I’m not one to beat up my own industry. I truly have a passion for and love designing and building new homes, but I’m fully aware that there are a lot of “bad apples” in the custom home construction business. Here’s a list of our Top 5 things that those “bad apples” won’t tell you.
1) “I’ll build your house on a marshmallow.” – I’ve seen many custom homes in Tampa and St. Petersburg with significant structural issues. Often this is due to a builder not obtaining a soil test. Many properties in our area, especially along the water, were created as the bay was dredged. These soils tend to be unstable and require additional earthwork and foundation work to ensure the homes won’t have large cracks. Get a soil test to determine what is needed.
2) “I’ll cut any corner that I can and you’ll never know until I’m long gone.” – There has been substandard work in the homebuilding industry for years. In some cases, builders are intentionally skipping steps that are dictated in the building code or have substituted inexperienced, low cost labor to save costs. In other cases, it isn’t intentional, but rather a lack of quality controls, processes and systems on the builder’s part. Talk with the past customers of a builder you’re considering. You’ll learn quickly from these homeowners whether the quality was up to par.
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3) “Public inspectors won’t catch my shoddy work”. – One of the biggest misconceptions many home buyers believe is that since each municipality conducts building inspections, that must mean that every home is assembled the same way. To put it bluntly, building a new home to code is like getting a C- on a report card. The public inspectors are definitely required to verify the construction of your new home at various points to determine that it’s built to code, but not that it’s well-constructed. Some items are simply not inspected. In particular, the cosmetic finishes like painting, flooring and cabinetry. Once again, talk with the builder’s past customers. Solid builders know that they have to provide a quality product to stay in business.
4) “Once you move in, you’ll never see me again.” – The responsibilities of a builder don’t end when they hand over the keys and the garage remotes. There’s typically a year plus of warranty support. Some builders simply don’t support their homes after they are sold, but solid builders will proactively schedule service walks after the home is completed at the 3 and 11 month periods to address any issues.
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5) “I haven’t budgeted enough for decent light fixtures.” – It’s a common practice for builders to set allowances or budgets for such things as lighting fixtures, flooring and appliances. That way the buyer gets to pick out what they want. The trouble is that many builders lowball the allowances to keep the total price down in order to get the sale. If you think the allowances seem low, make the builder increase them.
There are certainly other things that “bad apple” homebuilders in Tampa and St. Petersburg won’t tell you, but these are the common ones that we hear regularly.
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