COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT SLOW-MO BUILD DOWN THE STREET “Builders started 6442 homes, but how many have been finished? One house on my street broke ground almost exactly a year ago and as of today, it has a foundation, framing, Tyvek wrap, most of a roof, a little plumbing, and a little drywall. The house and its ‘dry’wall have been open to the elements for a few months now, including during the torrential rains of a few weeks ago. There have been only 2 workers working on it at a time, and no one has been working on it at all in the past couple weeks. It’s not like I’m in a slow-moving undesirable area; on the contrary, I’m near the border of 77098 and 77006 where houses are going under contract within a week of landing on the MLS, and asking prices are 1.5x –- 2x what they were 5 years ago. I’ve read that all of the construction employees have defected to work on commercial sites. Maybe that rumor is true.” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Headlines: Houston Tourism Boost; Downtown MegaBus Congestion]
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That most likely has to do with financing issues, the bank either yanked the loan for some reason or the builder doesn’t have enough cash to get to the next draw.
It’s odd. I’ve seen this before myself. Seems like if you ponied up some money for a new build, you’d want it finished. If the builder can’t pay back the loan, you’d at least have a finished property to sell off. Perhaps I’m not understanding the process here.
Its not the builder, its his sub contractors… they are booked solid and are taking care of the builders that pay best….
If that was my house, the contract would now be null and void. Dry wall and studs open to the element is asking for trouble. I would make sure that the contract had out clause for such a situation.
Might be the difference between a spec and a property where the owner is doing the construction. The spec builders want to build out as fast as possible. A spec house in my neck of the woods started construction at the beginning of April and will probably be ready for move-in June 1 (2900 sq ft with lots of custom stuff). By contrast, a to the studes rennovation nearby took over a year. That was owned by the eventual resident.
This is one where the new owners bought a teardown, tore it down, and hired a “luxury custom home builder” to put up a pseudo-Mediterranean-something-with-a-turret! in its place.