Or is there an increase in home with major structural issues?

Looked at some bats today and to make repairs I need to set ladders on a deck roof. The deck roof is wet damaged as is the deck below. The chimney has two large holes in it with water damage inside. Long and short I cannot do a seal on the home until the structural issues are addressed. No seal, no valve.
These folks bought the house a year ago and the damage is several years old. They bought without an inspection. The deck alone is a complete loss and needs a tear down and rebuild.
There is also erosion issues with the driveway slab just a whole list of issues that I found and listed for them.

From what I've seen around here. A number of years back during the "housing boom" everybody and their brother thought they were a contractor. Lots of sub standard buildings going up as well as repairs. People are paying the price now for fast and low bid a few years ago.

David, I was about to answer until I read mtncat's. He said it all for me. I'm just kind of shocked that the three of us are so far apart with the same problem.

It wasn't that way here In the building boom . Building codes got tough and prices went up . Why would people place low bids in a building boom when people are standing inline to have a house built makes no sense . Building codes were tougher because the twps had more money to hire inspectors . What I do see is people were not taking care of there homes because of the crash but things are turning around seems housing has renewed intreast because house value have rose a great deal this year . I've seen more new homes going up this year then I've seen in the last 6 years seems . Some are calling it a bubble who knows hope it keeps up

I see the same with the homes here. Most customers aren't happy with what they hear.

I watched a lake home be built in a week. This was just last month.

From the time they started building until the "Parade of Homes" open house was 7 days.

I feel bad for whoever buys that house.

I think it is a combination of bad materials, bad workmanship, and poor maintenance. Remember when a 2 x 4 was a 2 x 4? Then it became a 1 3/4 x 3 3/4. Now it is a 1 1/2 x 3 1/2. And what they call quality wood isn't even close to quality. When working with bad materials even the most skilled individual can only do so much and the majority of home owners don't even know how to cut their grass, let alone how to fix something that is loose.

I remember building my house 18 years ago and having a contractor put on the roof. My house was 1 3/16" out of being square and we spend four hours leveling sill plates down to 1/4" for the trusses. The contractor who did the roof thought we were crazy as the previous day they were working on a house that was 13 5/8" out of square (which they did think was extreme since the "accepted" amount was just under 6 inches according to them).

We're in business because the standard building practices the majority of builders/contractors use leave openings wildlife can exploit. Thankfully there are a lot of homes built without caps, vent screens and such, but I keep seeing more and more new construction installing them and making sure joints and overlaps are done securely.

I do have to wonder though which is worse, the homes built in less than 30 days or the homes that go through 6 months of rain and snow wrapped only in house wrap waiting on siding, doors, and windows.

Same thing over here.

A lot has to do with design of the house the more the different roof lines the more gaps and holes left behind these designs are ok at keeping the weather out but animals surely not . People buying these designs for the most part have no idea what kinda up keep comes with it

What I'm seeing are some of the foreclosures finally moving after sitting empty, usually sold as is without inspection. Homes that are under water and not maintained as the owner is one payment from going under.

I get a noticeable amount of work from real estate agents selling empty houses. It's not so much that the homes are poorly built, but that they have been empty.

Most houses around here aren't built to keep out critters, they're built to keep out the weather.

sgs, it's not the common construction issues that I am seeing but major strutural issues as in tear it down and start over type of damage. The kind of stuff that prevents me from even offering a quote.

If the houses aren't up to code, I wish there was some way of going back on the builder, but in a lot of cases the builder is no where to be found.

Most home inspection companies are insured for anything they miss that costs over a grand to fix. You can go back on them.

If someone refuses to hire an inspector to check out a tens of thousands of dollar purchase..... I feel bad but I do smile.

Ditto Eric and sgs.
Started a bat job today in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in St. Lou. House was obviously a tear-down (i.e., a perfectly good house is torn down to build a bigger house, ususally out of all proportion to the lot/surrounding homes). You could shove a Key Lime pie through the gaps in the roof overlaps. Owners had no idea where the bats could be entering.

They usually never do...

I normally ask the customer what year the house was built. I've found that in my service area, 1968 was pretty much the last year the craftsmen were in town. By 1974 the shysters were doing all the work, and they were using all the substandard products they could find. I hate tree farm trees, ever-shrinking lumber dimensions, vinyl siding and soffits, plastic foundation and ridge vents, OSB, lazy/crooked building inspectors, and don't-give-a-dam general contractors who don't bother to look at what their subs are doing. But I guess if they were building them like they did in the good ol' days, the phone wouldn't ring 100X/wk.

I got hired to handle critter issues in a model home that was rented (all the models were rented) when the market tanked. Rest of subdivision was just unsold lots. Anyway, this two year old model house had 6 different species of wildlife infesting the attic. I removed the juvenile squirrels from the insulation nest in the eave from the outside. Yep, the construction gap was big enough for my fist full of squirrel. Tried to explain the reason for the infestation to the GC so he could address the problem with his trim carpenter subcontractor when they started building again, but he wasn't interested. In so many words he told me to mind my own business. He failed to realize that IS my business.

One of the things I'll often tell customers is that vinyl siding and soffets are made to be installed by idiots...because they usually are!

I love going to cookie cutter style neighborhoods....When you go in you know where the problems are because the builders made the same mistakes on every one and in the same places...Saves time on the inspection! $$$$$

I went out to check one particular squirrel job and what I found made me nervous just to stand close to this house.

The squirrels were entering the attic at a point where two roof lines came together in a valley. But the whole end of the house seemed to be sinking and pulling out from the rest of the house. What this did was opened up a hole about the size of a soft ball at the eve of the valley.

I stopped there and went back to tell the lady, "You got bigger problems than a few squirrels!"

Yeah muddawg I hear ya. Earlier this year I was squirrel-proofing the house of a chimney sweep company owner. Leaned the ladder against the side to install screening over the gable vent and the whole friggin' side of this brick house wobbled under the weight of the 24' ladder. The entire wall could have easily collapsed then, and no doubt WILL eventually.