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Architect Eric Strain designed this award-winning house on a hillside in Summerlin to be adaptable to the desert. There are no windows at the rear because they would face west — and the punishing afternoon heat. Instead, the back of the home is garage, which acts a buffer between the living space and the sun.
By J. Patrick Coolican (contact) 
Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012 | 2 a.m.
J. Patrick Coolican
Eric Strain
The Eric Strain-designed home in The Ridges has two living areas connected by a foot bridge, with one side sitting lower than the other to allow for greater air flow.
Sun archives
I’m standing with architect Eric Strain outside a home perched on a hillside in Summerlin. The sun is setting behind us, the salmon-colored sky now bleeding into indigo darkness. We are looking east toward the Strip, its lights just beginning to shimmer.
“The view doesn’t suck,” Strain quips.
The rest of the Las Vegas Valley sits below us, like a giant Lego land. The houses are all red-tile roof and stucco that resembles the color of instant grits.
And if we were to stand here in 25 years, few of those houses will still be standing, Strain says. They won’t last, and anyway, no one would choose to live in them.
And in 50 years? Forget it.
But this home where we’re standing on that hillside in The Ridges in Summerlin? It’s a home Strain designed to be as well adapted to the desert as a Joshua Tree.
“I have no doubt this home will still be here,” Strain says confidently. He’s soft-spoken until he begins talking about building in the valley.
His confidence comes from his understanding of the desert and what can survive here. Outsiders often mistakenly think we are in a temperate climate because we do not suffer the snows of the East and Midwest. But our Mojave Desert is host to extreme temperatures and high winds, which can be murder on our built environment.
Strain builds structures that can survive and even thrive here, and he seems to believe he has an ethical responsibility to do so. And he clearly likes the challenge.
•••
We begin in the back, standing on the driveway. As Strain notes, there are no windows at the rear because they would face West — and the punishing afternoon heat. Instead, the back of the home is garage, which acts a buffer between the living space and the sun.
It is actually two living spaces. The owners, Dr. Danny Eisenberg, a radiologist, and his wife Lauren Eisenberg, a Hebrew School teacher, didn’t want something massive. Unfortunately, the development has a square footage minimum. Their ingenious solution provides separate independent living spaces at human scale: Two homes joined by a foot bridge. One living space is for the Eisenbergs, and the other is for their two college-aged children when they are home from school. Later, it will be a space for extended family.
And, the gap between the two structures is an important asset in the overall design, as it helps air flow. If all this sounds somehow shoddy or ad hoc, trust me, it’s not. The design won an award from the Nevada chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Strain used concrete block walls strengthened with vertical tie rods. The vertical spaces are then filled with insulation. The result: “It won’t wear or crack like stucco. It’s here forever,” Strain says.
The extra cost? Perhaps 15 percent more than conventional buildings, Strain says.
Now we are standing on the footbridge, and I point out the desert landscaping.
Down below is a courtyard and an infinity pool. Courtyards, Strain notes, have been used for thousands of years — in the Middle East, in the Spain of the Moors and in the old American Southwest — as social spaces that double as efficient mechanisms for cooling air.
“This allows us to get air flow and get some cooling before it moves up to the home.”
The two living spaces are ever so slightly askew, creating more air flow.
The roof is copper with black acid tint for aesthetics. It’s all recycled, and it won’t wear. There are some solar panels.
The black on the copper seems surprising, but Strain says it draws heat to the roof, creating air flow. Tile and stucco, on the other hand, allow the heat to beat against the walls and leach into the house.
“In many respects these are old techniques that Frank Lloyd Wright used.”
The home features lots of natural light, which might seem counterintuitive — won’t the sun beat on the glass? That’s why he uses big overhangs for shade and angles all the sunlight to prevent heat from invading the home.
In the end, Strain boasts, “It’s an indestructible home, and something the homeowner doesn’t have to worry about.” Very little maintenance. Must be nice, right?
•••
Here’s where it gets really interesting.
Strain is convinced we could do homes like this, on a much smaller and less opulent scale, of course, across the valley.
He says these materials and building techniques are affordable — building this home at The Ridges didn’t cost any more than doing a more conventional custom home.
Doing Strain’s kind of building in an affordable tract development might cost 25 percent more than conventional building. That sounds like a lot, but he says that when we factor in savings from lower utility and maintenance bills, it would pay for itself in 10 years. And they would be homes we could be proud of.
By the time the valley leaves this construction slump, we’ll be looking at deteriorating stucco all around us. “Those houses were built for 20 years. They weren’t built like our grandparents’ house,” Strain says.
