Foundation Problems in a New Build, Who Pays

In a new build, the builder pays first. Two things stand behind that. One is the express warranty written into your purchase contract, usually handed over as a booklet at closing. The other is the set of implied warranties Texas law reads into new home construction, which exist because the house was sold as new, not because somebody typed them into the paperwork. Neither collects itself. What decides a new construction foundation claim is rarely who was right about the soil. It is whether you built a record and put the builder on notice while the problem was young.

Start with the builder

Your purchase contract is the first document to read and the warranty booklet is the second. Most builder warranties are written in tiers. A builder warranty is not the same product as a purchased home warranty, which almost never covers foundations. A short tier covers workmanship and finishes, a middle tier covers systems like plumbing and electrical, and the longest tier covers structural elements, which is where the foundation lives. The lengths, the definitions, and the claim procedure vary from builder to builder, so read your own booklet rather than a neighbor's summary of theirs.

Two things in it matter more than the rest. The first is how the warranty defines a structural defect, which is narrower than homeowners assume and often turns on load-bearing performance rather than appearance. The second is what the warranty requires before a claim counts as filed. Some builders want a specific form, some want written notice inside a set window. Missing that step is the cheapest way to lose an argument you would otherwise have won.

Texas law also reads implied warranties into new home construction. In plain terms, that the house was built in a good and workmanlike manner and is fit to live in. They come with the sale rather than the contract. How contract language interacts with them is a question for a Texas construction attorney, but the practical point is that the builder's own paperwork is not necessarily the whole of your position.

Warranties carry exclusions too, and in Central Texas the ones that bite involve the ground. Builders commonly exclude damage tied to how the owner handled drainage, grading, irrigation, and soil moisture after closing. That is no reason to skip a claim. It is a reason to keep photos of your grading, downspouts, and beds from the first month you owned the house, before anybody has a motive to argue.

The order that protects you

Document first. Photograph every crack, gap, and sticking door with something in frame for scale, and record the date. Take the same photos again a month later from the same spot. Two dated images of one crack carry more weight than a paragraph describing it.

Then give written notice. Email works, certified mail is better, and following the builder's stated claim procedure is better still. Describe what you observe instead of what you think caused it. A note saying the dining room door stopped latching in June and a diagonal crack opened above it is harder to wave off than one saying the foundation failed. Diagnosis is what the inspection is for.

Then keep everything. Every reply, every visit and who came, every phone call summarized in a short follow-up email the same day. If a builder rep stands on your porch and tells you this is normal settling, email that afternoon thanking them for coming and restating what they said. Now it exists in writing, and in their inbox.

Why an independent inspection still matters

Builders routinely send their own contractor or warranty manager out to look. Take that visit. It is also a visit from somebody whose paycheck comes from the other side of the question, and it usually ends in an opinion rather than a measurement.

An outside baseline is a different animal. Our ICC-certified inspectors shoot floor elevations across the whole plan and map where the slab sits today, to the tenth of an inch, on a specific date. That does two jobs. It tells you whether the movement is real and how much of it there is, and it drops a dated number into your file that a warranty manager, a mediator, or an attorney can read a year from now. A free foundation inspection costs nothing to add to the record, and it gets more valuable the earlier you do it.

It cuts the other way often enough to say out loud. About a third of our inspections end with no repair needed, and plenty of new build owners hear that their floor reads inside normal range. If the builder's contractor has already handed you a verdict you do not trust, in either direction, reviewing somebody else's diagnosis and scope is what our foundation second opinion review is built for.

What year one movement usually looks like

Some movement in a first year is ordinary. Concrete shrinks as it cures, framing lumber dries with it, backfill around the foundation compacts, and a new slab on Central Texas clay lives through its first full wet season and its first dry one. Hairline cracks at drywall corners, thin cracks running out of door and window corners, and fine surface cracks in a garage slab are common in that stretch and usually cosmetic.

Normal is a probability, though, not a diagnosis, and it is the word a warranty department reaches for by reflex. What separates first year settling from a defect is how the cracks behave and whether the floor plane agrees with them. Cracks growing month over month, several appearing around one corner of the house, doors racking out of square, brick stepping down through the mortar joints, those are a different conversation from a hairline over a door frame. The full read on which cracks are telling you something, by direction, width, and movement over time, is in our guide to how to tell if foundation cracks are serious. Bring that read to the builder alongside the elevation numbers, not instead of them.

When the builder tells you no

Sometimes a claim gets denied, and sometimes it gets answered with a cosmetic repair that reopens by the next dry summer. Texas has a formal process that residential construction disputes are expected to go through before a homeowner sues, built around written notice to the builder, a chance for the builder to inspect, and a chance for them to offer a repair or a settlement. It carries deadlines and it penalizes skipped steps. Check your contract for an arbitration clause too, because many new home contracts contain one and it changes where a dispute gets decided. We inspect foundations rather than practice law, so read up on that process or spend an hour with a Texas construction attorney before you spend anything on litigation. The record you have been building since the first crack is what it runs on.

Where we fit in a new build claim

Most of the time our job on a new build is measurement and documentation, not piers. If the house is inside its structural warranty and the movement is real, the builder should be the one fixing it, and an elevation survey moves that conversation from adjectives to numbers. We would rather hand you the map that gets the builder moving than sell you a repair the builder owes you.

When a new build does end up needing underpinning that nobody else will pay for, we install steel and hybrid piers at $600 to $1,000 each, the piers carry a lifetime transferable warranty, and we come back for a yearly performance follow-up inspection to confirm the house is holding. The inspection that decides whether any of that is necessary is free either way, and on a house this young it is worth doing before the next season moves the evidence.