SAN ANTONIO - You've heard about a Lemon Law for your car, but what about a Lemon Law for a bad house? Legislation is in the works which could protect you as a homebuyer.
The city of Cibolo is backing the proposed homebuyer protection law in Austin. Once a small town, it's experiencing a housing boom with up to 500 homes built yearly.
"Not only is supporting the homebuyers and citizens important, but we see this as an economic factor, and when these homes start to have issues, it starts to play on home values," Mayor Jennifer Hartman explained. "It takes away not only from the city but the county and the school district in their taxing entity."
The city recently enacted tougher building standards in December.
"As a city, we have done everything we can do to help strengthen the building ordinances but we don't feel it's enough to protect the value of the homes and the quality of the homes," she explained.
The proposed legislation would require builders to fix defects in homes, or buy them back if three repair attempts don't fix the problem, or if a serious safety hazard exists.
Gizelle Luevano has had nothing but problems with her west side home and she believes this law could have helped her.
"They (the builder) would have bought my house a long time ago. I wouldn't be in this situation asking people to support these bills," she said.
She's trying to get the city of San Antonio to back the legislation. Bexar County Commissioners have already voiced their support.
The way the bill is currently written, it only applies to veterans, however, Mayor Hartman says she'd like to see it amended to apply to all homebuyers.
If you'd like to read HB 1887,
click here.
There are several other bills aimed at protecting homebuyers, including
HB 2527, which relates to the disclosure of construction defects,
HB 2526, which relates to the provision of construction blueprints to the buyer,
HB 3736, and which creates a homebuilder state standard contract form.
