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.