They don't make $1.8 million houses like they used to: Home inspectors use TikTok to reveal 'shoddy' new homes

By Aarthi Swaminathan

'I'm just blown away by all the bad work that I've seen,' one home inspector tells MarketWatch

Do they make new homes like they used to? These home inspectors don't think so.

When buying a home, some newbie buyers may assume newly constructed houses come with less upkeep because the property is fresh off the production line and has never been lived in.

But buyer beware: That isn't necessarily true, according to several TikTok videos posted by home inspectors. The videos, from across the U.S., detail major problems inspectors have found in newly built homes - revealing not just shabby workmanship but also, they say, the true cost of fast-and-furious home building over the last few years.

One inspector, who serves parts of North Carolina and South Carolina, showed TikTok viewers issues such as water leaking into a home's walls and floor, nails jutting out of framing, and more. "Take a look at this house with me, and let's see what $1.5 million will buy us these days," the inspector says as he tours the site.

"I was more impressed at the fifth-grade gingerbread-house contest than I am right now," he says. "It's pitiful."

Other clips posted by the same inspector show flaws in brand new houses that would send chills down the spine of many home buyers: rotten wood lurking inside a load-bearing wall; a luxuriously deep bathtub that "spins around like a top" because it's not properly anchored to the floor; wobbly gutters. "I don't expect to see runs in my paint and shoddy seam jobs on my trim when I'm paying half a million dollars for a new house," he says in one video.

The problems highlighted on social media come at a time when home buyers are turning to newly built homes amid a dearth of existing homes on the market. The TikTok videos, many of which have received millions of views, shine a light on the potential pitfalls associated with buying these houses - and the value of a home inspection.

Some home buyers are skipping home inspections

Unlike building inspectors - who are local-government employees who make sure homes are up to local, state and federal building codes - home inspectors look at homes with a different goal: They inspect newly purchased houses for safety and repair issues on behalf of home buyers who hire them. While brand new houses are typically inspected by the home builder and a building inspector, some buyers choose to pay a licensed third-party home inspector for a more comprehensive look when they buy a new house.

Typical costs for a home inspection can range from $300 to $500, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Home inspections have traditionally been a key step in the home-buying process, with buyers often making their offer contingent on a house passing inspection. But in today's competitive housing market, some buyers are waiving the inspection as a way to sweeten their offer.

Joe Hunt, a Phoenix-based market manager for the real-estate brokerage Redfin (RDFN), said he would never help a customer buy a newly constructed home without having an inspection.

"You're always going to find something, whether it's brand new or whether it's 100 years old," said Hunt, who has worked in real estate for 25 years. "And that's why you do an inspection ... to really have a road map of what you [are] up against in the future when maintaining this particular home."

Hunt said he wasn't surprised with the TikTok home inspectors' findings in brand new houses, but suggested they might be outliers. "Some of the things that are being sensationalized by these TikTok videos probably aren't consistently happening with everybody," Hunt noted, "but may be just happening more often with certain builders."

Insatiable demand for new homes

The home-building industry is in its heyday, as new homes have become more popular among home buyers. There's a lack of existing-home listings on the market because many homeowners are locked into ultralow mortgage rates and have little interest in selling now that rates are hovering around 7%.

Aspiring homeowners in the last two years have instead turned to home builders, who have plenty of inventory of new single-family homes. The surging demand for new homes has driven up supply: One-third of U.S. single-family homes for sale in the first quarter of 2024 were newly built, according to a Redfin analysis. That's double the prepandemic level.

But meeting that demand has come at a cost, according to the home inspectors posting TikTok videos of shoddy construction. As builders reckon with a record number of units under construction, some of their work has shown signs of being rushed, inspectors told MarketWatch.

One-third of U.S. single-family homes for sale in the first quarter of 2024 were newly built - double the prepandemic level.

