New contractor warranty law badly written to protect homeowners
If you are planning on building a new home in Oregon, enclosed recent 2008 information is important for you to know. ORS 701.320 mandates that a contractor who contracts to construct a new residential structure (but it excludes manufactured dwellings) must offer the owner or first purchaser, a warranty against defects in materials and workmanship for the structure.
This is not the same law that requires new home construction contractors to give first purchasers of a new home information on likely groundwater and solutions to protect the home from groundwater damage.
The new law 2008, further states that the owner may refuse the warranty and, as long as the two parties haven’t signed the warranty contract, the contractor can withdraw the original offer to construct the residential structure.
The legislation is silent on whether the contractor can charge for the warranty or how long the warranty must be in place. You may wish to consult an attorney for advice on how this applies to your construction business, or yourself as a homeowner.
Isn’t it amazing how laws are written to be litigated rather than to create an atmosphere of clarity. It is easy to see that attorneys are the ones behind the laws to begin with, and that their industry continues to create a mandate of required attorney presence in everything.
What was supposed to be a law protecting homeowners, turns out to be a law that greases the wheels of the attorneys, and gives them another way to milk the public of more cash, as the public is required to order and pay for further interpretation of the law.
Why wouldn’t the supposed home materials and construction quality warranty extend to future purchasers as well? The proposed home warranty, first and foremost, is supposidly designed to apply to the home, not the purchaser. Few problems with materials and construction quality on a new home come up without age and deterioration that identifies these problems.
Go figure, right. Do you think that the new home legislative lobby had anything to do with that? Just like the new watered down disclosure laws for home drainage that are now part of Oregon law, the home builders have fought this mandate for responsibility of workmanship and materials kicking and screaming all the way, through the voices of their paid legislative lobby in Salem.