I’d think that if anyone could get a tract home built right it would be me. I was swinging a hammer before Ty Pennington had spit out his baby teeth and I’ve been making my living inspecting new construction for the last seven years. You’d think a guy like me would be the last person spewing the futile threats of a desperate new home owner into the deaf ear of Joe Customer Care. If you were to think that, you’d be thinking wrong…
Since moving into my dream house this spring, it’s been one thing after another. I’m not talking big things, mind you. During construction, I made frequent visits to the jobsite and structurally all is well. The little quality of life things is where today’s builders are dropping the ball. For every one “House Falls in a Fissure” headline story, there are hundreds of seething new home buyers spending time away from their busy lives calling, waiting, and fighting with customer care because of a bad light switch, poorly installed cabinetry, or a door seal that lets in more hot air than a political debate. Yesterday I spent (I’m not kidding) six and a half hours waiting for the second replacement for a defective garage door opener!
To some degree, it’s always been this way, but over the last five years it’s gotten much worse. The reason: Value Engineering. While this term is not familiar to the general public, it is quite common in the vernacular of today’s bottom-line minded builder. Remember the good ol’ days when your windows were trimmed with wood? Why use wood when drywall saves a few bucks a window? Did I say WOOD trim? Silly me! Most home builders, these days, use MDF (Medium Density Fiber) instead of wood trim. While MDF, is more environmentally friendly, at least from a conservation standpoint, the main reason it’s now used is because it’s much cheaper than wood.
Notice how the floor tile is butted to the baseboard molding? Value engineering! You see, it’s cheaper to trim the whole house and paint it before installing the flooring. The reason it’s cheaper is because the carpentry crew, painters, and flooring contractor only have to make one trip. The result of this short cut is that the grout that meets the baseboard is prone to cracking due to expansion and contraction. Because the grout is not flexible, it cracks. The builder may fix it in the first year of ownership, but after that they tell you its regular homeowner maintenance. When you’re on your knees grouting every other year, until the eternal planting, thank Mister Value Engineering.
If your home is less than four years old and has cultured marble bathroom sinks, go and look for the overflow hole. Actually, don’t bother because it’s not there. My understanding is that the sink manufacturers had a high incidence of “overflow failure” at the factory. Instead of coming up with a solution to the problem, they just did away with it. Ahh, Value Engineering Hall of Fame!
The overhead bedroom light fixture has been replaced by switched outlet. You want a light? That’s an upgrade. Back in the day, cabinets came with knobs. Today, that’s an upgrade. The standard interior paint job would barely pass for primer 10 years ago. Speaking of paint, ever notice that it’s almost the exact same color and sheen as drywall compound? You don’t think that’s a coincidence, now do you?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a businessman and I believe everyone deserves to make a fair profit. I just don’t get that new home prices have nearly doubled, in the last five years, and I can’t get a decent showerhead.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Your House Is a Hot Dog
I was in ninth grade when I found out how hot dogs were made. After our science teacher explained (with much graphic embellishment) that your garden-variety hot dog was a combination of all the parts of the animal that couldn’t be used elsewhere, three kids got sick. I guess the fact that science class was the first period after lunch, on Wednesday, didn’t help. Wednesday was “hot dog day” at my high school cafeteria. Since that day, I never quite looked at good ol’ all-American hot dogs in quite the same way.
I left that class feeling like I’d been lied to by the Oscar Meyer Weiner Boy. That catchy jingle (Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner…), the bright red and yellow package, all the smiling, happy fat kids and skinny kids climbing rocks- never did they once mention intestines, snouts, and other “by-products”. If you think about it, that’s pretty similar to the new home buying experience here in the Valley. While a few valley builders are “100% All Beef”, I’m sad to say that many are all intestines and snouts.
Open your Sunday paper and you’ll see a gazillion happy people, proudly posing in front of their “American Dream”. Like most ad layouts everything is perfect, just like that golden ribbon of mustard, effortlessly across flowing down the side of a bronze and glistening tube steak, nestled in a golden baked bun. The house is just right, the family is just right, and effortlessly flowing across the bottom of the ad is a catchy tagline like- “If I were a (Fill-in-the-blank) Homeowner, Everyone would be in love with Me!” Makes you just want to sink your teeth in, don’t it?
Visit the model home complex and every single home looks like it came right out of Martha’s Place. Options galore, easy financing, and promises of Utopian living for all! “Act quickly, homes are going fast!” Who wouldn’t want a bite of that? It isn’t until construction begins that you see how the hot dog is really made.
It starts with the industry's construction standards. While they’re not terrible, they’re “minimum” standards at best. The enforcement is also minimal, by the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction)and “let’s make a deal” is the prevailing philosophy when it comes to complaints filled against the contractors. Got a complaint against your local "McBuilder"? Good luck with that! The builders (and their massive and powerful lobby) deal the cards, make the rules, and are sitting on the pot.
