Show your work!

I am fascinated by accounts of real estate development. I have been reading with regularity the Dream Home Diaries Blog in the NYT. And I have figured out why my pleasure in reading sometimes turns into annoyance: The writers seem to be totally lacking in the ability to    show their work,

For example, the bloggers have just received a very preliminary design from their architect —  and this is after a build-up of at least 4 months — and showed it to their tentative contractor for his comments. And his first comment after a nano-second of review was that the design didn't even come close to meeting the zoning code of the jurisdiction because of too much "lot coverage." 

Now lot coverage is an extremely basic design constraint. It is hard for me to fathom how an even halfway-competent architect — and the firm they chose seems quite competent — could miss such a basic issue. My response, should I have heard that analysis from a contractor with local knowledge, would have been to get on the phone to the architect immediately to get a response. But our Dream Home bloggers simply accept the fact that their design is not buildable and the last we see of them is in the airport, waiting for a flight home and concluding that the town's

....building officials probably wouldn’t approve the plans because the house and pool took up too much of the lot.

But we get none of the intermediate conversation. Did they ask the architect for a response? What did the architect say? Did they fire the architect for such an absurd mistake? Or fire the contractor being a dangerous know-it-all? Who know. The bloggers tell us nothing. This defective design is a huge event and should have triggered phone calls back-and-forth and extensive commentary on the blog. But these folks seem to just accept the word of one man without any investigation. I can't believe that they have actually done so that's why I say to them "Show your work!"

Comments

[Gomez]

These sorts of homeowners are the types to value the ends over the means anyway. It's frustrating reading their accounts, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.