As with everything, caveat emptor.

Neither the MSNBC piece's author, nor any of the commenters so far, has been able to mention the 800 lb. gorilla in the room: a sizable number of those workmen who provided the labor army to construct the McMansions now falling apart were illegal aliens. Ask a contractor you trust to be honest about it and you'll hear about how, in the rush to cut costs and get these new developments up and running in double-quick time, they resorted to hiring Guatemalan and Mexican peasants who knew as much going into the job about putting up drywall or laying down floors as Lindsay Lohan. Some of them perhaps got enough on the job experience to have eventually learned, so if you are considering buying one of these places in "Chesterfield Oaks" or somesuch, snap up one of the last ones completed, not the initial models. But the contractors who've spoken have said in most cases, the seasonal labor employed to build the various Tollbrothersburgs were finally paid off only marginally more skilled than when they started. As with everything, caveat emptor.

Context.