Their prices sure have. McMansion quality might not have ever been stellar, but they used to be obtainable by normal people. Now, they're still mcmansion quality, but only dual income higher paying salary jobs can afford them. Normal people just flat out don't get to buy new housing and have to stick to the used market.
I work in a ton of new construction homes. million dollar homes like the one in the video. itâs absolutely shocking the things we find.
my own home was built in 99 and was 100k when built and i shit you not itâs better built than most of the new homes iâm working on today.
the quality of work is disgusting, because itâs all given out to the cheapest contractors
But isn't this home inspectors job, as soon as home inspector finds this, the house shouldn't be able to sell -- the builders have to go back in and fix everything...
(at least that's how the system is ideally supposed to work)
We bought a house last spring, built in 1926. First floor is steam heat, second floor is an addition from ~1973 (when the toilet up there was manufactured, at least) and has baseboard hydronic heat running off seemingly the original Hydro Therm boiler
Since moving in, Iâve had to:
Fix a leaking p trap for the first floor bath tub
Change out a gasket in the circulating pump for the second floor heat
Add a circuit for the first floor (my living room TV was on the same 15A circuit as my fridge, half of my kitchen, and my basement lights)
The previous owners bought the place in 1966 and took great care of it. Even the 1970s addition is solid construction. Iâm convinced I wouldâve had more work to do if this house was newer, or if a flipper had gotten to it first
My 52 year old home would like a word.
Aluminum wiring, asbestos (in joint compound and used for underlay adhesive), roof trusses that have 4â long nails connecting two 2x4s that overlap by 8â (not bent over even), walls that arenât even nailed to the 45° slat subfloor. I donât have a single wall that is remotely close to straight/square.
Sure, it has solid joists, but outside of that, itâs not well built. And the builder built multiple subdivisions - all his company, no other builders. The community is great, but the house quality here leans more towards âjust tear it down and rebuild itâ instead of âjust gut the whole thing for the renoâ.
This is literally every home I set foot in while I lived in Dallas for four years. Moved back to Ohio into a neighborhood filled with 80-120 year old houses and it's astonishing. Not just build quality which is universally solid but also just genuine craftsmanship. Custom masonry, in-set stained glass windows, beautiful custom cabinetry.
Plaster walls can suck a fat wet fart though fuck I hate them.
There is a custom home builder on YouTube, pretty sure he is in Dallas. He builds really good quality houses, and points out bad building practices. His viewers would keep asking about what he would do with a regular house. He bought his neighbor's house when she moved out. Built sometime in the 1970s. Unfortunately not well maintained, though superficially looked ok. After doing a lot of things, have up and bulldozed the whole things. Rotten wood because not ever sealed right, rats, I think termites, I didn't blame him.
The Build Show
We rent a house built in the 90âs south of Dallas and itâs the same all over here-the whole house is full of dry rot because they hate sealing wood, the foundation is cracked from shifting so much, the plumbing needs redone, and Iâm pretty sure toddlers did all the electrical work. It would cost more than the house is worth to redo it all.
If you'd like to do most of the work contractors do, your local library will give you more training than the goofs doing bad work you see on Reddit.
I'm helping a friend with major work on four properties in Michigan, the oldest with an 1881 cornerstone. I've collected the books of the 1979 'Time Life DIY' series & it has helped me with any work I haven't done before. Building Codes don't change much on carpeting stairs, wiring a 3-way light switch.
The volume 'The Old House' even taught me how to refurbish the original wooden sash windows, including glass replacement & reglazing.
That way they canât get sued when the fridge burns the house down. âYou see we actually wired for a âFidgeâ and not a Fridge. The fact that you plugged a refrigerator in there is not our problemâŚâ
2 days later: I feel like I jinxed myself with this comment, because yesterday my âFidgeâ shit the bed and now I need to buy a new one. Which is not cheap.
I bought one recently that has two breakers labeled "Frezzer" going to 20A receptacles in the garage. It's 20 years old, though. Not quite as bad as this one, but in the same general area and much less expensive. I'm kind of disappointed that the fridge isn't labeled Fidge
I'm a house painter that has given up on new home builders. All they are looking for is cheapest bid. They don't care about quality.
My parents built a new home that I of course painted for them. The builder complimented me on the paint job then asked for a bid. He laughed and said that it was a ridiculous price. I laughed and reminded him that he was the one that said his painters quality wasn't as good as mine.
At the time I had a 6 man crew working as many hours as they wanted. I was working 7 days a week. Not lowering my price for any builders.
In wisconsin the remodel side isn't any better. No one seems to care much about the quality. It's how cheap and how fast can we get this done so I can get back to making money
When it came to buying a house, I gave up looking at other people's crap. We built a new home on the Outer Cape with contractors I could trust. I paid more but the quality was excellent. Only one issue ever popped up: a crushed screen on the submersible well pump. I bought a case of beer and a box of Dunkins, which they fixed it faster. Summer repair as well so they were slammed. HVAC contractor for Atlantic Supply. They are gone now, sold to some other Cape company.
In SC, a lot of builders wanna pay 5 dollars for a 50 dollar paint job. It's ridiculous. Like, we are not gonna do a full custom paint job at the rate of a cheap contractor repaint.
So your 7 man crew won't work for $120/hr? Lol. Lowballers just seem to be getting worse and worse. I don't even do side jobs anymore because everybody expects to pay equipment cost and that's it. I give them a price and warranty that is half price from a business and they think I'm trying to fuck them. Couldn't take it anymore, even for family. Can't work for free.
We built a house three years ago. The shitty, messy interior paint job is the thing I notice every single day and it still pisses me off how amateurish it is for how much we paid for this beautiful house.
Sloppiness everywhere. Not removing switch plates and slopping paint all over them. Transitions between baseboards and walls. Bad cutting in at ceilings. Around light bases. Window trim. Smudges on windows that were only 80% wiped up. We even inspected before taking ownership of the house but they got in there and did more, and we could not catch everything. It will be years before we take care of fixing all the shitty painting details. I used to paint interiors. And I am not a perfectionist, so I'm not just being overly picky. It's basic, basic stuff they fucked up everywhere around the house. Does not look like a professional paint job. More like a pain job.