He wants to return to that earlier era, when we built things to last. And in the desert, that means building his way.
“We need to invest in homes rather than just buying buildings. There’s a difference.”
A version of this story ran in Vegas magazine, a sister publication of the Sun.
Many home owners feel the same way, we need quality construction with well thoughout planning. Stucco housing is poor quality, and nowhere near the value of the asking price.
Sounds like a builder looking for business.
The bigger problem is the lack of ground space between the homes in some of the tracs. Every other home needs to be torn down just to make the area livable.
Peter Fritz hit the nail on the head. Each home SHOULD be sitting on a minimum 10 acre lot. There needs to be at least one full acre in every direction between your exterior wall and the nearest potential human annoyance. And - here's a novel concept - how about SOUNDPROOFING the entire home so I don't have to listen to all the male geniuses who seem to think the decibel level of their engine is an advertisement for the gargantuan size of their ... (certainly not their brain).
Very unique, nice looking home. The only issue with contemporary homes like this one is that they are a niche market...not everyone embraces them and their resale value is usually lower than similar sized homes that are more traditiional in design. Contemporary designs can get dated in a fairly short period of time. If you are not careful you may own a white elephant 10 years down the road.
Las Vegas really blundered when they allowed homes to be built on top of one another. There are some developments where it literally looks like there is maybe 6 feet between homes. When you have two story homes it feels like you are in a tunnel standing between them. I term these developments plain "ugly". I understand the idea that more property means more landscaping, more water...but they could have and should have found a happy medium. Postage stamp size lots with homes built as close to the property line as possible has destroyed any sense of a desert environment. If you go out in your backyard you've got five neighbor homes staring right down on you. Zero privacy. Some of these builders should be banned from ever building here again and Las Vegas needs more architects like Mr. Strain who seem to have an appreciation for environment and design and aren't just trying to max out lots.
In most cities a very structured Planning Department exits to guide the Elected Officials in the overall direction of a City. In Las Vegas you just wonder - What Happened? - and why even now is there no movement to keep the valley from looking like a hundreds of square miles Strip-Mall. Most of it filled with Repetitive Box Stores, Nail and Massage Places with no curb appeal at all.
Comment removed by moderator. Off Topic
Sorry no chance to make a change here.
Hard to cool and heat chicken wire shacks with a thin veneer of stucco on the dry rotten wood frame are the norm here in all neighborhoods. Such neighborhoods will eventually burn in a fire storm worthy of Dresden.
And current urban planning is simply another name for unsustainable crime ghettos. Cheap, so called, "luxury" apartments are deliberately thrown into middle class neighborhoods which give a ready made nest for drugs dealers and prostitutes/pimps to eventually flourish in the midst of older middle class housing. Burglary and drug sales and casual prostitution overwhelm many of our older middle class neighborhoods as the crime spills out from a cluster of roach filled apartments.
Solution?
Not a chance, ongoing criminal activities and even large firestorms are inevitable in this patchwork town, The town was thoughtlessly "planned" to end up this way. The town's greedy politicians and just plain good old boy/girl politics whipped on by developer money made sure it would happen this way.
PS if there HAD been any planning NO housing would EVER have gotten that close to Red Rock to give a great view. The reverse is NOT a great view, as dreck-like housing pollutes Red Rock's visual and aural envelope.
Just common sense..until the town fathers put a hold on building more homes in this depressed market (Rhodes gets approved for 4500 homes?) and the right building materials are used like this article states, nothing will change. He is right, most of our homes are 20yrs at best ! Look at a home here in the desert in 10yrs and look at a home in the midwest in 10yrs..The home here will look to be 100yrs old and ready to tear down,,,the midwest home - like brand new..Quality = longevity
Comment removed by moderator. Personal Attack
Like anything..you've got to maintain it to preserve it. People here (and everywhere) buy a home and think the outside never needs to be maintained. They wait too long to replace the roof, they don't fix stucco cracks, the don't preserve exterior wood, they don't paint it, they don't clean leaves out of the gutter. Yes, eventually these homes will disintegrate. That has more to do with owner neglect than the forces of nature. There's a lot of single family house homeowners who should have bought a condo instead.
Yeah too bad its so ugly. Why can't they build a traditional looking house to stand up to the heat, wind etc??
Whatever happened to having the eave of your roof hanging over it least 2 ft??? They just build crappy houses in Vegas...
