Construction Attorney, do you have a website or e-mail address? My brother is an attorney at Shepherd Mullin, and I’ve been trying to get him interested in starting his own practice, profiting from the huge fall-out of the housing bust. Your field is one such area. He’s not interested in bankruptcy law, because you’re dealing with clients who are broke, plus he is ethically opposed to the new BK law which makes people debt slaves according to him. But construction litigation holds more promise for high fees. If you’re not busy now, you soon will be.

My husband is an engineer by training, so he knows how to do/supervise all the soils tests you’re referring to. The County did not require us to do any soils or compaction testing when we built our house, but we did them anyway. It cost less than $1K. Our neighbors did not do any at all!!! Can you believe it? But we did tested our soil, and we also put extra reinforcement in our foundation: exra rebar to make the foundation stronger. Even if you build according to the building codes, as you mentioned, your house is inferior. I feel sorry for anybody with a tract house, unless of course they got it for pennies on the dollar.

Even $1 mil houses could be just paper boxes built most likely on poor soil, not properly compacted, missing roof vents (because remember that building inspectors do NOT climb on ladders or crawl through attics since they are too good for that). You cannot know what is in your house, because it is covered with some cheap stucco and a nice coat of paint. But underneath that pretty paint and smooth stucco, is who-knows-what? Cracked 2×4 framing? Soil not compacted properly? One will never know.

Does anyone know if construction used to be of higher quality? Was there a certain year when the quality deteriorated? Are some builders still craftsmen?