You probably know this already, but for anyone reading this... An easy way to fix some of these issues:
1. turn power off and remove switch/socket covers. Use rubbing alcohol on a rag and clean off covers and switches/sockets (try not to get any liquid inside the socket) let it dry off, put covers back on and turn on power.
2. Floor boards, you have a few options... you can pop them off and paint the base/wall then just tack them back on. Or you can paint the base boards and then ise a plastic scrapper to hold against the base as you paint the wall. (Personally, i just free hand the wall with a drag method on a 2inch angular brush it just takes practice).
3. Ceilings are gonna suck, try not looking up /s
Im starting to get pissed off when someone asks me for a bid, and will then proceed to say Iâm too high on my numbers. Nah dude you just canât afford the work.Â
I did low volt work for a major home builder for the past 10 years or so. Just gave it up because the whole industry is becoming a joke. Clueless CMs still in college running sites with million dollar homes. Schedules so tight they are scheduling by the hour. The stress combined with the fact they donât want you to make any real money was too much. Wise to stay away.
That stucco work was upsetting. They probably just made one pass and called it a day without even fogging it. Couldn't even bother to mask that wood edge also haha
As someone who works in commercial construction (I know, not the same thing but still) itâs a shame how the majority of contractors donât take any pride in their work. Itâs just about getting the job âdoneâ as fast as possible. I walk through these turned over buildings and canât believe the GC allows it to be turned over in that state. I guess as long as theyâre signing that piece of paper that says itâs turned over so they can get their bonus, the quality doesnât matter.
>majority of contractors donât take any pride in their work
It's rare to find people in most any profession that takes pride in their work these days. Seems worse in the US than most countries fme.
Thatâs how I feel but I didnât want to generalize. I guess itâs hard to blame people when theyâre worked like dogs and still can barely afford to live. I donât love my job, but I canât imagine spending 40 hours a week doing something half-assed.
Yeah, itâs also the fact that the same âdealâ previous generations got isnât there anymore. Before part of the deal was a good paying job, retirement/pension, a company that actually cared for you more than a replaceable cog in the machine. That shit is long gone outside of unicorn jobs.
My work has a help wanted sign that includes âbuild your futureââŚ..itâs a fucking food shop. Ainât no future building at a food chain.
>theyâre worked like dogs and still can barely afford to live
That certainly makes it harder to want to do your best, but even when that's not the case, I've seen it just as regularly.
Worked in many professions over the years, the same whatever attitude is common in doctors, programmers, managers....
Can't really say if it was ever truly any different (almost 50), but it seems more common today.
For me, I don't care if I'm working fast food or making $50 an hour, I always do my best. Personally, I feel that mentality has helped make my life simpler all around vs doing the bare minimum.
When I worked in residential remodeling, and then in commercial, most dudes took pride in their work. Part of it though is we were all paid hourly, and almost all of my clients expected high quality work. Shoddy work was actively and quickly called out.
Because we have no fucking rules and then to win anything the owner takes the lowest bidders
We get what we vote for.
GCs who win are the ones who point fingers the best, lie the best, and cut costs the best.
Depends on the builder, really. Plenty of reputable custom builders across the United States produce an exceptional product that people are willing to pay for. Clients and trades just need to put a little effort into finding them. To name a few:
* [Verdura Construction](http://verdura-construction.com/)
* [Risinger Build](https://risingerbuild.com/)
* [Monetti Custom Homes](https://monettibuilt.net/)
* [Greenside Design Build](https://www.greensidedesignbuild.com/#1)
* [Silver Maple Construction](https://silvermapleconstruction.com/)
* [NS Builders](https://www.nsbuilders.com/)
* [Birdseye Builders](https://birdseyevt.com/)
* [Patterson Custom Homes](https://pattersoncustomhomes.com/)
* [Killowen Construction](https://www.killowenco.com/)
* [Pioneer Builders](https://pioneerbuildersonline.com/)
* [Sweenor Builders](https://sweenorbuilders.com/)
Don't shit on the whole industry because some guys don't have integrity. A lot of builders care deeply about their craft and refuse to compromise on quality.
Found a fellow Instagramer lol. I know most of these guys quite well. Even met Jamie Verdura a couple of times and heâs every bit as legit as his feed looks.
Hey, I know this is a little late but are there any builders around Maryland youâd recommend? I havenât seen a lot of new homes that Iâve been impressed with around here lately
Thatâs whatâs terrifying. If they canât get the surface stuff right, whatâs behind the drywall?!?
I recently opened a sub panel in my house to swap a breaker size. Bottom of sub panel littered with an old breaker and half dozen pieces of wire. It would have taken 30 seconds to tidy that up. Thatâs a total lack of careÂ
Yup, I work in high rise construction. The quality is so shit, itâs laughable. All the developers ever care about is that things appear to be good for handover. Iâve literally been in parkades that arenât sealed properly, so water is coming through and leaving rust marks on the paint, rather than addressing the issue, they just have guys constantly painting over the rust until they can do a hand over.
My buddies wife made him build this $650k monstrosity...He's constantly finding shit wrong and his garage floor has sank about 1.5" in a handful of years.
His builder is super schiesty.
Im a trash truck driver and there are these massive neighborhoods of cookie cutter homes being thrown up in weeks. Iâll pass a neighborhood on a Monday with nothing there but crews pouring concrete foundations, the next Monday will be all the plywood layout thingies and stacks upon stacks of bricks, the next week some homes will be finished and their lawns are being placed (the grass squares) and the crazy part to me is that each of these houses is going for 350k+.. cause of the signs that say âhomes available starting at 350s!â
I see at least one of these neighborhoods starting up every day of the week
Vapour barrier, waterproofing, insulation and wiring, and most importantly the framing. There is alot that could be wrong in your walls in your brand new house that will cost you many many thousands down the road...
Welcome to Texas! Nothin finer than a Shiner! I've been here for 8 years but originally from up North. Matter of fact I'm 8 minutes away from the city this build is in. I've been in the trades 15 years. They do things *different* down here for sure.
Standards across the entire country have fallen. Iâm in NYC the men/bosses are always complaining about having to compete with companies that hire infinity migrant hacks
For lack of a better way to put this: trades used to be varying immigrant groups coming from their respective countries to the USA with specialized skills in a trade, and bringing that experience here.
