Why a new house needs inspecting at all
The reasonable objection first: the city inspected it. True, and a different product from what a buyer's inspection provides.
A municipal inspection is a code-compliance check performed by a jurisdiction, at defined phases, across a great many houses. It verifies compliance with the adopted codes at the moments it is performed. It is not a condition assessment made on your behalf, it is not concerned with workmanship that is compliant but poor, and it ends at the certificate of occupancy.
A buyer's inspection asks a different question — what is the observed condition of this house today — and answers it for you rather than for the jurisdiction. The distinction runs both ways, and it is worth stating plainly: a home inspection is not a code-compliance inspection either. Two separate exercises, different standards, different clients.
Texas rules recognise new construction inspections as their own category. The rule requiring the standard report form carries explicit exceptions for quality-control construction inspections performed for a builder and for inspections of buildings that are not substantially complete — which is what a pre-drywall phase inspection is.
The practical case is simpler still. A new house is assembled quickly by many trades under schedule pressure, and the last ones in — condensate protection, roof penetrations, attic insulation, final grade — work when the site is busiest.
How builder warranties are generally structured
This section will not tell you what your warranty covers, because it cannot. Builder warranties in Texas are contracts, they vary between builders and programmes, and the only authoritative text is the document issued for your house. Anyone stating specific durations without reading yours is guessing.
What can be said generally is the shape. Builder warranties are commonly tiered, with categories of coverage running for different lengths of time — typically a shorter initial period for workmanship and finish items, an intermediate period for distribution systems such as plumbing, electrical and mechanical, and a longer period for major structural elements. The names, the boundaries, the durations and the exclusions all differ by document.
What you should extract from yours, in writing, before you need it:
- What each tier covers, and where the boundary falls. A finding can sit in different tiers depending on how it is characterised.
- The performance standards used. Many warranties define coverage against measurable tolerances rather than a general standard of good work, and that definition decides claims.
- How a claim is submitted, in what form, to whom and within what time. Notice requirements are commonly strict and commonly missed.
- What is excluded — owner maintenance, grading altered after closing, and soil movement provisions in particular.
- Whether coverage transfers to a subsequent owner, and on what conditions. The same question applies to manufacturer warranties: a roofing manufacturer's warranty may be transferable only once, and only with written notice inside a defined period.
Two things worth naming honestly. The warranty is administered by the builder against the builder's own document, so a finding in an inspection report is not a determination of coverage. And an inspection is not a warranty, a guarantee or insurance — it tells you what is there, which is what you need in order to make a claim, not the claim itself.
Why the eleven-month window matters
The eleven-month inspection is named for the practice of inspecting shortly before the first tier of coverage lapses, whatever period your document defines. The reasoning is sound regardless of the exact term.
A full seasonal cycle has passed. A house that closed in spring has by then been through a North Texas summer, an autumn wet-up and a heating season. Defects invisible on a mild day in April have had the conditions they need to appear.
The soil has had its first real test. The dominant clay series here has high shrink-swell potential and cracks that stay open 90 to 150 cumulative days in a normal year. A newly built lot has fresh fill, new grade and new irrigation, none of it through a full dry-down and re-wetting. The first year is when the drainage design either works or shows that it does not.
You need time to act. An inspection performed the week coverage lapses is close to useless. It needs margin to write the claim, for the builder to schedule, and for the work to be done and verified. Book it well before the deadline, and read that deadline out of your own warranty document rather than out of an article, including this one.
Findings that recur in new North Texas construction
These are the ones that show up repeatedly in this region specifically, driven by the soil, the climate and the near-universal practice of putting mechanical equipment in the attic.
Grading, drainage and irrigation
The highest-yield category on a first-year house, and the one most often left as delivered. Fresh fill settles. Recurring findings: negative grade at the foundation; downspouts discharging at the slab, or no gutters at all; patios and walks sloping back toward the house; soil or mulch above the brick weep holes; beds bordered so they hold water against the foundation; condensate discharging at the slab; irrigation heads spraying the veneer or the foundation; and controller programming that waters the front generously and one side yard not at all. In Blackland Prairie clay, irrigation is a foundation system rather than a landscape system, and differential moisture drives differential movement.
One document almost no buyer knows to ask for: Texas rules require a licensed irrigator to sign, seal and date the irrigation plan and specifications, the contract, addenda or change orders, the warranty and the maintenance checklist. A properly installed system produces that paperwork. Ask the builder for it.
The slab
Post-tension is the default for new detached construction in Collin County, and the field identification is the row of patched circular stressing pockets around the slab edge. Two consequences follow. Nothing should ever be cored, cut or anchored into that slab without locating the tendons first — which matters the moment you want a patio anchor or a plumbing modification. And in jurisdictions with strict local amendments the design documents exist: Plano's adopted residential code ordinance requires that every foundation and footing, and any size addition to an existing post-tension foundation, be designed and sealed by a Texas-registered engineer (Ordinance 2022-1-17). That sealed document is part of your house's record and you should have a copy.
Attic mechanical equipment
Slab houses here put the air handler in the attic, directly above finished ceilings, in a space that reaches extreme summer temperatures. Recurring first-year findings: a secondary drain pan that is not properly sloped or plumbed; a missing or unwired float switch; primary condensate lines terminating incorrectly; return plenums drawing superheated attic air into the system; undersized returns; crushed or disconnected flex duct. A duct defect costs money continuously in this climate. A condensate defect costs a ceiling.
Attic ventilation and insulation
The most common single finding on a new house is blocked soffit intake, where blown insulation has been pushed into the eaves and closed the intake side of the ventilation loop. Also recurring: mixed exhaust configurations that short-circuit airflow rather than adding to it, bath fans terminating into the attic instead of outdoors, and insulation displaced by trades working after the insulator.
