Scott Norman, Executive Director of the Texas Association of Builders believes prospective homeowners should study-up, too; he contends buyers have options when it comes to arbitration.
”It’s entered into willingly by the parties to the contract not all builders in Texas use it: some do, some do not,” he explained.
BTW. Norman was the lead person on saving the builder's Residential Construction Commission and he failed miserably. The Commission was abolished in 2009. Norman's track record isn't very good and it might be tested again on the issue of mandatory binding arbitration.
3 comments:
It seems like you're the one claiming homeowners are stupid. You think they can't take care of themselves, that they can't read contracts in plain English, and that they don't know what they're signing.
His comments have been proven to be incorrect over and over again
He said the contracts are voluntarilysigned. How is that incorrect? Are you claiming contracts are forged, or that buyers are signing them under duress?
He also said that some builders use it and others don't. Again, that's true. Are you seriously claiming that every single builder, without exception, has a mandatory arbitrationclause?
Some builders associations require member-builders to use an arbitration clause. I've never seen a third party warranty policy such as from 2-10 HBW, RWC, etc, that does not require the arbitration clause in the warranty policy. This means if you have one of these warranties you are usually forced to arbitrate even if you avoided it in the builder's contract. This is how these warranties protect builders, (not the homeowner). The home buyer does not buy the policy or usually even see it til after closing, but the courts uphold this type of arbitration clause almost all the time. There are very few ways out of it. There are also very few ways out of the all-too-commonly used arbitration clauses in builders' contracts. If only a handful of builders don't require it, then buyers would only be able to buy from those few; what if they don't build near where you work? That is not a reasonable choice. Courts have typically enforced these contracts of adhesion even though it used to be that contracts of adhesion were not very enforceable. The courts have said over and over that they 'rule in favor of arbitration.' Again, no reasonable choice for consumers.
Consumers are not too stupid to take care of themselves if they are INFORMED. But they are not, because no one gets any adequate consumer education in this country. Instead we're bombarded by industry spin packaged as 'information.' They typically never find the REAL consumer info unless they are online, proficient at internet research, and already immersed in a major consumer problem. Even if they look for complaints, etc, so many complaints are hidden in private arbitration that they have no idea if, or how many, there are on a company they're considering. I'd advise homebuyers to learn proper construction, then they can more easily eliminate the builders from consideration who are doing things like improper site preaparation, omission of water proofing/shedding materials like flashing, building inadequate foundations, etc. Many homebuyers, seeing how BAD a lot of new construction is, might decide to buy resale, thus opening up their choice of location, etc, quite a bit, too.
If any homebuilder needs a personal ass kisser, they need to contact some of the anonymous posters on this blog. They got lips ready to be sew on their ass.
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