Part of the frenzy to build stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic, which boosted home-buying demand. As the Federal Reserve cut interest rates during the pandemic to keep the U.S. economy afloat, home buyers leapt at rock-bottom mortgage rates and went on a buying spree - and builders built to meet the demand.

Consequently, "there was a marked drop from 2019 to 2020 in terms of quality construction," Michael Cholewa, a Portland, Ore.-based home inspector since 2018, told MarketWatch in an interview. With a big backlog of homes to finish, builders were "just trying to build enough housing" and they couldn't "keep up," he said.

In one video, which had over 3.4 million views as of July 8, Cholewa sang about his "first look at a $1.8 million house" where he found several flaws. They included a flight of floating stairs that he was able to wiggle with just one hand. He did not specify which builder had constructed the home, which was in Oregon.

In another video, Cholewa showed another Oregon house where the heat pump is located on a backyard deck that also lacks stairs connecting it to the lawn. "Couldn't think of a better place to put the f-ing unit for the heat pump here," Cholewa says in the video. "But also, where are the steps?"

Has home-building quality declined as quantity has increased?

To be sure, it is difficult to gauge whether home-building quality has deteriorated in recent years. There is no national database that tracks the quality of new-home construction. Nonetheless, the inspectors' videos are striking a chord at a time of record-high home prices. In May, the median price of a resale home was $419,300, while the median price for a newly built home was $417,400, according to data from the National Association of Realtors and the U.S. Census Bureau.

There is also no national database where home buyers can check complaints against home builders. While lawsuits against some big-name home builders such as D.R. Horton (DHI) have cast public scrutiny on the workmanship in new houses, home inspectors' findings typically never see the light of day after being cast aside to a homeowner's junk drawer.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment for this story. D.R. Horton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'I'm just blown away by all the bad work that I've seen'

Home inspectors on TikTok say the information they provide in their videos has helped some aspiring homeowners. That's especially important, they add, given that 22% of home buyers opted to forgo home-inspection contingencies just to get an edge in bidding wars in May 2024, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

Social media has become a forum where concerned home inspectors can educate the public, while also advertising their services.

"I ended up looking through my 'luxury' apartment and am now able to see everything they messed up. How I gasped when I realized each piece of tape was a scratch!" a user wrote in a comment on an Arizona-based home inspector's TikTok video - in which he inspects what he says is a newly built million-dollar home and finds chipped and damaged shower tiles and scratched kitchen cabinets, among other flaws.

After Brad Zirlott, a Mobile, Ala.-based home inspector, posted a TikTok video in which he wiggles a toilet with his knees to show that it's not firmly rooted to the floor, people told Zirlott that they had started finding their own unattached toilets, he said in an interview with MarketWatch.

'I don't expect to see runs in my paint and shoddy seam jobs on my trim when I'm paying half a million dollars for a new house.'

"I'm just blown away by all the bad work that I've seen," said Zirlott, who has his own company, Due South Home Inspection, and has worked as a home inspector since 2017. "It just doesn't seem like anybody adheres to any code, or any type of best practices or standards."

At one new home, Zirlott said, he used a thermal camera and discovered moisture in one of the bedroom closets. That moisture, during the hot and humid summer months, could turn into mold within days, he told the builder. The builder tried to argue that there was no moisture, but Zirlott stood his ground. In the end, the builder spent at least $20,000 to fix the issue, according to Zirlott.

Subpar workmanship in new houses could be due to inexperienced construction workers, as well as pressure to deliver finished homes on time, Cholewa said. For instance, "guys will be painting houses in the winter when it's raining," he noted. "Once the siding's up, it's time to paint; it doesn't matter if it's the right time of the year to paint. ... They're moving as fast as they can."

At one new home he inspected, Cholewa said, the contractors were in such a rush to finish the house that instead of gluing the edges of floor joists to a sheet of the subfloor and then fastening them in, as is typically the case, they nailed them in. As a result, the eventual homeowners would notice their floor popping or squeaking when they walked on it, he predicted.

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