The trend of home construction cost cutting in high end neighborhoods. What you can do to ensure that your new house is top quality in materials and labor.
Aug. 18, 2007 Modern Cookie-Cutter Homes
I don't know where you live or who the dominant burb builders are where you live, but around here in South Texas, and especially in my town, it seems like the builders have figured out how to pay an architect to design one home, run it through the Sims, and get all the variations.
Then they slash the traditional lot size so they can build one or two more homes per street and Ka-ching! I can understand them going to clone mode in middle-income subdivisions, but when the price tag is $250,000 and above (which translates to about $600,000 in places like California), I'd like to see some individuality.
I was recently doing some minor maintenance in one of these $250,000 new homes and was appalled by the craftsmanship. The use of “undocumented” subcontractors cuts their costs dramatically but the quality of the work also diminishes.
Some of the Materials are Shabby
One of the issues I was addressing on this visit (there have been others) is cabinet door hinge reattachment. The wood was of poor quality and the screws were way too short to have any holding power. What?
If you pay a quarter of a million dollars for a home, why should you have to worry about the material? Shouldn't you be getting hardwood cabinets? Because these commercial builders are going to pinch wherever they can, they do. After all, they are not thinking about a repeat sale for another ten years or so.
I was in another very high-end subdivision not long ago. The homes were about two years old and were brick on three sides and plywood sheet siding on the forth side. After only two years the paint was badly faded. This was the result of using inferior paint. Again, I would expect better materials for this kind of money.
The Solution: A Well Built Home
The solution is to purchase your own lot, have an architect draw up plans to your specs, and hire a good general contractor to build it. Ideally, you should visit the work on a daily basis to make sure the work is being done well with good quality materials.
I know a couple that were having a mid-range home built. Every day when it was time for the tradesmen to knock off for the day, the couple would show up with beer and cokes for the workers. A bit unorthodox, but when it was all done with, they ended up with the best looking home in the subdivision.
The irony of this is that most of the people that can afford very high end homes don't have much time to supervise the work. But make the effort, it'll pay off in the long run.
