Remember the guy in "Crunchy Cons" who said his father-in-law, an engineer, used to walk him through neighborhoods where they were constructing McMansions and point out to him the crappy workmanship. And tell him that those houses were going to fall apart in 10 years?
Well, it turns out that shoddy McMansion craftsmanship may be playing a part in the foreclosure crisis.
Hat tip: Richard Barrett.
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House flippers are no better, and maybe worse, than builders of new homes.
We bought a small home built in 1948 a few months ago. The lady who owned it before us lived there only 15 months because she decided to move back from where she's from. The house is mainly fine, but we keep finding corners that got cut. There's a register in the hardwoods that doesn't connect to the HVAC anymore - the bottom is now just a box covered in sheet metal. Also, one kitchen cabinet literally fell of the wall as we started to fill it. The laboreres had just attached it to the sheetrock with regular screws.
Things could be way worse, but it does make me wonder what will come next. And when I see shows like "Flip that House," I am now deeply skeptical about what the ultimate buyers really get.
Sorry, I should have added that the lady before us brought it from a house flipper, I think. Our neighborhood is "up-and-coming" (read: gentrifying), so there are tons of flips going on. It continues even with the slump. Now they normally tear down the tiny homes and replace them with McMansions that loom over the smaller homes below.
Our family has long called those McMansion developments "cell-blocks for free people" because they are so lacking in character. Back in the late 90s there was a straight-line wind, something like an inland hurricane, that swept through the Twin Cities. 100+year old oaks and elms were uprooted. My old house, Arts and Crafts from the 20s, and all those of my neighbors withstood the storms, the only damage coming from trees that hit houses. On the far side of the storm, a Yup-scale development full of new McMansions, the roofs were ripped off like pieces of paper. Apparently the developers didn't even bother to use long enough nails to hold the things down.
At this point, the only new house I'd live in is one we built by hand.
I'd like a Craftsmen Bungalow built in the 20s. Beautiful and built to last, with some history.
My friend just had her house painted. She said that only the supervisor spoke English. The rest spoke spanish to each other. She felt creeped out by this. This is normal now in our area. Most of the construction workers don't speak English as their primary language. This is not to say that they can't do good work. But one has to wonder how well they know the area's building codes.
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