WHAT IS A PERSONAL ATTACK?? CRITICIZING THE JOURLNASTIC NATURE OF THE ARTICLE? SAYING YOUR PUBLIC PIC WOULD LOOK BETTER WITH A SMILE? Get over yourself, "moderator." Focus on the issue of poor housing in LV, which involves poor leadership, bad politicians, and off-tilted writing about the issues;; try again:
The article content is really interesting...but as usual, Mr. Coolican spends too much time blah blah blahing at the top so by the time we get to the good stuff half way, 3/4 down he's run out of space and its rushed, leaving out more details.
But all meowing aside, what irks me is the reporting style at the top turns into what reads like he just typed his notes. Conversational Vs. pure facts w/out color. Just a poorly constructed (pun intended!)/maybe rush job piece. Sorry but Journalism majors pick up on this stuff (dont give me "ya well you mispelled 'moron' and missed a coma!! Im not the one getting paid to write, here. And its early ;) )
Love the elitist nature of the homeowners, trying to pass themselves off as humble, not wanting a McMansion. Could have done a dozen other things with that second wing (didn't we used to call them In-Law arrangements?). So how practical is the issue (buried between the shrubs here) in tearing down LV's pop. boom? Not very. If the city "leaders" had any balls/brains they'd do something only the past and current (GOP) Governors did (and with no thanks to those who sabatoge their own state and economy, Harry The Hack...with moronic voters who keep this juvinile evil crook in office, how can we trust voters to make real & honest, tough choices for NV? Its why I now live 3 miles over the border; anywho...) and look down the road other than to just kick issues down it; use these crap houses for the obvious issues the valley faces. Funny how the lead title is only really addressed at the very end and for a brief moment at that. Again, great topic(s), poor article.
Gotta love how these papers spout about Free Speech but stifle it when they dont agree..if the Sun wasn't so leftist it would allow comments (and spam) about CORRUPT POL's like REID and his cronies, which put up so many regulations it is impossible to construct decent housing, bow to lobbyists, and had a poor outlook during Vegas' boom, making THIS problem worse. Problem is, ego at the Sun gets in the way of substance. Tear down bad housing? Try tearing down bad journalism which hides FREE speech, even when opposed. Wonder why people stop buying papers....
If ya dont like it, move out, move away, dont buy the crappy house in the first place.
HEY SUN, HOW IS DISAGREEING WITH OTHER POSTS PERSONAL ATTACKS?? PEOPLE POST, YOU REPLY, ITS PERSONAL!!!! DUH!!!
Commenters Dennis Hill, Ben Lambert,Peter Fritz, and LongTimeVegan, framed my sentiments exactly. Might I add, that the Clark Couty Planning Commission has NOT served in the best interest of the community in the past 20 years or more, but rather of their cronies and their own self-interests. To allow building at the massive scale as they have, has been irresponsible, considering there is NOT A SUSTAINABLE WATER SUPPLY!
Hello, this is a desert.
Now that economic hard times have hit, we are wallowing in endless foreclosures and empty dwellings, yet, the Clark County Planning Commission sees fit to continue uncontrolled building in light of the current disaster of neighborhoods turning into slums/ghettos, and ghost towns. Anyone looking to live in a nice sustainable place, will truly cross Clark County off their list. The State of Nevada LAWMAKERS have seen to it, that MINING continues to prosper, paying a mere pittance into State revenues, while the People continue to suffer LOSS. Hell of a deal!
Educators are having to shell out of their pockets to keep their classrooms running, have extra duties/responsibilities due to budget cuts, while certain preferential treatment of some prevail in the culture. Thousands of parents are giving up in frustration, due to an economy where the Banksters were bailed out and NOT the People. Their dreams and hopes are shattered, as well as their VOICES. You see it in the motivation of their children at school.
We need leaders with common sense and decency. Leaders who can PLAN with the knowledge that this is a desert with very limited resources, that maintaining the ambiance of the landscape is of value to citizens, that as our communities age or mature, it is necessary to provide resources to strengthen what remains, to make it a quality liveable place.
So far, this has been lacking for a while. Let's require that our PLANNERS do their job responsibly.
Blessings and Peace,
Star
if the average family could afford a custom designed home by a prominent architect with an enormous courtyard and acres of property surrounding it then, yes, these are ideas worth considering. however, the reality we live in is that politicians will always take the quick buck from developers squeezing 6 houses in an area that should contain only 2. there are many mid century stucco houses in las vegas. we're not exactly talking thatched roofs here. what las vegas should be considering is how to make houses more self sufficient (solar panels) and neighborhoods more livable (houses spread out, walkable grocery, dining, et al).