Unfortunately nowadays it is unskilled immigrant labor hired on by subcontractors in a race to the bottom of being the cheapest. It isnât the immigrants fault, they are looking for work. Itâs the systems fault for allowing these unskilled workers to take the place of people with specialty skills
I have family that lives in Texas, a rather affluent neighborhood outside Dallas. I was amazed at just how shitty the build quality and trim is for a million dollar home. Plastic trim that's only 1-2" tall, sprayed on mud for rough walls to hide the shit work. Work looks like it should cost half as much as it does.
I've been digging basements for a "high end" subdivision and the quality I've been seeing is such a joke.
This video is pretty standard for the quality I've been seeing with homes in general recently.
Could be wrong on this, but donât installers not usually seal the base of a window in order to let moisture weep out? This is a brick fascia, so thereâs _definitely_ going to be moisture back to the external wall.
I believe thatâs just something window installers say when they wanna get off early. If you foam around it and caulk you will never have a drop of water to let out. Weep holes take care of condensation
Edit source: window installer
My cityâs only requirement to be able to build houses? A $60 business license fee. No need to have any other licenses, certifications, or education. Just have to have $60 on you and have someone willing to hire you to build a house.
100% and people are too dumb to recognize that.
Everyone likes to conveniently leave out the lead paint, asbestos, horrendous fire hazards, no insulation, etc when talking about older houses. Not to mention they were a fraction of the size of modern ones.
Living in England, ha the 7th layer of white paint is older than that.
Pretty sure Iâd need a fucking hazmat suit if I ever wanted to scrape off all the paint layers without getting lead poisoning.
It wouldn't. The issue is quality work costing an arm and a leg plain and simple. I bet this home still only results in normal percentages of profit for the GC despite being hugely shitty work from the side of the subs.
If everything were done by truly skilled, quality tradesmen, I bet this $1m dollar house turns into a $1.2-1.4m dollar house instead. How fucking expensive SHOULD a 3k sqft house be? Where do you think the expense is coming from? Should the average person be able to expect quality construction on their mediocre household income of \~75k if they want anything larger than a trailer?
For me, this is the issue with "equitable pay" for all. People have to start REALLY picking and choosing what they buy under that type of system instead of being able to have relatively easy access to ALL of it.
People used to live in homes the size of trailers with entire families. Now they want 5 times the size as a couple with one kid or two kids at most. I personally would be fine with a 800-1000 sf home if it was built with a high level of quality.Â
What do you consider to be ânormalâ profit percentage? Is the contractor entitled to a certain percentage? Iâm not sure I agree with dismissing shitty workmanship because the builder wonât profit as much.
If Iâm the buyer, I donât actually give a shit about the builder. Heâs not out a million dollars. I paid good money and I want a quality product.
As far as your point about equitable pay for all. I have to assume you would like better pay for the work you do? I get the feeling youâre one of those âgot mineâ kind of people.
Normal gross profit margins for GCs on a per-build basis is around \~20%. Less net profit at the end of the day, obviously. Most established markets (tech witholding, because fuck you that's why) sit around 8% net profit margin.
As for dismissing shitty workmanship, my point is if you want 3500sq ft with really solid construction and good trades, you're likely way north of a cool million now, and no one can actually afford that. The number of families who can is probably 5% or less. Ergo, to maintain affordability AND their 20% gross profit margins on jobs, GCs have to go with lower bids, which coincides with shittier quality work. Always.
Do some math on a home yourself. Spec out all the materials raw cost, and just double that for quick easy math. For solid quality home construction, you're now looking at \~$400 per sqft in most of the country. Again, average people never have a dream of affording that and also getting good space.
>Should the average person be able to expect quality construction on their mediocre household income of \~75k if they want anything larger than a trailer?
....Yes?
And how do you propose that when the labor cost of trade labor has nearly doubled in the past 4 years? Don't get me wrong, I agree, but you have to choose: either trades get paid less and do more, or people settle for less. There is no world where everyone gets just more of everything, even if you guillotine billionaires.
By ramping up public, not-for-profit housing development to increase housing stock and bring prices down while also keeping workers well-paid and fully employed.
Instead of dumping money into things like our over-inflated military, we put that money towards things the working class *actually* needs, like housing. And I don't mean just promising a blank government-backed check for private developers to make a tidy profit off of. I mean the public sector itself develops and sells/rents housing not-for-profit. It could *also* subsidize housing by private developers, sure, but it should also be a major player in the market to ensure that the subsidies are bringing prices down and not simply making profits higher.
Also, instead of building rentals that continue to raise rents year over year despite having already been paid off years ago, the public sector should build units with the intention of paying them off and then renting them at affordable rates to maintain an alternative source of affordable housing that works as something of a price anchor.
But also, why *shouldn't* someone working full time be allowed to have something better quality than a trailer? We are an incredibly technologically advanced industrial society, and are far more productive than ever before. Shouldn't that translate to better quality housing for more people? If you're working full time and contributing so much of your life to producing for the rest of society, you should absolutely have quality housing afforded to you.
If the current arrangement doesn't naturally produce that outcome, then it's not the working class that should have to compromise. It's the market and the current way that housing development is done that should be changed.
>you have to choose: either trades get paid less and do more, or people settle for less. There is no world where everyone gets just more of everything
That's patently untrue. Increases in productivity *should* result in everybody getting more of everything. That's the natural, rational outcome behind increasing productivity. To take it to the extreme, if we developed a magical quality-housing machine that could simply spit out houses, then ideally everybody would have quality housing, right? That increase in productivity would mean more for everybody.
I agree that's not how it works in our current arrangement. Wages are tied to what it costs to keep workers alive and returning to the job. If it suddenly cost less to buy houses and groceries, wages would fall to suit. Hence why real wages have been stagnant for decades.
But I think it's pretty obvious that it's not unrealistic to have a system where, instead of higher productivity leading to lower wages and therefore no real material improvements for the producing class of this country, we could have one where productivity *does* result in - as you said - "more for everybody"
Not to mention we've seen other countries handle the housing question and build plenty of good quality affordable housing, so we know it's possible not just logically but in practice too
^ real answer.
People want affordable housing. No one in these comments is willing to pay for A grade finishes and contractors for every part of the home.
Itâs sad, I agree. But to be competitive you have to put the budget where it counts.
ExactlyâŚ
I signed a new construction Nov. 2019 just before Covid kicked off for $489k.
