In addition to land prices and impact fees, there`s another factor in rising home costs that the home-building industry is increasingly pointing its finger at: the differences in building codes.
”Building code requirements can vary radically from town to town,” said Al Bloom, an architect with Bloom and Fiorino in Oakbrook Terrace and a member of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago`s Technical and Code Committee.
”It`s very frustrating, especially with production builders who develop a product line and want to move it from one area to another,” he added.
”Trying to hold the cost of the unit at a relative value gets to be a problem because of the differences in the codes.”
”This issue is coming to the forefront,” said Gary Lichthardt, chairman of the tech and code committee and project manager for Itasca-based U.S. Shelter Group Inc.
While the building industry supports safety issues in home construction, building officials say that some municipalities have become overly concerned with their restrictions and requirements.
”It`s simply overkill on some of these issues,” said Bloom.
”Unfortunately, what happens in this business is that individual
(municipal) inspectors will not understand their own code clearly enough or have personal quirks in which there are certain applications that they don`t particularly care for,” said Harry Nolan, a certified building inspector for the City of Lockport.
”And from a practical standpoint, if I was to tell a builder that I didn`t like something on his house and it was going to cost him $300 to do it the way I wanted it done, he`d go ahead and do it because it would be cheaper for him to bite his tongue than to take the time to litigate to appeal my decision.”
Building industry officials say there is a barometer for gauging such subjectiveness on the part of municipalities: the changes they make to their model building code.
Most communities in Illinois adopt the Building Officials and Code Administrators guidelines as a model for their municipal building codes. And about 20 states, mostly in the Midwest and the East, have adopted the entire code or parts of it.
”The BOCA code is called a model code and it`s changed every three years (the last time in 1990) to reflect advances in materials and building construction,” said Kelly P. Reynolds, a Chicago-based building code consultant and third-party planning reviewer for municipalities.
”I`ve been working with the BOCA code for 20 years and I find that the code seems to be reasonable as far as performance standards,” said Lockport`s Nolan, whose city has made only a couple of minor changes to the code.
”I`m not of the opinion that a municipality has to come up with a lot of changes to the BOCA code,” said Mark Anderson, director of inspections and permits for the City of Aurora. ”There are some changes you can make, and we`ve made a few. But the BOCA code is a good solid code put together by highly qualified people.”
Some communities, such as Aurora, add a few pages of changes to the codes, those being mostly administrative changes.
Others add dozens of pages of technical changes, an act that the building industry says is dictated by ”personal taste.”
”It`s safe to say that the code is modified in some fashion by anyone,” said Ken Schoonover, manager of code development services for BOCA, which is based in Country Club Hills. ”Sometimes that`s just minor administrative changes. It`s impossible to track how many communities change the technical requirements.”
”A lot of code changes are subjective,” said Reynolds. ”In some cases, you have municipal code officials and elected officials who are set in their ways and they`ve been doing the same thing for 20 years. Other codes are based on history: If they had a lot of fires in a town because of a certain cause, they`re going to change the code to reflect that.”
”The model codes were developed as the minimum requirements for the safest type of construction,” said Bloom. ”The individual communities can look at these codes and, based on their perceptions, upgrade them. Typically, they have made them more stringent.”
The result of more stringent codes is usually an increased cost – to builders and, subsequently, buyers – for changes in design, materials and labor. Such costs can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, said Bloom.
”Especially with multifamily (construction), there can really be a radical difference in the final cost in what it takes to build each particular unit,” said Bloom.
For example, Lichthardt and Bloom pointed to several examples of making codes more stringent:
– ”In one northern suburb, there is a requirement for all vertical framing to be 16 inches apart, including wall studs, floor framing and roofing,” said Bloom. ”And there`s really no call for it. You can design a system that will work at 24 inches and still provide the same degree of structural capability and safety. It`s a carryover from who knows where, but the village officials refuse to relent on this particular issue.”
– That same suburb, said Lichthardt, requires builders to use five-eighths-inch drywall instead of one-half-inch drywall, which is acceptable in many other communities. The suburb also requires builders to encase low-voltage wiring such as telephone lines and doorbell wire in conduit.
– Another northern suburb requires changing staircase construction from the current 8 1/4-inch risers and 9-inch treads to 7-inch risers and 12-inch treads, said Lichthardt. The change meant a local builder had to extend the staircase several feet and shift the front door of a model to accommodate the change.
