Warranty woes

We are now in the month of February, which means that Centerpointe Section 9's first houses are turning three years old. 

Over the last 3 years, I've had a lot of residents ask me, "Um, what the heck is 'Section 9'?"  It's the "new" tract of houses southeast of Centerpointe and the Boxelder Pointe utility easement.  All 75 houses in this section have either a Harvard Pointe or an Arlington Pointe address. 

The Googlemaps aerial (screengrab above) still shows us as being only half done, but we've been totally built-out for more than a year now. 

With age comes decrepitude - some of it premature.  This past weekend, it was difficult to miss all the construction noise on the northeast side of Section 9.  That racket was reportedly occurring because one of our builders was fulfilling a warranty claim on a resident's 3-year-old house, which appears to have significant structural defects.  I'm saying "appears" because the resident reported this to me but I myself have not set eyes on any proof, although I did witness a contractor tearing apart a portion of the exterior structure and replacing it with new materials.  It was a whole heck of a lot of work that occurred over the past few weeks, culminating in this weekend's effort.   

Residential construction in Texas is generally covered by a 10-year warranty for structural issues.  But here's the thing: if there does prove to be a problem with your house, it's only going to get worse with time and, depending on the nature of the issue, it could spin off ancillary problems which might be challenging to deal with in and of themselves as separate repairs.  These residents described above were smart to jump on their issues quickly, while their home is still in its toddlerhood, and get their warranty claim fulfilled now.  (There is a warranty site for our builder Meritage, and I can't seem to find an analogous page for our other builder Brighton, but here is a list of phone numbers for its parent company).

That resident's structural situation is not the only warranty claim I've been told about thus far in Section 9.  Furthermore, I've also heard multiple stories about "quirks" arising, issues with houses that may or may not eventually prove to be defects per se, but which are aggravations for homeowners.  Some of the houses are demonstrating remarkably consistent quirks from one house to the next, which is not unexpected, given that there were a limited number of trades teams swarming the section during construction.

Here's what I suggest: if anything appears quirky in your house, communicate it to me and/or to our POA.  Knowledge is power, there's strength in numbers, and insert additional cliche's here.  Some of us are having to solve these types of problems and if you are also facing the same problem, we could potentially help you to avoid re-inventing part of the warranty wheel if we were to pool our information and experiences. 

Happy Birthday, Section 9.

Nothing but wood and wide open spaces:  Section 9 a bit more than three years ago.