I'm sure you have heard the Tx lemon law on vehicles. But what about on your homes? Your saving to buy a brand new home. You have your money ready to pay the closing cost. And then a crack develops on the floor of the house. The crack grows and grows. You have already signed all the necessary paperwork. Who has to pay for it? The builder? Think again!
Lemons – signifying the need for lemon laws to protect us from substandard builders of defective housing. Some of us wore these pins because we had been sold lemons, and others had lost our homes through foreclosure because we could not afford the repairs on our new lemon homes.
said they built these over 400 low-income houses, to the specs they were given. They had no back doors, and one had already burned down. These houses had unbelievable, limitless, problems and defects.
One poor person after another testified. It was disgusting, and it was pathetic. It was like listening to complaints from third world countries, not the great state of Texas. Women cried as they spoke and begged for help.
Hispanics said they were being targeted..Many left in disgust after feeling the futility and listening to the builders’ representative(s) saying how the prices of houses would have to go up to meet some of our demands, like habitability?
We all would have preferred to pay more, rather than be in our present situations. I told the committees there were no boundaries in price of houses or color of skin; the builders we were speaking of, were equal-opportunity crooks.
HB 2721 Thompson, by Representative Senfronia Thompson. It would require builders to correct defects caused by the builder. If the defects could not be repaired, then the house should be bought back. (Loved her for trying, but this will never happen.)
This is killing the economy. We have a lemon laws for cars. Yet if you buy a lemon house, you have no recourse. We do not even have laws of habitability. Once you sign the papers – if the house becomes uninhabitable, it is just too bad for the homeowner. Many have to declare bankruptcy because they cannot afford the repairs.
Our repairs totaled over $150,000 dollars. Our house is still empty after nearly three years. It went into foreclosure. No exotic mortgage, just a 6% fixed; and we could make the payments, just not all the repairs. We couldn’t even live in it.
There are laws for the builders and different laws for consumers. I cannot sell my house to you without disclosure, or you can sue me. Yet the builder can; he can hide anything he can get away with, and did. He can lie in arbitration; I thought that was perjury. He can admit fraud and non-disclosure ... and he is above the law. I do not make these accusations lightly.
They will not sue me because I am telling the truth As I see this unfold and the depths of the absolutely criminal activity, the only way we can get any help is for the media to tell our stories and for a congressional hearing to be called. The State of Texas is owned by the builders, and paid-for by one in particular.
As Representative Garnet Coleman said in the Texas Monthly, "only in Texas can you buy your own state agency and regulate yourself."