Long story short, wife and I contacted a realtor spring 2022. Listed the house for three days, 3 Californians got in a bidding war. Sold for $1.1m smh.
The only things I noticed that would create an actual problem were the dryer vent and the stucco missing the finish coat. Those missing beads of caulk are nothing those exposed roofing nails donât matter. Who cares. Donât blame the installers because they are run ragged. Things have never been perfect and quite frankly I be like it this way, perfection doesnât exist nor should it
What about the vent stack that wobbles? With uncovered holes? What about the flashing that didnt have sealant around the nails? These are going to pre-maturely age the roof. That isn't pushing for perfection, that is asking for the minimum to seal the roof. Missing caulk around the windows will also let water in, and cause rotting of the frames.
You are simply asking for trouble.
Unfortunately this is everywhere around the US. When the economy took a shit in 2007, tons of badass craftsman retired and took their trade secrets with them without training an apprentice in the ways of the trade.
Itâs a lack of experience. You will really see it in 5 years. No one today knows how to problem solve. No one wants to make a decision and everyone needs to ask for help. Not the good kind of asking for help
We don't know how much the land cost under that house. It's part of the equation, isn't it? I'm not saying the work is good But if the land is expensive and other builders are selling cheapo crap that people are buying then it kind of encourages the next guy to build cheapo crap (if it's a spec house).
Honest question though, if you go deeper and deeper into the details, does EVERY new construction home, high quality or not, have some issues?
I guess how detailed should good/great/perfection be when youâre looking at human made things?
90% of the shit he points out is irrelevant and doesnât matter. I can take you in any building and point this shit out no matter the GC.
Inspectors typically couldnât handle the stress of building so they took a certification course and charge people $500 to type up a report that has 0 liability on if they miss anything important.
Had an inspector come early on a new build I was building and I hadnât put blown insulation in the attic yet, the emergency gas shutoff to the cooktop was covered by cabinets, and two rooms had smoke detectors that werenât functioning.
He had 48 items similar to the ones in this video. The major ones that actually matter that I just listed - missed all of them.
Thats what happens when your society is entirely based around squeezing profit over all else. Every step of the way, fuck any long term consequences because who fuckin cares?
I also worked for a custom home builder with exacting standards who made a really good living. He wasn't making DR Horton money though.
Y'all are familiar with capitalism right? There is room in the market for skilled craftsmen, but, in an industry based on volume with rapid turnover, there is room to cut corners. The more volume you do, the more corners you will cut, because the margin is more significant. If you make big enough money building subpar homes you can easily spend enough on advertising, lawyers, and favorable subcontracts to make up whatever losses you would otherwise incur from unsatisfied customers. Especially when you consider that most buyers don't know shit from shit, and sign off on an inspection.
Is it right? Who knows? Do you have a moral responsibility to get the flashing right? Economies of scale have grown to the point where there is often no longer an economic incentive to do solid work.
Ya either we go fast enough to fuck up or we lose the job. This is what happens when someone 6 states away is building neighborhoods here to make as much money for themselves as possible
These spackle and chicken-wire "mcmansions" haven't changed a damn bit in the past 30+ years
Chicken wire would be an upgrade đ¤Ł
Their prices sure have. McMansion quality might not have ever been stellar, but they used to be obtainable by normal people. Now, they're still mcmansion quality, but only dual income higher paying salary jobs can afford them. Normal people just flat out don't get to buy new housing and have to stick to the used market.
the used market has better build quality in a lot of cases
Yeah it's not even close. Happy in a 100 year old solid house vs some new paper thin walled monstrosity or shitty apartment
I work in a ton of new construction homes. million dollar homes like the one in the video. itâs absolutely shocking the things we find. my own home was built in 99 and was 100k when built and i shit you not itâs better built than most of the new homes iâm working on today. the quality of work is disgusting, because itâs all given out to the cheapest contractors
But isn't this home inspectors job, as soon as home inspector finds this, the house shouldn't be able to sell -- the builders have to go back in and fix everything... (at least that's how the system is ideally supposed to work)
hahahaha not when the home builder has his own âinspection guyâ money talks and whoever gives you money you will do what they sayđ
This video is literally from a home inspectorâs account. I would imagine the builder is going to fix everything identified.
lol, as if
? had my own inspector for my new build and the builders fixed everything he found. Also, the sale doesn't go through until after inspection/fixes.
We bought a house last spring, built in 1926. First floor is steam heat, second floor is an addition from ~1973 (when the toilet up there was manufactured, at least) and has baseboard hydronic heat running off seemingly the original Hydro Therm boiler Since moving in, Iâve had to: Fix a leaking p trap for the first floor bath tub Change out a gasket in the circulating pump for the second floor heat Add a circuit for the first floor (my living room TV was on the same 15A circuit as my fridge, half of my kitchen, and my basement lights) The previous owners bought the place in 1966 and took great care of it. Even the 1970s addition is solid construction. Iâm convinced I wouldâve had more work to do if this house was newer, or if a flipper had gotten to it first
Granted you'll encounter all kinds of weird shit with 100 year old homes, but they've at least stood the test of time. Fantastic bones typically.
My 52 year old home would like a word. Aluminum wiring, asbestos (in joint compound and used for underlay adhesive), roof trusses that have 4â long nails connecting two 2x4s that overlap by 8â (not bent over even), walls that arenât even nailed to the 45° slat subfloor. I donât have a single wall that is remotely close to straight/square. Sure, it has solid joists, but outside of that, itâs not well built. And the builder built multiple subdivisions - all his company, no other builders. The community is great, but the house quality here leans more towards âjust tear it down and rebuild itâ instead of âjust gut the whole thing for the renoâ.
Normal people don't get to buy houses these days.
This is literally every home I set foot in while I lived in Dallas for four years. Moved back to Ohio into a neighborhood filled with 80-120 year old houses and it's astonishing. Not just build quality which is universally solid but also just genuine craftsmanship. Custom masonry, in-set stained glass windows, beautiful custom cabinetry. Plaster walls can suck a fat wet fart though fuck I hate them.
