Are you a retirement community owner in Texas? Poor construction can lead to several issues to your property. There are six systems that come into play when having a successful construction defect claim.

TRANSCRIPT

When you talk about retirement communities and how they’re constructed, any discussion about retirement communities would not be complete without pointing out that there’s been a lot of them constructed in the past four or five years with the aging population. And because there’s been so many constructed over the past 5 to 7 years, even 10 years, a lot of retirement communities run into problems with shoddy construction.

Now, the general law in Texas with regard to problem construction and what an owner can do to recover for the problem construction is that you’ve got a 10-year statute of repose beyond which you cannot recover for issues in construction.

There’s also another deadline that any retirement community owner should be aware of, and that is a statute of limitations on breach of contract. The general law in situations like this is that your rights and responsibilities are defined by the contract you’ve signed with the general contractor and the design professionals and the architects. And, so, fundamentally, you’ve got four years from the date of Substantial Completion on a retirement community to take action to protect your rights for shoddy workmanship or design.

What we typically see at issue in retirement communities are issues with one of the five or six systems that comprise the buildings.

One is the roof system. Roof systems sometimes aren’t installed correctly and can lead to moisture and air leakage out of the building and moisture leakage into the building.

Another one of the systems we see problems with are balcony and window systems. Balconies can be notoriously hard and difficult to design and to construct, and it takes a real knowledge of how to design a balcony that will function properly to drain the water away from the living space. Balconies need to be sloped properly. They need to be flashed properly. So, in addition to being designed properly, they need to be constructed properly.

Hand in hand with balcony systems is window systems. We’ve seen windows installed backwards and upside down in retirement communities. So, that’s another one of the systems that we’ll evaluate or that an owner may have problems with.

Another system is the grading and drainage system. A lot of people don’t think about the grounds that surround the building as a system, but they are. They’re a drainage system meant to drain water away from the building so as to protect the integrity of the structure. At times, we see problems with the drainage system where the civil engineer didn’t design the drainage system properly, or the general contractor didn’t grade the drainage areas or didn’t grade the areas properly.

So, roof systems, window systems, balcony systems, and grading and drainage are some of the systems we see issues with.

The problem for retirement communities is, they’re in the business of taking care of folks, whether it be independent living or memory care. They’re not in the business of pointing out all the construction issues and going after the folks who are responsible. There’s no budget for it.  There’s no budget for standing up to the general contractor who has built, typically, many, many retirement communities.

The solution is, we can give a no-cost review. Up to 10 years from the date of Substantial Completion, our firm will do a no-cost review of any retirement community, and we can do that because we’re a law firm focused on owners and retirement communities, in particular.

We’ll do a no-cost review. Our review is pretty straightforward and simple. We’ll review the contract documents to determine what rights and remedies you may have. We’ll provide a detailed oral report to the folks in charge to let you know what our experts have found, and we will discuss with you who the potentially responsible parties are.

Here’s what makes us successful in what we do – this is all we do. Contact us at your convenience and let us know how we can help to evaluate your situation at no cost.

Speak with a Gravely Construction Lawyer to Learn your Options.