My family has been home builders and contractors since teh mid 1960’s. I worked this for years. And I have seen the lack of quality on the new houses built in the past ten years. I have talked to my father, who for the past decade or so before his retirement last year was doing cad, scheduling, and estimating for a large residential home builder and contractor in the Houston area. He has told me many a horror story and he for one echos my opinion to the nth degree. When a man who has 40 years of experience in something and has run jobs with over 1000 hands on them tells you something is bad you might want to listen.
Many times my husband who is a glazier has to explain a homeowner that it is not the mirrors that are crooked but the walls. In the years I did inspections I only saw one builder string the corners of the foundation. And just trying explaining A2 x B2 = C2. No wonder so many houses are out of square.
And I have a news flash for buyers of real expensive homes. The contractor of your 500K + house uses the same immigrant labor as the contractor on the 100K house. Plus he most likely uses the same construction material. You are paying for upgrades in such things as cabinets, plumbing fixtures, carpets and paint. Not for quality of the construction.
I remember a class action where the builder was reusing the same foundation ribar. foundation is dug, ribar laid in, inspector checks off, ribar moved to next foundation hole, and concrete poured in.
There was also reported here on FR, the story of the people who discovered the illegal alien workers were using the bedroom as a urinal during constriction.
There ARE good homes being built now but they are few and far between, all we have are these Monotony HOA developments.