The TRCC or Texas Residential Construction Commission
(Or, more appropriately, The Texas Builder's Defense Act)
Why do I call it the Builder’s Defense Act? To start with, the law was written at least in part by John Krugh. John Krugh now sits on the Commission for the Texas Residential Construction Commission. So why is that a problem? Well John Krugh just happens to work for Perry Homes, a multi-million dollar builder throughout the state. Who better to guard the henhouse than the fox’s lawyer?
So there is obvious complicity between the commission and the builders, but that doesn’t mean it is bad for consumers. Because I believe that anything good for consumers, no matter how it was conceived or maintained , is still good for consumers if it gives them rights. The good of this law is that it does protect consumers against bad contractors that do remodeling and other small projects. The problem is that the law was not really devised for this purpose or it wouldn’t have made the bar so high.
If you are a homeowner and have a contractor work on your home and he fails to complete the work (a very frequent occurrence) or worse, he does substandard workmanship (an even more frequent occurrence) you can have a state agency review your complaint and sanction, punish and even put out of business the offending contractor. The only problem is that there has to be at least $20,000 worth of work or the commission is not interested. That is really too bad because the vast majority of bad craftsmanship is done on jobs that are contracted for far less than that amount. Less expensive jobs need more accountability from a governing agency, not less. The contractors at that level never carry insurance and a lawsuit is pointless because they will not have any assets to recover. Additionally and because of the aforementioned, there is little chance an attorney will get involved. Yet senior citizens and the people who can afford it the least—the working middle class—go unprotected.
And this leads to the cold hard truth about why it really is the Builders Defense Act. It protects builders from lawsuits. If every new homeowner has to proceed with complaints at the commission level where no legal fees can be recovered, the vast majority of complaints will die at the commission level. The Act provides that if at the end when the commission issues its final decision an appeal is made, it will be presumed in court that the commission made the correct decision. If builders built homes correctly, there would be no need for this law. You see, cutting corners in every new home in Texas will save the big builders millions at the expense of Texas homeowners.
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