Homeowners of Texas Information
Pages
We provide these links to help consumers
learn about home buying steps, find reputable builders
and contractors, and so much more. We'd love to hear from
you, so please send us an email (
) and suggest other links and/or
categories.
TOPIC
CATEGORIES:
-
-
-
- Builders
-
-
1. Consumer Home
Building &
Remodeling Information
This section helps you follow Clark Howard's
advice, "save more; spend less; and avoid rip-offs."
-
HUD Homes &
Communities
http://www.hud.gov
This site is a good starting point for basic
information about home ownership, starting with
figuring out how much you can afford. The U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
has a mission of increasing homeownership,
supporting community development and increasing
access to affordable housing free from
discrimination.
-
Angie's
List
http://www.angieslist.com
How can you find reputable homebuilders,
contractors and service providers? Many consumers
pay a small fee to subscribe to Angie's List for
unbiased ratings and reviews from other
consumers. Angie's staff reads each review
before posting so companies can't rate themselves
or competitors. Companies don't pay to be on the
list, but the most highly rated ones are allowed to
offer discounts.
-
Rate
Your Builder
http://www.RateYourBuilder.com
This free service provides consumer ratings of
home builders and communities as well as
valuable advice and up-to-date news helpful to
new home buyers and owners. Because it's
relatively new and has not yet built up a large
enough sample size for most builders and
communities, it's ratings aren't statistically
accurate representations. Even so, it gives
valuable insight and links to good reference
material that HoT doesn't cover.
-
Home Building
Pitfalls
http://www.homebuildingpitfalls.com
Learn the pitfalls of building a new home. Learn
how to avoid builder rip offs on your construction
project. Save money, Save time, Avoid stress. And
get the high quality new home you expect. This
guide is the culmination of knowledge of several
attorneys, architects, and new home builders. It
shares knowledge gained the hard way: dealing with
hundreds of angry homeowners while managing the
warranty department for one of the country's
largest home builders.
-
The Clark Howard
Show
http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/category/4/
From this section on Homes & Real Estate,
"Whether you're buying your first home or selling
your seventh, real estate transactions can be
tricky. Once you are in a home, taking care of it
can be overwhelming to you and especially to your
wallet."
-
Web Soil
Survey
http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) has soil maps and data available online for
more than 95 percent of the nation’s counties and
anticipates having 100 percent in the near future.
The site is updated and maintained online as the
single authoritative source of soil survey
information.
2. Consumer Advocacy
If you've had
trouble with a builder, want to avoid pitfalls in the building
process, or just become aware of groups providing consumer
support, check these out.
-
- Neighbors blame builder Lennar Homes for
defective homes
http://www.searchhutto.com/huttoparke/channel8.html
NEWS 8 launches story about HuttoParke and residents
complaints regarding nail pops, cracked foundations, and
shoddy repairs. Residents continue to protest and picket
against the builder Lennar corporation...
-
Hutto clay leave some home needing
repair
http://www.searchhutto.com/huttoparke/Hutto_clay.html
Defective homes are now a national problem.
Builders like Lennar Homes are selling defective
homes with little regard for building codes. Lennar
Homes can get around building codes and obtain
certificates of occupancy on defective homes by
simply filing an affidavit that the home meets the
building code after an inspection by inspectors
Lennar Homes hires. It is now impossible for local
inspectors to inspect all homes being built. The
result is a flood of defective homes, with little
recourse for the buyers. We cannot address all of
the issues, so we have decided to start with Lennar
Homes in regard to defects, code violations and
misleading self inspections.
3.
Builders
-
Texas Association of
Builders (www.TexasBuilders.org)
TAB is an affiliate of the National Association of
Home Builders. With a membership of
over 14,000 representing 550,000 jobs and $35B
in annual revenue, TAB poses a powerful lobbying
force to advocate legislation that benefits
builders, as opposed to
homeowners.
- How
can you find reputable builders and
contractors?
-
- TRCC
is the state agency charged with overseeing
the homebuilding industry and protecting
homeowners, but it has no authority
to force builders to fix defects or to
prevent bad builders from entering the field.
Instead, it serves more to shield builders from
lawsuits. But as ineffective as this state
agency is, it does provide a way to search for a
builder and see if they're registered. Being
registered, however, tells you nothing about how
good they are, what type of homes they build,
what homeowners are saying about them,
etc.
- AngiesList.com is
a much better way of finding good builders or
ones to avoid, but it requires a small
subscription fee. Still, we recommend
this service because it captures consumer
ratings of all sorts of products and services,
including home builders and construction trades,
and builders can't nominate or write reviews
about themselves.
- HOT
Endorsements? We're still looking for
better ways to highlight good builders and
encourage their support, but we don't want to
be influenced by their membership.
So, watch this space and provide ideas if
you have them.
- Bad Builder Watch
List? Because we don't want to be in a
position of listing builders to watch out
for, you'll have to Angie's List or a
similar service, or read some of the articles and case
studies on this
site.
-
Web Soil Survey
http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) has soil maps and data available online for
more than 95 percent of the nation’s counties and
anticipates having 100 percent in the near future.
The site is updated and maintained online as the
single authoritative source of soil survey
information.
4.
Realtors
Reputable
realtors who endorse the work of HOT and provide support can
have links to their websites here, along with paid advertising
that we may eventually add to our home page.
-
Texas
Real Estate Commission (www.trec.state.tx.us
)
This state agency provides real estate education,
licensing and regulation for the protection of the
homeowner. Well over 100,000 realtors are licensed
and listed here. We need similar oversight for
builders and the contractors they
hire.
-
Texas Association of
Realtors (http://texasrealtors.com)
represents more then 90,000 members statewide and
provides professional education, standards,
resources, legal tools, and policy
representation.
-
Texas Real Estate
(
www.TexasRealEstate.com)
provides consumer information about buying a home
and working with a
realtor.
5. Legal /
Legislative
-
What
Politicians Take Homebuilder
Money?
Did the Texas home
building industry, which brings in some $35 Billion
per year, buy its way into favorable regulation (or
lack thereof) at the expense of consumers? That's
the impression one gets from
this Lobby
Watch report. The top builder
contributor was Houston builder Perry Homes
($2,877,299). The top recipient was Texas
Governor Rick Perry ($649,218). And every
Texas Supreme Court justice was on the take,
so is it surprising that they overruled a
binding arbitration decision that had favored
the homeowner?
-
Can Anyone
Understand This? Can Your
Attorney?
We challenge anyone to
interpret this Brownfields
Act. It seems to
offer
builders
& developers incentives to remediate and
develop on contaminated soil with no apparent
oversight and almost no liability.
Please let us know if you come across other links
that will help Texas homeowners.
|