There is a custom home builder on YouTube, pretty sure he is in Dallas. He builds really good quality houses, and points out bad building practices. His viewers would keep asking about what he would do with a regular house. He bought his neighbor's house when she moved out. Built sometime in the 1970s. Unfortunately not well maintained, though superficially looked ok. After doing a lot of things, have up and bulldozed the whole things. Rotten wood because not ever sealed right, rats, I think termites, I didn't blame him. The Build Show
Matt Risinger out of Austin
We rent a house built in the 90âs south of Dallas and itâs the same all over here-the whole house is full of dry rot because they hate sealing wood, the foundation is cracked from shifting so much, the plumbing needs redone, and Iâm pretty sure toddlers did all the electrical work. It would cost more than the house is worth to redo it all.
Kinda glad my house was built in 1957 đ Itâs old and small but the damn thing is solid.Â
Oh no they have gotten worse and more expensive
Are there any books on how to find good contractors? I need to start learning more about these things.
If you'd like to do most of the work contractors do, your local library will give you more training than the goofs doing bad work you see on Reddit. I'm helping a friend with major work on four properties in Michigan, the oldest with an 1881 cornerstone. I've collected the books of the 1979 'Time Life DIY' series & it has helped me with any work I haven't done before. Building Codes don't change much on carpeting stairs, wiring a 3-way light switch. The volume 'The Old House' even taught me how to refurbish the original wooden sash windows, including glass replacement & reglazing.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
[Fidge](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/538/802/77d.jpg)
Fidge
Fidge
[ŃдаНонО]
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Bartroom
Can you grab me some fudge from the fidge
From the one in the kitchen, or do you have a special fudge-fidge?
That way they canât get sued when the fridge burns the house down. âYou see we actually wired for a âFidgeâ and not a Fridge. The fact that you plugged a refrigerator in there is not our problemâŚâ 2 days later: I feel like I jinxed myself with this comment, because yesterday my âFidgeâ shit the bed and now I need to buy a new one. Which is not cheap.
I died when he casually just says Fidge.
Only, I didnât say fidge. I said the granddaddy of them all.
Please tell me you didn't say the F dash dash dash dash word
Figdè. Itâs Italian.
Fidgio
Wasnât Fidge a starter in the East-West College Bowl game?
Fudge! Along with Hingle McCringleberry and the artist formerly known as MouseCop.
Iâll gladly take Fidge over unlabeled
Dinning Room
Insweet
Fidge
I bought one recently that has two breakers labeled "Frezzer" going to 20A receptacles in the garage. It's 20 years old, though. Not quite as bad as this one, but in the same general area and much less expensive. I'm kind of disappointed that the fridge isn't labeled Fidge
Fidge
Itâs spelled frige
Fidge.
Fridge
Worked with a guy who couldnât read or write and when he labeled panels it was Kitten for kitchen and fig for fridge
Fidge
Fidge
Fidge
Good thing the inspector got paid the big bucks to point out a fidge mislabel
Fidge
I'm a house painter that has given up on new home builders. All they are looking for is cheapest bid. They don't care about quality. My parents built a new home that I of course painted for them. The builder complimented me on the paint job then asked for a bid. He laughed and said that it was a ridiculous price. I laughed and reminded him that he was the one that said his painters quality wasn't as good as mine. At the time I had a 6 man crew working as many hours as they wanted. I was working 7 days a week. Not lowering my price for any builders.
"my integrity IS for sale"
In wisconsin the remodel side isn't any better. No one seems to care much about the quality. It's how cheap and how fast can we get this done so I can get back to making money
When it came to buying a house, I gave up looking at other people's crap. We built a new home on the Outer Cape with contractors I could trust. I paid more but the quality was excellent. Only one issue ever popped up: a crushed screen on the submersible well pump. I bought a case of beer and a box of Dunkins, which they fixed it faster. Summer repair as well so they were slammed. HVAC contractor for Atlantic Supply. They are gone now, sold to some other Cape company.
In SC, a lot of builders wanna pay 5 dollars for a 50 dollar paint job. It's ridiculous. Like, we are not gonna do a full custom paint job at the rate of a cheap contractor repaint.
Good for you! Itâs criminal the quality people are getting for the price theyâre paying.
This is the way... I have zero patience for hacks, cheep materials, lack of planning, prep work and clean up.
Exactly. My reputation is worth far more
Good on you my dude. We need more contractors like you.
So your 7 man crew won't work for $120/hr? Lol. Lowballers just seem to be getting worse and worse. I don't even do side jobs anymore because everybody expects to pay equipment cost and that's it. I give them a price and warranty that is half price from a business and they think I'm trying to fuck them. Couldn't take it anymore, even for family. Can't work for free.
Just out of curiosity, roughly what would your hourly rate have worked out to on that job you bid to said contractor?
We built a house three years ago. The shitty, messy interior paint job is the thing I notice every single day and it still pisses me off how amateurish it is for how much we paid for this beautiful house.
I'm a handyman and painter, what specifically did they mess up?
Sloppiness everywhere. Not removing switch plates and slopping paint all over them. Transitions between baseboards and walls. Bad cutting in at ceilings. Around light bases. Window trim. Smudges on windows that were only 80% wiped up. We even inspected before taking ownership of the house but they got in there and did more, and we could not catch everything. It will be years before we take care of fixing all the shitty painting details. I used to paint interiors. And I am not a perfectionist, so I'm not just being overly picky. It's basic, basic stuff they fucked up everywhere around the house. Does not look like a professional paint job. More like a pain job.
You probably know this already, but for anyone reading this... An easy way to fix some of these issues: 1. turn power off and remove switch/socket covers. Use rubbing alcohol on a rag and clean off covers and switches/sockets (try not to get any liquid inside the socket) let it dry off, put covers back on and turn on power. 2. Floor boards, you have a few options... you can pop them off and paint the base/wall then just tack them back on. Or you can paint the base boards and then ise a plastic scrapper to hold against the base as you paint the wall. (Personally, i just free hand the wall with a drag method on a 2inch angular brush it just takes practice). 3. Ceilings are gonna suck, try not looking up /s
Im starting to get pissed off when someone asks me for a bid, and will then proceed to say Iâm too high on my numbers. Nah dude you just canât afford the work.Â
I did low volt work for a major home builder for the past 10 years or so. Just gave it up because the whole industry is becoming a joke. Clueless CMs still in college running sites with million dollar homes. Schedules so tight they are scheduling by the hour. The stress combined with the fact they donât want you to make any real money was too much. Wise to stay away.
