Cracked Houses: What the Boom Built

WSJ ^ | 01 July 2009 | M.P. McQueen

[BGHater]

Robert and Kay Lynn lay in bed shortly after closing on their new home in the Blue Oaks subdivision in Rancho Murieta, Calif., abutting an 18-hole golf course. They were listening to the “pop, pop, pop” of what they thought were acorns falling onto the roof.

The Lynns soon realized those were not acorns dropping on the roof.

“Little did we know it was the house cracking,” says Mrs. Lynn, 67 years old. Mr. Lynn, 68, says they bought the property in 2002 for $357,000 as a weekend home and an investment. The stucco house was moving and shifting, with part of it subtly pitching toward the golf course, resulting in cracks and fissures in the walls, ceiling and floors, the couple says.

Many of their neighbors say they had similar problems. In the Sacramento Valley subdivision of about 250 houses, more than half the residents have reported some type of flaw. The Lynns and dozens of their neighbors last year filed construction-defect lawsuits against the builders, and the lead case is expected to go to trial next week. They are seeking enough money to permanently repair the houses, a figure expected to total millions of dollars.

A spokeswoman for the builders, Reynen & Bardis Development LLC, said they would have no comment pending litigation, but a response the company’s attorneys filed with California Superior Court said time limits for some of the plaintiffs’ claims had run out.

Whatever the outcome of the case, hundreds of thousands of people from California to Georgia say their almost-new homes need costly repairs because of construction defects. The furious pace of home building from the late 1990s through the first half of the 2000s contributed to a surge in defects, experts say.

[riverdawg]

There is nothing wrong with OSB (or even synthetic stucco)if, as the previous poster implied, it is properly installed, sealed, joined (to other materials), and maintained. That is a tall order, however, for most builders and homeowners. There are brick houses in Texas that are crumbling because the Mexican bricks were of poor quality. I've seen brick veneer fall off $500k houses because the mortar wasn't mixed properly.

[the long march]

Oh yeah. Sometimes it is as simple as don’t build there

[Tainan]

And sand with salt in it. Use it to make cement, water gets in the cement later, salt dissolves...cement falls apart.

I see it everyday. Brick walls built 3 yerars ago that I can push over with my foot. (And I don’t mean some super-powerful gung fu push either...8-)