With freedom comes responsibility...at least in my book. We learned the hard way "freedom" for a few can destroy many. I offer up AIG and a 200 billion dollar taxpayer bailout. Essentially one man (Joseph Cassano) with limitless freedom in mortgage securities almost took down the entire Financial system.
Lousy housing is like commenting on The Sun...no reason why (removing what they dont like), never addressed, blindly going with status quo. Until real change comes to LV or the country (imagine Sun removing any criticism of WHY the problem exists in the first place..HOW is that off topic?) How many times can I say certain candidates have plans to address this very issue, when local ones do not?? You pose a question in your lead banner but wont let those smart enough to answer it, answer it with facts Vs. just a Yes or No!?!?! Common sense went out with the Mob..NOT off topic...houses built when they were running the joint are still here and look better than those built in the 90s and the naughts (look it up, jay). Solution, addressing the why, answering the Q posed in the article....come on. But a guy peddling a book can stay posted?? About the financial industry, none the less. COme on Sun, rise and shine! Wake up!
I am living in a 1200 SF townhouse that was built in 1976. They are practically giving these places away now. I've paid 81K, 73K, 63K, 45K and the last one at 38K. They all needed paint, carpet and some minor plumbing and electrical but they are quite solid. So, I don't see why these newer homes would only last for 20 years.
The temptation is to call for a moratorium on new McMansions. This could 4 done by charging a $80K connection fee for water (that's how Santa Barbra CA did it). But then, all these workers would lose their jobs so it's hard to make choices like this.
It's funny that when the place I live in was selling for $225K in 2005 there was a waiting list and now at $38K nobody wants one. Makes no sense really.
That's my meow of the day :-)
Correct, with an exception in that Frank Lloyd Wright would also tell you to buy as much land as you could afford, (he had this thing about privacy).....
Go ahead and put on a Dean Martin tape open a bottle of wine and try not to smile........
Joe Cassano is still stinkin rich too, lives in a huge mansion in London.
I dont think my 10 year old KB home is going to disintegrate over the next 10 years.
The lot sizes in housing tracks here have been a problem longer than since the latest building bubble.
Ill buy my next house when I can get a .25 acre or bigger lot and decent drive to work.
Strain's ideas might be good, but unfortunately most home builders will never use these. They want to build homes as cheaply and quickly as possible. We've rented a few different houses here (because we were loathe to buy a nasty home in a nasty city) and they've all been ugly, not well thought out, dreadful homes. Just to save a few cents, the builders have shorted the copper pipes going to and from our hot water heater. So when our garage was flooded from a leaking hot water heater, it took the plumber even longer to repair the leak because the pipe was hidden in the back of a bunch of useless wooden boards! I guess this was disguise/hide any wrong-doing from any inspectors (if they do ever inspect any of these crummy suburban homes!)
It would be nice if Strain's ideas took a real foot hold here but I highly doubt that vegas will ever smarten up about houses.
If you want to see examples of the absolute worst in planning combined with high density-uber ugly tract housing, look no further than the ragged edge of the southern NV housing collapse on west Blue Diamond Road. Horrors!
This is the first time in my life, since I left the city life of Southern California in 1972, that I had purchased a home with less than 2 acres land. Needless to say, it is NOT my cup of tea, and what makes it worse, is that getting out of this particular property here on East Carey Avenue, next to the new City of North Las Vegas Waste Water Treatment Plant, will be next to impossible, since my values dropped significantly (from $174,000 to less than $39,000!!!!!!)
It is obvious that the PLANNING COMMISSION and all parties involved benefited greatly, while the entire neighborhood on East Carey Avenue and Betty Lane suffered HARM and there is NO JUSTICE.
Corruption in Clark County is the rule of the day, week, month, and year. These commissioners must be accountable or be voted OUT.
An aside on this article: years ago, I owned a well-built, walls made of cinder blocks, with the entire home walls surrounded with sliding doors for 360 views custom home with acreage on Rainbow Heights Road, in Rainbow (Fallbrook), California. The home's foundation was blasted into the side of a mountain, had solar, and passive cooling. Although this home was extremely well-built, years after I had sold it, this lovely home burnt to the ground! Goes to show, that sometimes, no matter how well and thoughtful a home is built, disaster can happen.
Blessings and Peace,
Star
Patrick Coolican; Do you know what happened to the change in building tract homes with those metal frames that were being utilized on new homes on the northwest side of town off of Craig Road before the housing bust? Seemed like a good idea at the time.
