Building Industry Says Speedy Doesn’t Have to Mean Shoddy : Construction: ‘80s boom caused only a few isolated problems in huge O.C. market, officials maintain.
Construction industry critics who claim that shoddy workmanship was widespread from 1985 to 1989--when nearly 100,000 Orange County houses, condos and apartments were built--are roundly vilified by industry officials whenever the topic is mentioned.
The stakes are too big to do otherwise.
In private conversations, some of Southern California’s top builders acknowledge that construction quality in at least some instances did suffer in the rush to build. But they also underscore their belief that the problems are not widespread.
The boom was a time, however, when nearly anyone who could hold a hammer could get a job. And when all the qualified carpenters, painters, drywall installers, electricians and window glaziers were too busy, more than one frantic subcontractor started hiring most anyone who walked through the door.
Builders then--and even now--pressed their subcontractors to finish building projects on schedule or earlier, paying big bonuses when jobs were done fast because homes were in such demand that buyers routinely camped out in long lines for days, even weeks, to improve their chances to get a house.
“When all that is going on, then sure, some things aren’t going to be done right some of the time,” said one developer who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
But builders say that faulty construction problems--which can be pretty dramatic when detailed in lawsuits like the $20-million action the Crosspointe Village Condominium Owners Assn. in Stanton has filed against William Lyon Co.--are relatively rare considering the huge number of homes built during the period.
“It is just wrong to indict the whole industry,” said Bruce Akins, president of Akins Cos., an Irvine-based home builder with a reputation for building high-quality homes.
He disputes that speedy construction invariably results in defective work but acknowledges that some builders did reduce their quality standards in the late ‘80s.
“A big element of this business is carrying costs (interest paid on construction loans while a project is being built), so every builder pays attention to getting things done as quickly as possible,” Akins said.
“I don’t think there was something different going on in the mid-1980s. What was unusual then was the huge number of units that were being built in each phase of a project. That becomes a supervision issue. The more units per phase, the more of your company’s representatives you should have on the site to ensure that everyone is doing what they are supposed to do.”
Overseeing construction is one of the principal duties of a home builder because few have their own full-time construction crews. They rely on independent subcontractors and must ensure that each worker is competent and knows how to adapt to the peculiarities of the plans for a specific building.
It is when such supervision is lacking, Akins and other builders say, that mistakes occur.
But the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County’s position on construction defects is that “there are isolated cases and those builders should be held liable, but we don’t believe there is an automatic question of defects just because something was built during the building boom years,” said executive director Christine Diemer. “There are a lot of good, credible builders in Orange County, and they stand behind their products.”
David L. Colgan, an Irvine attorney whose firm represents several construction companies, said he believes most developers are “fairly responsive with customer service and repairs if problems occur after their houses are sold. If you aren’t responsive, you don’t stay in business very long.”
Colgan, who also is co-chairman of the building association’s legal affairs committee, said that among the attorneys who specialize in construction defects litigation are some “who are out soliciting cases, sending letters to home buyers . . . and muddying the waters and trying to make it look like there is a terrible problem and that suing is the only remedy. And there is something wrong with that.”
Most builders, he said, “want to build good products because their success depends on their reputations. If you look at all the housing that was built in Orange County in the ‘80s, sure there will be a few mistakes. But far and away the vast majority were done well.”
