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April 19, 2017 04:00 PM UTC
8 Comments
I quit working for two home builders because of substandard work performed by subcontractors. And I will name names.
Shea Homes – the work the framing contractor did was so deficient the Jefferson County Building Dept. threatened to "red tag" the entire project. Among other things, roof sheathing was not nailed off and serious structural defects were not corrected. Shea Homes management did nothing to address the issues or replace the framing contractor.
American Concert Homes (actually a Canadian company formerly operating under the name B-Corp). The project was the multifamily Water Tower project developed by the Arvada Urban Redevelopment Authority (AURA). The drywall subcontractor, Front Range Drywall, hired undocumented workers who were not supervised and repeatedly installed the drywall party walls between units improperly. Operating as B-Corp at the Centennial project in Littleton, B-Corp was sued by homeowners and awarded a $700,000 judgment for the very same construction defect issue. Despite this history, American Concert Homes refused to fire Front Range Drywall and the defective installations continued building after building.
Never underestimate the power of groupthink.
Dear Democrats,
Please stop boning us in your rush to slobber all over the cash-laden phalli of your corporate pals. The system works fine. Builders have, and will always, build what makes them the best return. Prices will be, and have always been, based on market comps, not builder insurance rates. All that will come of decreased insurance costs, if there are any, is increased builder profits. All that comes of strengthening builders is weakening customers.
Please stop. This is the same nonsense you jagoffs try to pull every year with the payday lenders. Stop saying you're trying to protect the regular guy, while loading up sacks of cash for these businesses (and maybe hoping the wind picks up a few stray bills and blows them your way), and solve some actual problems.
Could that be the sound of the tort lawyer heard in the land, Sudy?
Whole discussion reminds me of when I moved to Colorado in April, 1981. Eventually, I started looking for something to buy. A good friend said something like: "you're paying rent on an apartment with minimal soundproofing, but you can walk away after 30 days. Why get stuck in a cardboard condo with similar soundproofing issues that you can't walk away from?"
Sound advice. I saved up and finally bought a solidly built Hutchinson house in 1995.
The lack of sound control was the issue in the B-Corp litigation. Some of the testimony was about hearing couples having sex in the next unit. There are specific ways party wall assemblies are constructed to achieve a desired STC rating (sound transmission control) and plaintiff's were able to establish the party walls did not meet the desired STC rating because of improper installation.
Construction defect litigation is not what has driven low rates of condominium formation. It is the economics of selling v. renting when interest rates are low and rents are high, allowing for a big spread between the two that makes apartments more profitable than condominiums.
There is an easy way to put more condominiums on the market if it is profitable to do so. It is cheap and easy to convert an existing apartment building whose lack of construction defects has been established to condos. A decade and a half ago, when condos had a much larger market share – there were a lot of such conversions in metro Denver. If the economics were there, but construction defects were an issue, we'd seem them again.
Enacting legislation to solve a problem that doesn't exist isn't doing us any favors. It is purely pandering to a fake problem. Colorado already has strict limits on construction defect litigation. We don't need more incentives for builders to cut corners.
A soliid point, ohwilleke, but many apartments lack the high end features that purpose built condos can incorporate. The litigation cost is a real problem, albeit seldom the decisive factor.