Have you, or anyone you know, found a new place of residence to be less that fully satisfactory..?

Question

February 14 2007 -- Less than a year after moving into her new 2,100-square-foot house in Lenexa, Kans., Susan Sabin has strung up lemon lights in her front window.

The lemons, she says, go perfectly with the home's most prominent features: jammed doors, warped windows, bent pipes and cracked walls. "The house is essentially splitting in two," says Sabin.

At the peak of the recent housing boom, home buyers scooped up a million newly built homes every year while homeowners poured more than $200 billion into renovations. But now stories of shifting soil, leaky roofs, damaged stucco and other construction defects abound.

Contractor problems rank among the most common consumer complaints, according to the Better Business Bureau, and a recent Criterium Engineers study found that 17 percent of new residential construction projects inspected by the firm in 2006 had at least two significant problems.

Answer 1

When the housing market is HOT and prices are high, all kinds of builders come out of the woodwork. They come from all around trying to make money.
The only way they can make the most money is by buying the property and licenses to build and then putting up homes as fast as they can to turn them and make a profit.
The faster they turn the homes the bigger the profit. They pay less back on their loan.
And to make a big profit they keep overhead low and end up hiring low end workers. Many are not fully trained and if the inspector has his head in a bottle of beer many things can get looked over. The housing market for new homes has been on the increase until last year (middle). As the market slows the contractor has to lay workers off and demand more of the workers he keeps. It is all a big game. The ones that worry about their reputation in a community play the best game and the buyers wins.
Others just plain dont care.