By the way, go ahead and remove the remainder of "AussiesRokTheWest's" comments. He is effectively attempting to take my place as your number one critic!!! (Just kidding everyone, maintain your sense of humor now)
=D for Bradley Chapline little jab!
But going back to that time when metal framing was quite the rage, it seems to me that during the boom times, prices were going sky high, and the supply was less available than lumber. This sticks in my mind, because back in 2000, we were building from the ground up, a ranch house in Lund, and we came down here to Las Vegas for our materials, our trusses even crossed the Hoover Dam! Quite a thrill.
Blessings and Peace,
Star
The Eisenberg residence was a nightmare to build, overbudget and behind schedule. Ask the Contractors. Review the litigation over its construction. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, notice that the only flattery this home is getting is in trophies by architects and platitudes from columnists.
While there is no question but that the speed with which residential construction was completed in this valley led to compromised quality, the assertion that developments will be levelled within 25 years is unfounded.
This article has an interesting perspective... One that I, and I am sure many, will not agree with. First of all, there are many well-thought of neighborhoods around town and many homes that are built well. *Stucco, when done well, has a long expected life span (http://www.kunzstucco.com/stucco-faq.php...). I am also skeptical about the statement that using the same material and technique as the featured house will only cost 25% more than conventional building. If it really is, then it would be great if he started building communities like this around town... (I am sure someone will start tacking on an extra 25% because of its unique design and sell the exclusivity aspect of it though...) Oh, well... Great concept house though... * The house featured on this article is a 5 bedroom 6000 sq ft. house. It was listed for rent in November 2009 for $12k/month. It was finally rented about a year later for $8k/month... Not sure of its current status.
1. No thoughtful planning.
2. Greedy elected officials, developers, real estate agents, and buyers.
3. Very poorly built homes to maximize out of control profit.
Solution?
If you bought on high end, are still making your payments, you must realize that your home has lost it's investment. Don't kid yourself, it's gone.
If you don't walk away, you must get your loan modified to the lowest payment possible. Stop the bleeding of your cash. Then give it back to bank when you retire, when the bank can't get to your retirement income. Only way out.
You will not win this one folks.
The Eisenberg residence is a custom built home. As with a lot of custom built homes, it is rarely completed on time or on budget. Good luck if he ever had to sell that home as the market for buying 2 separate homes on one lot connected by a bridge is probably very thin. With the transient nature of this town I wouldn't do any type of custom, unique design unless I planned to and had a good idea I was going to be here for a long time.
The houses in Las Vegas, are way too tightly packed, but are very well built. Heavy framing+foam+chickenwire+stucco+tile roof, makes for a tough energy saving house. Meanwhile these pompous eastern elites can not enjoy the great western views through their windowless back wall. STUPID!!
It's a shame the planning boards allow homes to be built without any backyard space. We live in the middle of a desert - no lack of space that I can see.
If you do not like it here please pack up and get out...and leave the rest of stucco hell for me as Armageddon approaches.
I can't complain about the size of my lot. It's certainly not huge, but I can't reach out of my window and smack my neighbor, like you could in some of the homes built during the boom.
Some developer asked for a zone variance nearby to build "condos" during the boom. Myself, and a bunch of neighbors from the HOA showed up at the planning commission meeting and it was shot down. A few months later the market crashed hard.
I'm really thankful that my little neighborhood didn't have the additional burden of a bunch of apartments nearby. You have to get involved to make a difference in your neighborhood.
So if the Eisenberg's house was on land on the other side of the golf hole would Eric have built it with no view of the golf course just to keep from having a western exposure?
As it is, it looks more like a pair of eyeglasses than a house.
The guys a genius, who would of thought to have the windows face the golf coarse.
I worked in the Las Vegas home building industry in the 1990's. It was incredible how fast the developers went from looking at the land to complete build out. One development in NLV took less than a year.
I also remember a meeting with developers (a large home building company) on a new entry level subdivision where we were throwing around ideas for a slogan for the sales promotion. Of course, all of the usual "Building your dream", Living the good life", etc. were mentioned. One person (not me) jokingly said how about "building tomorrow's slums today". We all laughed and went with one of the other more palateable genaric slogans.
The reason for all of those red tile roofs mentioned is because that was required in some developments, along with the off-white exterior coatings, creating thousands of look alike houses. Some developments even require HOA approval for any plant you may want to put in the yard.
I also expect those "20 year houses" mentioned will still be around in another 50 years and more.
