News

By its nature, the discussion is going to be financially motivated (typically by realty/inspection firms peddling wares or construction firms insisting their work standards are great). The reason for this is straightforward; the inspections/construction are almost entirely private and there are virtually no reporting requirements for issues, so most of those issues are invisible to the public (they get fixed privately if at all).

So you can easily find stuff like this, which I admit is basically marketing material for a service vendor. But it's a quite robust industry for a reason.

It's really very hard to make objective claims one way or the other. These things are very hidden from the public, so the stories are inherently anecdotal. But I've lived in a few places in the world, and when I lived adjacent to this Florida stuff, the stories of just shoddy workmanship were every day. Texas also has a similarly bad reputation in my experience. I could link a bunch of news stories about homeowners that went public with lawsuits against builders, but that probably would not be persuasive.

But it's a fair criticism. I really can't back it up. It's just my opinion, and I do not trust developers, especially large developers, and especially large developers in the south, and especially especially large developers in Florida, to not try to sell a pig in a poke to ignorant buyers. That was the lesson of Surfside, to me. That the government in Florida isn't looking out for you and the developers don't care if you die, they just want their money.