Homeowners of Texas - Builder Advice, post-TRCC

Builder Advice, post-TRCC

HOT proudly presents this Business Week book excerpt, which pinpoints the insidious (and often invisible) problems that send great companies, industries or nations crashing to earth. It seems to explain the decline of the Texas home building industry and the institutions (companies and political system) that fueled it. Here are some highlights.

We note signs of impending doom that seem to apply to the Texas homebuilding industry

Based on the article, HOT offers this advice for the homebuilding industry:

· Take this economic downturn and low market demand as an opportunity to retool your organization's skills and culture. Work to develop construction trade schools to feed the pipeline with qualified workers.

· Become a better citizen and work extra hard to repair your industry's reputation, which was severely damaged by the strong-arm tactics of your lobbyists and attorneys and the TRCC. Whether justified or not, homeowners and many legislators have come to hate builders because of those tactics.

· Rather than spending millions on lobbyists and attorneys and fighting the real advocacy groups like HOT, work with us and other stakeholders to improve building standards and the homebuilding profession so buyers feel as safe buying new homes versus existing ones.

· Rather than being forced to compete with shoddy builders on price, embrace effective licensing and regulatory oversight to weed them out and keep them out.

· Rather than dismissing customer complaints as frivolous, listen in an unfiltered and unemotional way to what they're trying to tell you. With this information, you can learn from any past mistakes, understand changing market needs, and work toward building better homes with more value.

· Rather than shielding yourself from customer lawsuits, discover and fix their underlying cause. Rely on insurance, including performance bonds for each home, to help mitigate risks. And work with the insurance industry to lower their risks too, because that will help lower your rates.

· Know that past success is one of the biggest impediments to future growth. It can reinforce a traditional way of doing things.

· Respond to this article with your own advice for other builders, because "a rising tide floats all ships."

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

The Cops are against the Robbers, but the Laws are against the Cops.
- Hank Williams, Jr.

In Texas you can buy your own state agency, then regulate yourself.
- Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston),one of just 6 Texas legislators to NOT receive money from homebuilders.

The loss in property values resulting from substandard, incomplete and unsafe construction erodes the local tax base. These are the tax dollars that educate our children and safeguard our communities.
- Rep. Dora Olivo
(D-Rosenberg)

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. - Milton Berle

THEY ALSO SAY

No other states' public policy poses a greater burden for defective homes squarely on homeowners like Texas.

Stuck with LEMON... need Lemon Law for homes

In Texas LULAC has witnessed a disturbing trend in substandard new home construction, which can be attributed to the lack of adequate inspections during construction, lack of effective new home warranty protection, home durability as well as lack of consumer redress for defective new home construction.

The industry-wide use of Binding Mandatory Arbitration (BMA) clauses in new homebuilder contracts and third party warranties further deny home buyers their constitutional rights of holding a builder accountable through the courts.