knot-free stuff used in framing and even huge support members, of a quality that'd be reserved for things like solid wood furniture, trim & finishes, and veneer after that (and then phased out of trim and finishes somewhat later).

What happened is it stopped being just as cheap as new growth—that is, it got rare enough and new growth got cheap enough that farming new growth finally became viable, and soon dominated.

Something "funny" related to this happened with wood-shingled housing in the US in the '80s: wood shingles had a reputation for being premium, long-lasting roofing, but this was a reputation built in the era when all of it was thick shake made out of that excellent old growth stuff. It got trendy in the '80s, spiking demand, just as the material for the real stuff, the stuff that was the reason people wanted it, got too rare to practically use for that anymore (except for way higher prices). What was installed was thinner, and made of worse wood.

The roofs installed on new houses in that period soon became notorious for leaks and often ending up covered over with desperately-applied asphalt shingles within 15 years, while the wood roofs were supposed to last closer to 50... but that was the old material, the new stuff was still wood but was not the same product, as that no longer existed as something Mere Mortals could afford.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#35

I feel like shoddy construction/craftsmanship isn't limited to new home construction. My wife and I just wrapped up a 6 month renovation of a >100 year old house. I used to work in industrial maintenance, so I knew how to do a lot of stuff already (electric, natural gas lines, drain lines, etc.) We had to farm out a couple of jobs to contractors we didn't have time to do ourselves. With the exception of one guy, they…

> I can't be the only one out there that's happy to pay a little extra if they know they're not getting garbage.

Not the only one, but there is just not a large market for it. And it likely would not be a “little” extra either.

I’ve tried to find local contractors who will just take pride in their work and get it done right (or overkill I suppose by my standards) the first time. Even old mainstays that are regularly double the cost of everyone else have been slipping lately. Companies I used to single bid for jobs knowing I was overpaying but didn’t care since I didn’t have to come behind them to audit or fix anything. They have all devolved.

There is a market at the very high end for ultra wealthy folks at something like 4-8x regular contractor rates. I’ve seen a few friends engage such folks. Most of that is in overpaying for a GC to manage their network of above average contractors and have the budget to make things right if one messes up.

Such companies seem to have zero interest in jobs not in the low 7 figures.

I would pay at least double “market” rate if I could find an electric contractor willing to take on my “crazy” home solar and battery backup project. The problem is the market for people willing to overpay for commercial quality work that will never have a dream of paying their costs back in solar savings is effectively zero. So goes for everything these days.

That said I just had my floors refinished and the contractors we lucked into finding for that 2 week job went above and beyond even my level of attention to detail. They were not any more expensive than competing bids. So who knows. It’s a crapshoot.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#36
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking how poorly built these houses are. No insulation, broken roof trusses, gas leaks, concrete property walls falling over. It's not like houses were always perfect in the past though. My 1953 house has construction debris mixed in to the concrete foundation in the corner of the garage, where I assume they ran out of concrete, and knots in the roof planks patched with garbage as well.

Sure maybe they weren't perfect in the past but were they this expensive (compared to income)? In the Cy videos I can't believe how much some of the homes cost and the things he finds wrong.

No, houses were much cheaper compared to income.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#37

I bought a home a few years ago. We chose an older 1940's wood home near downtown in a California town. Its solid. Meanwhile, friends of ours have bought newly constructed homes with all the modern features, and the horror stories they have...

I wonder what exactly about the 1940's home made it solid. I want to build my own home one day, and I don't want it to fall apart the minute the builder's liability expires.

Old growth wood is denser and stronger than new growth wood. Once we stopped cutting down old forests for lumber (generally a good thing), wood became a bit shit.

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not new. Nothing under the sun is new, but we do currently live in a time with unprecedented levels of open corruption where nobody seems to feel the slightest amount of guilt for clearly immoral behavior as long as they get away with it. And even in cases where what you do is explicitly illegal legal enforcement is largely contingent on whether or not whatever corrupt thing you did made you rich enough to…

> unprecedented levels of open corruption where nobody seems to feel the slightest amount of guilt as long as they get away with it. Historically speaking, current levels of corruption in most of the world are either low, or completely precedented. In the US specifically, corruption may be higher the last decade than in the couple of decades precloud, but certainly is not as high as 120 years ago.

I'm sorry, at what point in the late 1800s was the President of the US actively enriching himself at the taxpayers' expense, openly taking bribes from foreign countries, and threatening the families of members of Congress who he felt were not sufficiently supportive of his agenda?

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#39
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unprecedented levels of open corruption where nobody seems to feel the slightest amount of guilt as long as they get away with it. Historically speaking, current levels of corruption in most of the world are either low, or completely precedented. In the US specifically, corruption may be higher the last decade than in the couple of decades precloud, but certainly is not as high as 120 years ago.

I'm sorry, at what point in the late 1800s was the President of the US actively enriching himself at the taxpayers' expense, openly taking bribes from foreign countries, and threatening the families of members of Congress who he felt were not sufficiently supportive of his agenda?

Offhand, Ulysses S. Grant had a scandal ridden presidency (1869 - 1877) with multiple large scale corruption examples all headed by his closest associates.

There was some goings on related to foreign territories and annexation that I don't well recall, but to this day Grant's degree of involvement is debated - he tolerated much corruption from his personal secretary, defended him, and steered corruption investigations away until eventually removing Babcock(?) from his post.

Much pressure was exerted during this period, I hazard some of that pressure was via threats to persons, their assets, and perhaps their families.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Grant_administ...

Re: America's Large Homebuilders Shift the Cost of Shoddy Construction to Buyers

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s tricky. Buy 1970s or earlier and risk asbestos and lead issues (look how late asbestos was still used in a few things! It’s surprisingly late). Buy later than about 1985 and all the good old-growth wood was gone so it all sucks in different ways.

Was it actually gone or did the remaining stock get some sort of protection? Like did the entire continent seriously get logged?

Almost the entire stock gets logged until there's so little left that they stand up a protection scheme for it. The same happened to teak and rosewood here.
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