WHY CONSTRUCTION DEFECTS HAVE BECOME COMMON PLACE
Having spent years focusing our efforts on construction defect litigation, there is no question in our mind why construction defects are increasingly a problem in California and many western states. Firstly, the cost of land has skyrocketed meaning developers are under extreme pressure to take the lowest construction bidder no matter what.
Also, unskilled labor is an issue. Unskilled laborers have their hearts in the right place, but they are not properly trained nor do they have the requisite construction experience. They very often don't understand the proper techniques when it comes to home building and most of the time many laborers on a construction site cannot read the blueprints. They typically use their common sense in installing construction components. This is problematic and can result in defects. With production housing, if you start off doing it wrong, pretty soon you have hundreds of homes with the same defect.
Further, builders are under pressure to keep costs down so homes are affordable and profitable. Demands for energy efficiency and environmentally sound products mean that homes today are more complicated to build. During the building boom that began in the 1990s, demand has sometimes outstripped the supply of qualified laborers and quality materials.
And one might think that the City inspectors will catch the problems, but unfortunately, the City inspectors, who by the way are immune from liability for the most part, only look at a sampling of homes. It is simply not possible for the City inspectors to look at every home. And, believe it or not, many inspectors miss glaring defects.