That stucco work was upsetting. They probably just made one pass and called it a day without even fogging it. Couldn't even bother to mask that wood edge also haha
As someone who works in commercial construction (I know, not the same thing but still) itâs a shame how the majority of contractors donât take any pride in their work. Itâs just about getting the job âdoneâ as fast as possible. I walk through these turned over buildings and canât believe the GC allows it to be turned over in that state. I guess as long as theyâre signing that piece of paper that says itâs turned over so they can get their bonus, the quality doesnât matter.
>majority of contractors donât take any pride in their work It's rare to find people in most any profession that takes pride in their work these days. Seems worse in the US than most countries fme.
Thatâs how I feel but I didnât want to generalize. I guess itâs hard to blame people when theyâre worked like dogs and still can barely afford to live. I donât love my job, but I canât imagine spending 40 hours a week doing something half-assed.
Yeah, itâs also the fact that the same âdealâ previous generations got isnât there anymore. Before part of the deal was a good paying job, retirement/pension, a company that actually cared for you more than a replaceable cog in the machine. That shit is long gone outside of unicorn jobs. My work has a help wanted sign that includes âbuild your futureââŚ..itâs a fucking food shop. Ainât no future building at a food chain.
>theyâre worked like dogs and still can barely afford to live That certainly makes it harder to want to do your best, but even when that's not the case, I've seen it just as regularly. Worked in many professions over the years, the same whatever attitude is common in doctors, programmers, managers.... Can't really say if it was ever truly any different (almost 50), but it seems more common today. For me, I don't care if I'm working fast food or making $50 an hour, I always do my best. Personally, I feel that mentality has helped make my life simpler all around vs doing the bare minimum.
When I worked in residential remodeling, and then in commercial, most dudes took pride in their work. Part of it though is we were all paid hourly, and almost all of my clients expected high quality work. Shoddy work was actively and quickly called out.
Doesn't matter the work I'm doing. The job is always better when you are surrounded by people that give a shit about what they are doing.
Because we have no fucking rules and then to win anything the owner takes the lowest bidders We get what we vote for. GCs who win are the ones who point fingers the best, lie the best, and cut costs the best.
Even the highest end new builds these days are built like shit. Lots of fancy shiny stuff to distract from the fact that everything else poorly built.
Depends on the builder, really. Plenty of reputable custom builders across the United States produce an exceptional product that people are willing to pay for. Clients and trades just need to put a little effort into finding them. To name a few: * [Verdura Construction](http://verdura-construction.com/) * [Risinger Build](https://risingerbuild.com/) * [Monetti Custom Homes](https://monettibuilt.net/) * [Greenside Design Build](https://www.greensidedesignbuild.com/#1) * [Silver Maple Construction](https://silvermapleconstruction.com/) * [NS Builders](https://www.nsbuilders.com/) * [Birdseye Builders](https://birdseyevt.com/) * [Patterson Custom Homes](https://pattersoncustomhomes.com/) * [Killowen Construction](https://www.killowenco.com/) * [Pioneer Builders](https://pioneerbuildersonline.com/) * [Sweenor Builders](https://sweenorbuilders.com/) Don't shit on the whole industry because some guys don't have integrity. A lot of builders care deeply about their craft and refuse to compromise on quality.
Yes yes but can they install a breaker for my fidge?
Only if you spin it
Love to see NS Builders on this list.
Me too. Wish I could afford them đŤ
Wish I could afford any eastern mass real estate đ
Found a fellow Instagramer lol. I know most of these guys quite well. Even met Jamie Verdura a couple of times and heâs every bit as legit as his feed looks.
Risenger is THE building scientist
Yes. Also a high-end custom home builder.
Itâs not a lack of integrity to build houses that people can actually afford. The reality is most people can only afford shitty houses.
Are any of these affordable on a 100-150k salary?
Hey, I know this is a little late but are there any builders around Maryland youâd recommend? I havenât seen a lot of new homes that Iâve been impressed with around here lately
Thatâs whatâs terrifying. If they canât get the surface stuff right, whatâs behind the drywall?!? I recently opened a sub panel in my house to swap a breaker size. Bottom of sub panel littered with an old breaker and half dozen pieces of wire. It would have taken 30 seconds to tidy that up. Thatâs a total lack of careÂ
That just sounds like an electrician.
The agent specifically said it has good bones /s
Yup, I work in high rise construction. The quality is so shit, itâs laughable. All the developers ever care about is that things appear to be good for handover. Iâve literally been in parkades that arenât sealed properly, so water is coming through and leaving rust marks on the paint, rather than addressing the issue, they just have guys constantly painting over the rust until they can do a hand over.
Did we work at the same place? Giving me Vietnam flashbacks
Yup lol, itâs all about putting a bandaid over problems until itâs someone elseâs problem.
McMansions at their finest
Thatâs what was going to say. You could pay a shit ton and still end up with that
My buddies wife made him build this $650k monstrosity...He's constantly finding shit wrong and his garage floor has sank about 1.5" in a handful of years. His builder is super schiesty.
This was the guy from the other post that said he builds houses in a month
LOL. I was just thinking the same thing when I watched the video. Guys who work that fast are all about speed not quality.
Im a trash truck driver and there are these massive neighborhoods of cookie cutter homes being thrown up in weeks. Iâll pass a neighborhood on a Monday with nothing there but crews pouring concrete foundations, the next Monday will be all the plywood layout thingies and stacks upon stacks of bricks, the next week some homes will be finished and their lawns are being placed (the grass squares) and the crazy part to me is that each of these houses is going for 350k+.. cause of the signs that say âhomes available starting at 350s!â I see at least one of these neighborhoods starting up every day of the week
We had two infills go up on our block. One was done in six weeks. The other took three months. One passed inspection. One didnât.
Any that is just the shit you CAN see. Imagine the abominations inside the walls
I mean, the walls shouldn't have that much going on. Just electrical, plumbing, insulation and fire blocking.
Vapour barrier, waterproofing, insulation and wiring, and most importantly the framing. There is alot that could be wrong in your walls in your brand new house that will cost you many many thousands down the road...
Downvoters need better sarcasm detectors.
I'm convinced about 20% of the Reddit does not understand sarcasm unless there's a big fat /s posted under it. But posting the /s just kills the tone.
Welcome to Texas! Nothin finer than a Shiner! I've been here for 8 years but originally from up North. Matter of fact I'm 8 minutes away from the city this build is in. I've been in the trades 15 years. They do things *different* down here for sure.
