Rotten houses: Homeownership has doubled in California since the 1960s.

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http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A53294

Rotten houses

Homeownership has doubled in California since the 1960s.

But, by some estimates, as many as 15 percent of new homes

sold are defective. Welcome to the dark side of the

American dream.

By R.V. Scheide

Courtesy Of Big Architecture

Ah, the sweet smell of success. You paid your dues, gave

the best years of your life and rose to the top. Now it’s

time to kick back and enjoy the view, the silvery surface

of some distant lake as seen from, say, the Serrano Country

Club in the El Dorado Hills east of Sacramento. Swimming

pools, nature trails and an 18-hole championship golf

course all within easy access of your palatial $800,000

custom home. Country air perfumed by fragrant wildflowers

carpeting the verdant hillocks. It’s the scent of the

American dream. Go ahead, breathe it in deeply. You’ve

earned it.

Certainly Tom and Pat Heredia earned it. The couple spent

their productive years in San , he as a high-tech CEO

and she as a United Airlines flight attendant. Shortly

after the turn of the century, they decided to retire

early. They cashed out, and for half the price they would

have paid in San , they purchased a 3,500-square-foot

dream home in the Placer County foothills, where they

planned to live happily ever after. Little did they know

that their fairy tale was about to go seriously sideways.

Their home was finished in September 2001. That’s when the

Heredias say their problems really began.

“Once we moved in, we started noticing things were wrong,â€

Tom Heredia recalled. “Locks were installed upside down.

The lights in the bedroom didn’t work. There were cracks in

the garage-floor concrete and in the stucco.â€

The Heredias soon found themselves in a legal dispute with

builder Plott. Through their attorney, the Heredias

hired Jerry , a Sacramento architect who specializes

in investigating so-called construction defects. The list

of alleged required repairs submitted to the El

Dorado County Superior Court was lengthy: redo all of the

stucco, repair incorrectly installed interior doors and

frames, install a vent for the kitchen stove, replace a

warped hardwood floor, fix leaks in the tile roof, and on

and on.

Plott refused to discuss the case with SN & R. But Plott’s

attorney, Mark Hardy, defended his client’s work. “The case

went to binding arbitration, and an award was issued,â€

Hardy said. “The award was certainly less than what the

plaintiffs requested.â€

For the Heredias, one thing was certain. “Our dream home

got very nightmarish,†Tom Heredia said.

Welcome to the dark side of the American dream.

Courtesy Of Big Architecture

Homeownership long has epitomized the American dream, and

today more Americans own homes than ever before. According

to the U.S. Census, in the four decades since 1965, the

number of American homeowners has more than doubled, from

36 million people to 74 million people. In Sacramento

County, the number of homeowners has increased by one-third

since 1990, from 223,360 people to 305,779 people.

Obviously, this increasing number of owners requires an

increasing number of new homes, and there’s the rub: It may

be a cliché, but they just don’t build ’em like they used

to.

It’s not possible, given the country’s population growth,

its insatiable demand for housing and the depletion of its

natural resources. The tremendous post-World War II

homebuilding boom was achieved by employing methods of mass

production more akin to Henry Ford’s Model T than Abe

Lincoln’s log cabin. Thanks to rampant deforestation and

the decline of readily available quality lumber, builders

must depend more on manmade materials that are often

inferior to their natural counterparts. According to many

industry observers, budget constraints have led to less

supervision on job sites, lower wages for non-union

journeymen and an overall decline in the pool of skilled

labor.

The end result, according to a 2004 investigation by

Consumer Reports, is an increasing number of defective

homes. The magazine reported that the number of new homes

with so-called construction defects may be as high as 15

percent-- --through perseverance, it’s not a bad

house.â€

Asked what he might do differently if they could start from

scratch, Tom Heredia said, “I really think you have to get

everything up front and documented. No verbal agreements.

No 'he said, she said.’ The builder could have saved a lot

of money. He could have solved all the issues for $70,000.â€

Jerry has a more succinct solution.

“Don’t buy anything made after World War II,†he said

wryly.