– Lichthardt said one far northern suburb last year changed its building code requirements so that all multifamily dwellings must have brick exteriors rather than aluminum or cedar sidings. ”The village rationale was they had an abundance of townhouses there and any new multifamily housing was going to be upscale,” he said.
– Lichthardt also pointed to several suburbs that require masonry separation walls between multifamily units vs. a drywall system that can achieve the same fire rating at a lower cost. ”That`s been proven to raise the cost of a unit from $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the size,” he said.
Code quirks are most commonly associated with multifamily housing, where safety standards are both more stringent and complicated.
”Codes don`t vary that much with single-family homes,” said Lichthardt, ”although some villages have held out for personal reasons on certain materials that can be used during construction, such as cast-iron pipes over plastic pipes.”
With multifamily housing, the most common variation involves fire protection codes, say building officials, which can be anything from requiring masonry firewalls to the installation of sprinkler systems.
Members of the building industry feel that the codes are a way for municipal officials to manipulate the type of housing – and ultimately the type of buyer – that comes into a community.
For example, requiring full brick veneers on townhouse developments can drastically raise the price of the units.
”When municipalities tamper with codes, it`s detrimental because it`s obviously going to drive up the cost of a home,” said Lichthardt. ”That dictates what type of buyer can afford that home. So in an indirect way that tampering becomes discriminatory.”
Building officials say they realize the value of codes from a safety standpoint, and some municipal officials verify that stance.
”I tend to find that the builders are overbuilding their houses and spend more money on their houses than they have to,” said Nolan, the Lockport inspector. ”They go beyond the scope of what the codes ask for.”
What`s frustrating to many local builders is that several states, including Indiana and Michigan, have adopted universal building codes.
But ”Illinois has home rule status, and individual communities, once they reach certain size, have the capacity to write their own codes and ordinances,” said Bloom.
There are a number of other reasons why municipal building codes in the Chicago area don`t become universal, say officials.
”I don`t believe the municipalities are that reluctant; I believe it`s more of an education thing,” said Lichthardt. ”I don`t believe the builders have been able to collectively orchestrate a movement toward universal adoption. That`s why we`re now seriously investigating the possibility.”
And Lichthardt and Bloom said there are members of the building industry who believe that a universal code scenario might be frowned on by members of certain trades.
”A prime example of that is the City of Chicago, where for years you were not allowed to put in less expensive plastic plumbing pipes,” said Bloom. ”There, everything had to be cast iron or steel or lead or some other type of heavy metal system. The basic union issue was that there would be jobs taken away from the union members by allowing what they considered lesser materials. But that has never been proven.”
Bloom said getting the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance (in 1990) allowing plastic pipe ”took quite an effort.” Now plastic pipe is allowed in single-family and duplex construction as well as in small townhouse projects.
Another example, said Lichthardt, is the masonry industry`s efforts to promote brick to municipalities. He said the industry touts masonry as a safer, but more expensive, alternative to a drywall system that achieves the same fire rating as a firewall and tries to get municipalities to require brick-veneer exteriors on multifamily projects, although, he said, the brick veneer offers no structural advantages.
”The (trades) are worried about the economic climate out there, and they want to do more to protect their membership, and that`s understandable,” said Lichthardt. ”But I don`t believe these changes would make the jobs disappear.”
Lichthardt said the Home Builders Association of Illinois is surveying its members to see how they feel about a uniform state code.
”We feel it`s going to be tough to bring in a state code because in the past the idea has received resistance from the Illinois Municipal League, and home rule would have an effect,” said Lichthardt.
Lichthardt said he hoped that the state would adopt a universal code within the next five years. Others agreed with the need for such a code.
”There`s antiquated and downright silly codes out there,” said Reynolds. ”There are some suburbs that are still using a 1976 national building code that`s not even published anymore.”
Currently, however, the builders say they are continuing to play tug of war with municipal officials.
”We can and have tried to plead our case with villages and cities in order to get some of the more onerous code restrictions (rescinded),” said Bloom. ”In some of the communities, we`ve been able to effect the change. But more often than not, the villages take the attitude they`re not going to change the requirements.
”It`s frustrating because it`s tough to figure out how to shave costs to make homes more affordable in these communities.”