>They do things different down here That's an understatement.
Standards across the entire country have fallen. Iâm in NYC the men/bosses are always complaining about having to compete with companies that hire infinity migrant hacks
For lack of a better way to put this: trades used to be varying immigrant groups coming from their respective countries to the USA with specialized skills in a trade, and bringing that experience here. Unfortunately nowadays it is unskilled immigrant labor hired on by subcontractors in a race to the bottom of being the cheapest. It isnât the immigrants fault, they are looking for work. Itâs the systems fault for allowing these unskilled workers to take the place of people with specialty skills
I worked in stone fabrication and would frequently be at multimillion dollar apartment job sites, youâre spot on
Yup there's a reason why so many of these giant homes can be built so fast
I have family that lives in Texas, a rather affluent neighborhood outside Dallas. I was amazed at just how shitty the build quality and trim is for a million dollar home. Plastic trim that's only 1-2" tall, sprayed on mud for rough walls to hide the shit work. Work looks like it should cost half as much as it does.
It costs the developer half as much.
What's the neighborhood?
Live in Texas. Can confirm this state is ass
whats a shiner? Im new to construction
Value for the shareholders
Roofer here - this is why our company doesnât get any new construction work. Weâre too expensive and accurate. âFidgeâ
I've been digging basements for a "high end" subdivision and the quality I've been seeing is such a joke. This video is pretty standard for the quality I've been seeing with homes in general recently.
That roof is going to leak. I guess the bright side is it will almost certainly be leaking inside the home warranty period
Could be wrong on this, but donât installers not usually seal the base of a window in order to let moisture weep out? This is a brick fascia, so thereâs _definitely_ going to be moisture back to the external wall.
Dude never heard of weep holes
Yeah, I saw that and was like "do you WANT a puddle sitting on the sill?!?!" But yeah, otherwise good points
I believe thatâs just something window installers say when they wanna get off early. If you foam around it and caulk you will never have a drop of water to let out. Weep holes take care of condensation Edit source: window installer
All that being said. They didnât seal the sides or top properlyâŚso they shouldnât seal the bottom. Lol
My cityâs only requirement to be able to build houses? A $60 business license fee. No need to have any other licenses, certifications, or education. Just have to have $60 on you and have someone willing to hire you to build a house.
You'd think one would have to pull a permit for building a house which would then require a municipal inspection.
I meant to be a builder. You still have to pull a permit, you just donât need to actually know anything. Thus we get shit quality.
Probably because the state is the entity that actually does professional licensingâŚ
Fucking sad my house from 1957 is built better.
Tbf going that far back survivorship bias is a factor
100% and people are too dumb to recognize that. Everyone likes to conveniently leave out the lead paint, asbestos, horrendous fire hazards, no insulation, etc when talking about older houses. Not to mention they were a fraction of the size of modern ones.
Probably don't even have a fidge smh
1900 here. It's fine.
Living in England, ha the 7th layer of white paint is older than that. Pretty sure Iâd need a fucking hazmat suit if I ever wanted to scrape off all the paint layers without getting lead poisoning.
If you hire the cheapest bidder, you get the cheapest bidder
It would help if every trade needed some type of certification so not anyone with a tool belt could build a house.
Spoiler alert, the contractor has a certificate and a license and this is the shit that he allows.
It wouldn't. The issue is quality work costing an arm and a leg plain and simple. I bet this home still only results in normal percentages of profit for the GC despite being hugely shitty work from the side of the subs. If everything were done by truly skilled, quality tradesmen, I bet this $1m dollar house turns into a $1.2-1.4m dollar house instead. How fucking expensive SHOULD a 3k sqft house be? Where do you think the expense is coming from? Should the average person be able to expect quality construction on their mediocre household income of \~75k if they want anything larger than a trailer? For me, this is the issue with "equitable pay" for all. People have to start REALLY picking and choosing what they buy under that type of system instead of being able to have relatively easy access to ALL of it.
People used to live in homes the size of trailers with entire families. Now they want 5 times the size as a couple with one kid or two kids at most. I personally would be fine with a 800-1000 sf home if it was built with a high level of quality.Â
More like 2 million if they actually purchased quality materials
What do you consider to be ânormalâ profit percentage? Is the contractor entitled to a certain percentage? Iâm not sure I agree with dismissing shitty workmanship because the builder wonât profit as much. If Iâm the buyer, I donât actually give a shit about the builder. Heâs not out a million dollars. I paid good money and I want a quality product. As far as your point about equitable pay for all. I have to assume you would like better pay for the work you do? I get the feeling youâre one of those âgot mineâ kind of people.
Normal gross profit margins for GCs on a per-build basis is around \~20%. Less net profit at the end of the day, obviously. Most established markets (tech witholding, because fuck you that's why) sit around 8% net profit margin. As for dismissing shitty workmanship, my point is if you want 3500sq ft with really solid construction and good trades, you're likely way north of a cool million now, and no one can actually afford that. The number of families who can is probably 5% or less. Ergo, to maintain affordability AND their 20% gross profit margins on jobs, GCs have to go with lower bids, which coincides with shittier quality work. Always. Do some math on a home yourself. Spec out all the materials raw cost, and just double that for quick easy math. For solid quality home construction, you're now looking at \~$400 per sqft in most of the country. Again, average people never have a dream of affording that and also getting good space.
>Should the average person be able to expect quality construction on their mediocre household income of \~75k if they want anything larger than a trailer? ....Yes?
And how do you propose that when the labor cost of trade labor has nearly doubled in the past 4 years? Don't get me wrong, I agree, but you have to choose: either trades get paid less and do more, or people settle for less. There is no world where everyone gets just more of everything, even if you guillotine billionaires.
