Home Buyers Beware

July 16, 2009 by root

Home Buyers Beware

By Roger Gray

In Texas, we have a lemon law for new cars, but not new homes.

You need a license to decorate a home, but not to build one.

If you want to cut hair or give people tattoos in Texas, you need a license. But to build a home, you simply register and hang out a shingle, and the reason is money.

The political clout of builders has made Texas an easy state in which to build bad houses, like the homes we saw in Hutto, near Austin; shoddy homes built on the worst soil in the state, expansive clay.

"The houses can become uninhabitable over time," said Tom Archer with the consumer group "Homeowners of Texas."

"It expands and contracts enormously. The amount of pressure it generates is huge. It is really, really deadly to foundations."

And buyers like Cheryl Rea say they weren't told.

"I think Lennar needs to buy this house back," she told us, since her home is unsalable.

We asked about her comment that they ought to buy the house back and what they say when she says that to them?

"They're not in the business to buy houses back," she replied

Katherine Barnhill has the same issue.

"Had I known that the homes were built on highly expansive soil," she said,

"Had I known we're within 3000 ft. of a voluntary cleanup site for arsenic contaminated soil, there's no way we would have bought this house, no way."

You heard right, arsenic, used on old cotton fields.

Tom Archer said, "So, the developer was aware of the fact that this land had arsenic contamination. This is a VCP site here. He was put on the honor system to clean it up. No verification that he ever did so."

And, nobody comes back to check to see if you cleaned it up.

And the buyer isn't told.

"The farmer or the landowner of the contaminated property has to tell the developer, " Archer told us. "The developer has to tell the builder.

But the builder does not have to tell the homeowner that the property is contaminated."

"I have three boys. Can they go out and dig in the dirt?" asked Katherine Barnhill. "What is this doing to them long term? I have not had my children tested, but I'm kind of afraid of what I might find out."

And most home contracts require arbitration, ruling out a lawsuit.

"The judge says, can't do it," Barnhill said, "You need to go through arbitration."

Reputable builders, like Anwar Khalifa of Pyramid Homes, say buyers need to be careful.

"This is the most expensive purchase most people will ever make," he warned. "They need to really do their homework on the builder."

Or the results can be disastrous.

"We're stuck," Cheryl Rea concluded. "We're prisoners here."

There was some minor progress for home buyers in the last legislative session, but any chance for real reform is at least two years away.

Source: http://www.cbs19.tv/Global/story.asp?S=10730658&nav=menu1493_2_1