Those mistakes could derail the mortgage process or cost buyers thousands of dollars down the road.
finance.yahoo.com
Funny, it's not happening here (but read on) Im in constant awe and amazement where we just moved too. Almost 3 months ago now. We bought before any homes were completed and I think up to two hundred more will be built in the coming years.
Anyway, they are now going up and fast as ever, also being everything is selling out like any large builder they are experimenting if more expensive models will sell and from what I hear, which gives some credit to your post, they are cutting back on the "extras" meaning when they started they were throwing in fantastic options, sure it was built into the price and we have so many options, there weren't anything else we could add. At the same time you had to pay the price of the home and could not remove any options.
But now as I watch the new homes of the same models being built I am told, the price is the same but they are not coming with the extras we were given. I will know more once they are finished.
As far as cutting corners, you would think that is a quality issue and local government issue, it wont happen here for two reasons.
One is this is a phase in a resort type community with multiple strong HOAs and the other is a county government that to the best of my knowledge is not corrupt, is honest and nothing passes, framing, plumbing, electrical ect ect unless its 100% right. Even more so they do not allow the builder to fix things on the spot, a new inspection has to be ordered, the builder has to wait AND they will not do multiple issues on one trip, each trip is a specific inspection.
I only say this because I know for fact, every home built here fails inspections regularly. Even at the time our construction manager confirms it and even told us when something failed and they needed to come back on our house.
Im in no way defending builders, some of the slabs we saw being poured in Florida was horrible, its more of a local thing, we bought from the same builder in NC. But Florida we were looking at slabs and discounting specific homes under construction that we would buy, based on sloppy slabs, cracks all over the place, side walls with the hurricane straps miss placed. Saw the same from other Florida builders. I couldn't help but wonder if the tile floors being places in those homes would hold up from cracking since the foundations had cracks. Retyping it, I still cant believe what we saw down there.