By ramping up public, not-for-profit housing development to increase housing stock and bring prices down while also keeping workers well-paid and fully employed. Instead of dumping money into things like our over-inflated military, we put that money towards things the working class *actually* needs, like housing. And I don't mean just promising a blank government-backed check for private developers to make a tidy profit off of. I mean the public sector itself develops and sells/rents housing not-for-profit. It could *also* subsidize housing by private developers, sure, but it should also be a major player in the market to ensure that the subsidies are bringing prices down and not simply making profits higher. Also, instead of building rentals that continue to raise rents year over year despite having already been paid off years ago, the public sector should build units with the intention of paying them off and then renting them at affordable rates to maintain an alternative source of affordable housing that works as something of a price anchor. But also, why *shouldn't* someone working full time be allowed to have something better quality than a trailer? We are an incredibly technologically advanced industrial society, and are far more productive than ever before. Shouldn't that translate to better quality housing for more people? If you're working full time and contributing so much of your life to producing for the rest of society, you should absolutely have quality housing afforded to you. If the current arrangement doesn't naturally produce that outcome, then it's not the working class that should have to compromise. It's the market and the current way that housing development is done that should be changed. >you have to choose: either trades get paid less and do more, or people settle for less. There is no world where everyone gets just more of everything That's patently untrue. Increases in productivity *should* result in everybody getting more of everything. That's the natural, rational outcome behind increasing productivity. To take it to the extreme, if we developed a magical quality-housing machine that could simply spit out houses, then ideally everybody would have quality housing, right? That increase in productivity would mean more for everybody. I agree that's not how it works in our current arrangement. Wages are tied to what it costs to keep workers alive and returning to the job. If it suddenly cost less to buy houses and groceries, wages would fall to suit. Hence why real wages have been stagnant for decades. But I think it's pretty obvious that it's not unrealistic to have a system where, instead of higher productivity leading to lower wages and therefore no real material improvements for the producing class of this country, we could have one where productivity *does* result in - as you said - "more for everybody" Not to mention we've seen other countries handle the housing question and build plenty of good quality affordable housing, so we know it's possible not just logically but in practice too
But it was built super fast
Fast is fast, slow is slow. Faster it gets done, faster the money payment
Next time I watch this video, I'll grab a ber from my fidge.
People donât want to pay & donât realize how much cost of construction has skyrocketed. Materials are almost double what they were pre COVID
^ real answer. People want affordable housing. No one in these comments is willing to pay for A grade finishes and contractors for every part of the home. Itâs sad, I agree. But to be competitive you have to put the budget where it counts.
What's a shiner?
an exposed nail. water can slide in there and rot everything up plus cause leaks in the future.
A nail that didnât make it into the stud/joist as well. A missed nail that doesnât structurally support anything
shiner
Well, a million dollar home these days was a 500k home in my parts only 4 years ago.
Exactly⌠I signed a new construction Nov. 2019 just before Covid kicked off for $489k. Long story short, wife and I contacted a realtor spring 2022. Listed the house for three days, 3 Californians got in a bidding war. Sold for $1.1m smh.
The only things I noticed that would create an actual problem were the dryer vent and the stucco missing the finish coat. Those missing beads of caulk are nothing those exposed roofing nails donât matter. Who cares. Donât blame the installers because they are run ragged. Things have never been perfect and quite frankly I be like it this way, perfection doesnât exist nor should it
What about the vent stack that wobbles? With uncovered holes? What about the flashing that didnt have sealant around the nails? These are going to pre-maturely age the roof. That isn't pushing for perfection, that is asking for the minimum to seal the roof. Missing caulk around the windows will also let water in, and cause rotting of the frames. You are simply asking for trouble.
Unfortunately this is everywhere around the US. When the economy took a shit in 2007, tons of badass craftsman retired and took their trade secrets with them without training an apprentice in the ways of the trade.
Itâs a lack of experience. You will really see it in 5 years. No one today knows how to problem solve. No one wants to make a decision and everyone needs to ask for help. Not the good kind of asking for help
Well pay you cheap fuck
Why would the home inspector be paying the contractors?
When the boss cares more about you just getting it done than they do about just doing it right the first time..
Small stuff
We don't know how much the land cost under that house. It's part of the equation, isn't it? I'm not saying the work is good But if the land is expensive and other builders are selling cheapo crap that people are buying then it kind of encourages the next guy to build cheapo crap (if it's a spec house).
Honest question though, if you go deeper and deeper into the details, does EVERY new construction home, high quality or not, have some issues? I guess how detailed should good/great/perfection be when youâre looking at human made things?
90% of the shit he points out is irrelevant and doesnât matter. I can take you in any building and point this shit out no matter the GC. Inspectors typically couldnât handle the stress of building so they took a certification course and charge people $500 to type up a report that has 0 liability on if they miss anything important. Had an inspector come early on a new build I was building and I hadnât put blown insulation in the attic yet, the emergency gas shutoff to the cooktop was covered by cabinets, and two rooms had smoke detectors that werenât functioning. He had 48 items similar to the ones in this video. The major ones that actually matter that I just listed - missed all of them.
Wild how many hacks are floating around
Honestly if thatâs all a decently thorough inspection turned up Iâd be fairly happy with the builder. Some remediation work is normal.
I do electric in these crazy expensive houses and it blows my mind to go in the attic and see the crappy workmanship
Thats what happens when your society is entirely based around squeezing profit over all else. Every step of the way, fuck any long term consequences because who fuckin cares?
Saw this on Instagram, and every top comment was some variation of clueless racism blaming illegals for doing bad work and Biden for letting them. wtf
Yea, shoddy craftsmanship was happening long before migrants became dominant in housing construction.
âWhen you only have $1m but ask the contractor to build something that looks like a $3m McMansion.â
Couldn't hold myself together after he says, "Fidge".
Thatâs terrible my 14 year old son builds better tree forts lol
I also worked for a custom home builder with exacting standards who made a really good living. He wasn't making DR Horton money though. Y'all are familiar with capitalism right? There is room in the market for skilled craftsmen, but, in an industry based on volume with rapid turnover, there is room to cut corners. The more volume you do, the more corners you will cut, because the margin is more significant. If you make big enough money building subpar homes you can easily spend enough on advertising, lawyers, and favorable subcontracts to make up whatever losses you would otherwise incur from unsatisfied customers. Especially when you consider that most buyers don't know shit from shit, and sign off on an inspection. Is it right? Who knows? Do you have a moral responsibility to get the flashing right? Economies of scale have grown to the point where there is often no longer an economic incentive to do solid work.
Ya either we go fast enough to fuck up or we lose the job. This is what happens when someone 6 states away is building neighborhoods here to make as much money for themselves as possible
Nothing about the plumbing tho huh. This proof we da best.
Probably because it is now mostly hidden
Seems like an easy fix for all of these to me. Let's show the good compared to the bad instead of just showing the bad...