While the house in the photo looks really nice, there doesn't appear to be much privacy. I would have included something to obscure the fishbowl effect and also a cover over the walkway might be nice.
As you grow older, you'll agree with me more and more. My next house, and the one I'm in now, will be SINGLE STORY with attached garage (2-3 car) and useable outside space--small desert landscape out front and larger, deserted back yard--with perimeter of vegetation and plenty of space for hobbies. Interested in large 2nd bedroom for versatility. 3rd bedroom for office, paperwork, hobbies. Moderate price range. Yes the Frank Lloyd Wright clientelle can have whatever they want but WHY DO THEY KEEP IGNORING THE BOOMERS? And granted, the low incomers are going to be in what's left of the foreclosures that won't sell right now. Where would we (Vegas) be if they'd been building for us all along? Maybe we'd have snow birds moving in and buying up the bargains, rather than thousands of unsellable at any price tiny back yards, oversized indoors without serious insulation and without ergo design.....
Recently turned down the purchase of a local piece of property, the reason? It was attached to an HOA. Apparently, HOAs are commonplace in the valley and from our view transform property ownership into an undesired property partnership. We refuse to subject ourselves to such partnerships, which host a plethora of potentially costly liability issues as well. We also won't subject ourselves to communities hosting master plan fees, as well as LIDs and/or SIDs.
The general layout embraced by many local communities is akin to prison cell-blocks -- closely stacked units surround by gates, guards and walls hosting no perception of space and/or freedom.
Chicken-wire-n-spackled cookie-cutter construction offers no ownership individualism not to mention durability.
Air conditioners mounted upon the slopes of rooftops, furnaces placed in the rafters of attics fall short in adequately accommodating their continued maintenance requirements. Three car garages that don't possess enough width to fully open vehicle doors or depth to accommodate storage cabinets as well as path to safely transfer groceries is yet another design flaw routinely incorporated in local residences.
Two/three story homes seem all too popular as well -- face it stairs suck, whether it's moving furniture, items or yourself, particularly as you age.
Not sure what going back to the drawing board means -- but if it means abolishing HOAs, Master Plan fees, Sids, Lids, gates, guards to host stacked cardboard chick-coop crap -- it would certainly be a step in the right direction in our opinion -- but we won't hold our breaths waiting as we understand how governments, developers, and real estate dealers operate -- just look closely at the masterpieces they've already scared the land with.
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In my youth, I had the good fortune to build houses here with a reputable and ethical custom home builder. I am aware of other tract home developers who supposedly threw houses together and then supposedly ran with the money before the complaints hit. Several builders here supposedly and routinely built tracts with one company and, then abandoned that company; and the tract's home owners, for another new company.
A retired NLV chief and a retired NLV fire captain once told me that weight loaded metal studs wrapped in, not quite inflammable, plastic insulation sheets collapse quickly in a house fire (they bend due to fire/heat). This led to house roofs collapsing from what should have been minor localized house fires.
On sustainable houses:
Masses of fir framed/stacked houses with quickly done tile on chip board roofs with inadequate papering; routinely develop incipient (sometimes disintegrating) dry rot and end up with roofs that leak just enough to ignore. That leads to persistent hidden water damage and dry rot and then a pervasive invasion by black mold sometimes follows into crawl spaces, attics, and walls. Home owners supposedly and routinely paint over the damage and sell toxic houses to unsuspecting people.
Land is getting scarce so marginal "HOT" alkali rich soil on land formerly too expensive to build on is now being used. Foundations built on marginally usable "hot" desert soil require special dirt preparation and deeper than normal foundations laced with proper imported soil. These hot soils often end up with 10-12" foundations without any proper soil preparation. Add water and the alkali rich dirt "boils" and then rots and undermines foundations. Inspectors supposedly often "miss" such details which would stop entire tracts from being built.
Yes, those houses will "last" but it depends on your definition of lasting. Poorly constructed houses are not a good buy.
A toxic house that probably needs to be demolished and rebuilt to prevent health issues is hardly my idea of a good value. A neighborhood of old firetraps crowded up against each other, just waiting for a large fire, is not my idea of a good value.
Like the making of an all byproduct sausage, the building of mass tract homes is better left undisclosed to the end user.
There's a square footage MINIMUM in their estate? I never heard anything so stupid in all my life. No wonder Vegas produces such hideous housing.
I found this article to be very informative. If the architect can produce this type of home for a modest 25% increase over traditional construction I wonder if he would charge the same 25% premium for mustache rides. Judging from his sexy photo, I would say it would be worth every penny!!