Panel fines 48 builders for registration failures
The Texas Residential Construction Commission has fined 48 Texas builders, including two in San Antonio, for failing to renew their state registrations on time.  See related article and TRCC press release.

Consumers for Quality Homes
Corporate builders are using subcontractors, often employing a labor force without the training required to build quality homes. This practice of using a shadow workforce leads to poor workmanship and record number of homeowner complaints...In the spring of 2006 CFQH surveyed Centex Homes consumers in several markets.
How would you rate your experience with Centex Homes?  POOR: 41%, FAIR: 24%, GOOD: 35%
How would you rate the quality of your new home built by Centex Homes?
POOR: 31%, AVERAGE: 28%,GOOD: 26%, EXCELLENT: 15%  Read More...

Missouri City Chatter Here is an article from a blog which better explains SLAPP-suits and why/how they are used. More than half of all states in the U.S. have legislation on the books to stop these type of frivilous lawsuits...  Read More...

Dealing with problems in newly-built homes
Industry estimates claim that nearly 85 percent of all new homes have defects, and 15 percent of these homes may have serious problems, including faulty foundations, dangerous moisture intrusion and inadequate framing. Often these problems show up months or even years after the buyer has moved in and the builder has moved on. Many of these new starter castles will be lucky to survive their mortgage.

Wife of jailed builder arrested in fraud case
The wife of a Central Florida home builder was arrested Thursday after a federal grand jury indicted the couple on conspiracy and fraud charges...John Barrington, 44, who was born John Stuart Jakows, started his home-building business in July 2002, a few weeks after his release from a state prison. By legally changing his name later that year, he hid his criminal past from lenders and clients. He is a felon on state supervision with a record dating to 1990. His arrests and convictions include counts of grand theft, mortgage fraud and forgery in Orange, Seminole and Volusia counties.

Builder charged with selling heroin at job sites
Customers would buy the drug at Howard's city construction sites in pre-packaged "bricks" for $500 each, Onofri said. A brick is the equivalent of 50 doses of the drug... Law enforcement officers searched Howard's Garfield Ave nue residence and a detached ga rage behind the house at around 5 p.m. Wednesday. Inside the garage, detectives found 24 bricks of heroin with a street value of $12,000 and $20,000 in cash in the rafters of the garage, investigators said.

Wife of jailed builder arrested in fraud case
The wife of a Central Florida home builder was arrested Thursday after a federal grand jury indicted the couple on conspiracy and fraud charges...John Barrington, 44, who was born John Stuart Jakows, started his home-building business in July 2002, a few weeks after his release from a state prison. By legally changing his name later that year, he hid his criminal past from lenders and clients. He is a felon on state supervision with a record dating to 1990. His arrests and convictions include counts of grand theft, mortgage fraud and forgery in Orange, Seminole and Volusia counties.

Tougher code needed
The Florida Building Commission voted against a stronger residential building code for panhandle counties this week. The commission, despite pressure from home builders who complain that stricter building standards will increase the costs, needs to reconsider its decision when it meets in August in Miami.

Fannie Mae to suspend construction lending program
 Fannie Mae (FNM) said Thursday it has agreed to suspend its acquisition, development, and construction lending program because of concerns raised by its safety and soundness regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight...The mortgage finance giant is recovering from a $10.6 billion accounting scandal and recently paid a $400 million fine to federal regulators because of its internal lapses.

Law aims to cut mortgage fraud
"What we had seen in the past, fly-by-night brokers were coming from out of state who had bad records," said Rep. Val Vigil, D-Thornton, one of the sponsors of the legislation, called House Bill 1161... If they have been convicted of fraud, deceit, theft or similar offenses, they automatically would be barred from brokering loans in Colorado... Colorado also is leading the nation in the rate of foreclosures.

Foreclosures still surging
Residential foreclosure filings continue to flood public offices throughout the metro area, with no signs that the record-setting pace of failed home loans will let up. Foreclosures in the seven-county metro area jumped by nearly a third in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2005, according to public-trustee counts.

BIAW hoping to pack State Supreme Court with handpicked candidates this fall
The BIAW is an association of homebuilders headquartered in Olympia, not far from the Capitol Campus. It has about eleven thousand members or so, and deep pockets ...seek to craft a government friendly to unfettered, unregulated capitalism, not to mention a government that provides generous subsidies and a steady stream of lucrative contracts to further line their pockets - codifying the culture of corruption into the nation's laws…The BIAW has used the initiative process repeatedly to get voters to repeal worker and environmental protection legislation it opposes.

Record foreclosure pace
More than 9,500 real estate foreclosures have been filed in the Denver area in the first half of the year, about 34 percent more than in the first six months of 2005.  It's on pace to be the worst year ever in terms of the number of foreclosures, topping 17,122 in 1988, though the area's population growth since then means the total percentage of homes in foreclosure is smaller.

Bills offer protection from shady home deals
A package of bills unveiled Monday would offer people refinancing their homes more protection from lenders who are defrauding the real estate industry by giving law enforcement officials more muscle to investigate and prosecute such cases.The state has one of the fastest-growing mortgage-fraud problems in the nation, according to the FBI. Michigan's mortgage-fraud losses jumped from nearly $9 million in 2003 to $26 million in 2005.