Next are the municipal inspectors. They are overworked and outgunned, just like the AHJ that employs them. Ask a city or county inspector about his workload. He’ll tell you that he can, in most cases, only spot check the work. Some inspectors have been on record as admitting to having over 50 inspections on the daily docket. Do the math…
As a former construction super and independent home inspector, I’ve seen the inside of the hot dog factory. I’ve also been run off of construction sites by some of the biggest builders around. Seems they don’t always appreciate a non biased third party snooping around their product. Some builders will grudgingly tolerate a third party inspector, but we are still the Rodney Dangerfields of the equation. Even though there are a handful of independent inspectors fighting the good fight, less than 1% of new home ever buyers hire us. The prevailing mindset is “Hey, it’s a new house, why the heck do I need a home inspection”? The ones who do hire us are almost always second time “hot dog eaters”. Fool me twice…
If you take a look at the super overseeing the construction of your hot dog…er, house, chances are he or she is as fresh faced as the kids in that old Oscar Meyer commercial. It used to be that construction supers were crusty old-timers with a little bit of sawdust in their veins. Nowadays, the job is more often than not given to a kid right out of college. Give em’ a hardhat, a laptop, and dry erase marker, and presto! Most of their experience comes from a spoon-fed course of “Big Builder University”. Sprinkle in the fact that the sub-contractors are often the lowest bidders, and you have yourself a recipe for mediocrity.
For those of you that never have been down this road, you probably think I’m being a little too tough. For those that have, you know different. For what it’s worth, I still eat hot dogs. I just spend more time checking out the ingredients.
I left that class feeling like I’d been lied to by the Oscar Meyer Weiner Boy. That catchy jingle (Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner…), the bright red and yellow package, all the smiling, happy fat kids and skinny kids climbing rocks- never did they once mention intestines, snouts, and other “by-products”. If you think about it, that’s pretty similar to the new home buying experience here in the Valley. While a few valley builders are “100% All Beef”, I’m sad to say that many are all intestines and snouts.
Open your Sunday paper and you’ll see a gazillion happy people, proudly posing in front of their “American Dream”. Like most ad layouts everything is perfect, just like that golden ribbon of mustard, effortlessly across flowing down the side of a bronze and glistening tube steak, nestled in a golden baked bun. The house is just right, the family is just right, and effortlessly flowing across the bottom of the ad is a catchy tagline like- “If I were a (Fill-in-the-blank) Homeowner, Everyone would be in love with Me!” Makes you just want to sink your teeth in, don’t it?
Visit the model home complex and every single home looks like it came right out of Martha’s Place. Options galore, easy financing, and promises of Utopian living for all! “Act quickly, homes are going fast!” Who wouldn’t want a bite of that? It isn’t until construction begins that you see how the hot dog is really made.
It starts with the industry's construction standards. While they’re not terrible, they’re “minimum” standards at best. The enforcement is also minimal, by the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction)and “let’s make a deal” is the prevailing philosophy when it comes to complaints filled against the contractors. Got a complaint against your local "McBuilder"? Good luck with that! The builders (and their massive and powerful lobby) deal the cards, make the rules, and are sitting on the pot.
Next are the municipal inspectors. They are overworked and outgunned, just like the AHJ that employs them. Ask a city or county inspector about his workload. He’ll tell you that he can, in most cases, only spot check the work. Some inspectors have been on record as admitting to having over 50 inspections on the daily docket. Do the math…
As a former construction super and independent home inspector, I’ve seen the inside of the hot dog factory. I’ve also been run off of construction sites by some of the biggest builders around. Seems they don’t always appreciate a non biased third party snooping around their product. Some builders will grudgingly tolerate a third party inspector, but we are still the Rodney Dangerfields of the equation. Even though there are a handful of independent inspectors fighting the good fight, less than 1% of new home ever buyers hire us. The prevailing mindset is “Hey, it’s a new house, why the heck do I need a home inspection”? The ones who do hire us are almost always second time “hot dog eaters”. Fool me twice…
If you take a look at the super overseeing the construction of your hot dog…er, house, chances are he or she is as fresh faced as the kids in that old Oscar Meyer commercial. It used to be that construction supers were crusty old-timers with a little bit of sawdust in their veins. Nowadays, the job is more often than not given to a kid right out of college. Give em’ a hardhat, a laptop, and dry erase marker, and presto! Most of their experience comes from a spoon-fed course of “Big Builder University”. Sprinkle in the fact that the sub-contractors are often the lowest bidders, and you have yourself a recipe for mediocrity.
For those of you that never have been down this road, you probably think I’m being a little too tough. For those that have, you know different. For what it’s worth, I still eat hot dogs. I just spend more time checking out the ingredients.
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