This is a financial finding, not only a comfort one. Roofing manufacturers exclude ventilation-related damage from their shingle warranties in writing — GAF's Silver Pledge states that failure to install adequate ventilation is not an application error of its products and is not covered (GAF Silver Pledge Limited Warranty), and CertainTeed's limited shingle warranty excludes damage or failure resulting from inadequate ventilation. A blocked soffit in year one is a warranty exposure in year ten.
Roof and envelope
Unsealed or exposed fasteners, improperly sealed penetrations and pipe boots, damaged or missing drip edge, debris left in valleys. On the walls: brick veneer weep holes blocked with mortar droppings or buried below grade. Weep holes are required drainage, not an aesthetic detail, and they need to be open and above grade.
Electrical and plumbing
Here the age logic inverts. On an older house, missing ground-fault or arc-fault protection is a legal nonconforming condition and an elective upgrade. On a new house it is a genuine builder defect, because the house was built under a code that required it. Also common: PEX unsupported, in contact with sharp edges, missing nail plates at framing penetrations, and manifolds without practical access.
What is normal in a first-year house
New construction generates more unnecessary alarm than almost anything else, because expectations are highest exactly where tolerance for imperfection is lowest.
Ordinary in the first year, and cosmetic:
- Drywall nail pops and seam cracking, particularly at door and window corners. Framing lumber dries and shrinks after the house is closed in — the most common first-year complaint and the most consistently benign.
- Trim and crown joints opening slightly as the same shrinkage works through the finish carpentry.
- Hairline shrinkage cracking in a slab or garage floor. Concrete shrinks as it cures, and a hairline crack without vertical offset is not displacement.
- Doors needing adjustment after a season, and grout or caulk lines shrinking at tubs and countertops.
Most warranties address these as finish items. Document them, submit them together, and do not treat them as evidence of a badly built house, because they usually are not.
What is not ordinary, and should be escalated: water at or under the slab; any ceiling stain; rust or standing water in a condensate pan; a missing or unwired float switch; blocked soffit intake; a return plenum drawing attic air; veneer cracking with offset; a door gone from sticking to unlatchable; any electrical condition involving heat, arcing or missing required protection.
What an inspector cannot determine on a finished new house
Naming the limit is more useful than pretending there is not one.
Under the Texas Standards of Practice an inspection is a limited visual survey and basic performance evaluation using normal controls, expressly not a comprehensive investigation or exploratory probe to determine the cause or effect of deficiencies, and inspectors are not required to inspect anything buried, hidden, latent or concealed (22 TAC §535.227).
On a finished new house that excludes a great deal of what a builder actually built:
- Whether the site fill was properly compacted, and to what standard.
- The reinforcement, tendon layout and beam depth in the slab.
- Framing behind finished surfaces, and whether flashing exists behind the veneer and at wall-to-roof intersections.
- Whether the air barrier is continuous, and whether plumbing and electrical rough-in inside the walls is as required.
That list is the argument for a pre-drywall phase inspection, performed while framing, mechanical rough-in and flashing are still visible. It answers questions that become permanently unanswerable once the drywall is hung. If you are building rather than buying finished, that is the inspection with the most leverage; the eleven-month inspection is the one with the most enforcement behind it.
Common questions
The city inspected my new house. Why would I pay for another inspection?
Because they answer different questions for different clients. A municipal inspection is a code-compliance check performed by the jurisdiction at defined construction phases; it verifies compliance at the moments it happens and it ends at the certificate of occupancy. A buyer's inspection is a condition assessment performed for you, on the finished house, including workmanship that is compliant but poor and defects that only appear after the house has been lived in through a season. Neither one substitutes for the other, and a home inspection is not a code-compliance inspection either.
How long does a builder warranty last?
It depends entirely on your document, and any article that gives you a number is guessing about your house. Builder warranties in Texas are contracts and they vary between builders and between programmes. What is generally true is that they are tiered, with shorter coverage for workmanship and finish items, an intermediate period for distribution systems such as plumbing, electrical and mechanical, and longer coverage for major structural elements. Read your own warranty for the durations, the performance standards it uses, the exclusions, the notice requirements and whether it transfers.
Why eleven months rather than twelve?
To leave working time before the first tier of coverage lapses. An inspection performed in the final days accomplishes very little, because you still have to write the claim, the builder has to schedule it, and the work has to be done and verified. Inspecting with a margin of weeks gives all of that room. Take the actual deadline from your warranty document rather than assuming a twelve-month term, since terms vary and the eleven-month convention is a practice rather than a rule.
Are drywall cracks and nail pops in a new house a defect?
Usually not. Framing lumber dries and shrinks after the house is closed in, and the resulting nail pops and seam cracking — especially at door and window corners — are the most common and most benign first-year finding there is. The same shrinkage opens trim and crown joints. Document them, submit them together as finish items, and expect one correction. What deserves escalation is different in kind: water at the slab, ceiling stains, cracking with vertical offset, a door that has gone from sticking to unlatchable.
What is the single most valuable thing to check on a new North Texas house?
Water management, in two places. Outside: the grade, the downspout discharge points, the condensate discharge and the irrigation coverage, because fresh fill settles and the first year decides whether water sits at the slab perimeter in soil that swells when wet. Inside the attic: the condensate secondary pan, its slope and plumbing, and the float switch, because that equipment sits directly above finished ceilings. Blocked soffit intake belongs on the same list, since roofing manufacturers exclude ventilation-related shingle damage from their warranties in writing.