Frederick County, Maryland. Headers bowing above two windows, a coupling already rusting on the fire sprinkler line, and every window in the house recaulked but never painted. Seventy-nine items the builder had missed, documented before our buyer signed.
Counted from the delivered report
79
Findings documented
Across 15 areas of the unit
2
Bowed headers
Family room and front-left bedroom windows
26
Exterior items
Grading, downspouts, siding and dents
1
Whole-house item
Every window recaulked, none painted
Estimated buyer savings
$13,000
What the same list would cost the buyer from independent trades if the builder had not corrected it: roughly $9,000 to $17,000 at Maryland rates. The two bowed headers are the largest single line, because correcting a header means opening the wall, and the rest is spread across every trade that touched the house.
A new build is not a finished build. These six are the items we made sure the builder saw before the warranty clock started.
The header above the family room’s left window was bowed, and so was the header over the front-left bedroom window. The framing at the center of the family room windows was out of square. On a brand-new house, a sagging header is a framing question for the builder, not a cosmetic one.
The residential fire sprinkler system ties into the water supply through a backflow prevention device. On the sprinkler side of it, a coupling was already very rusty. The passive radon system in the same utility space was not clearly marked either.
The majority of windows throughout the house had been recaulked around the openings and left with bare white caulk beads. Glazing was displaced on one sash and damaged on another, sashes were scratched, and a meeting gasket was out of place. We told the buyer to have every window checked.
The grade was sinking to the right of the front porch, a downspout and a downspout extension had both been rotated off line, the heat pump sat out of level on its pad, and the siding and flashing were dented near the electric service drop and the back door.
The range sat unusually far from the wall, leaving a gap between the backsplash and its back. The garbage disposal ran louder than normal. The wall beside the pantry was not square to the flooring and the island trims were poorly finished at the bottom and rough at the back end.
In the hall bathroom the tile in the left rear corner at waist level was not properly set, the grout on the right rear wall had voids, and the Schluter strip reveal was inconsistent. In the master bath the mirrors and vanity fronts were not parallel and the corner beside the tub was out of plumb.
Photographs from the inspection, personal details removed
Every item as it was captioned in the delivered report, verbatim. Name, street address and report number removed.
Exterior
Exterior landscaping (FYI)
All interior windows/paint
Family room
FL bedroom
Utility
Finished basement
Kitchen
Foyer
Master bath
Hall bathroom
Laundry
Master bedroom
FR bedroom
Upper stairs and hallway
Every Century report is confidential and prepared exclusively for the client who ordered it. This page is published with written permission, with anything identifying removed before it went up.
Seventy-nine items on a house nobody had lived in, two of them framing. The builder’s warranty only covers what gets written down, so we write all of it down.
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