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Those have their own set of issues.

You can get a high-quality house built today you just can't go in asking for the most square footage at the cheapest price per foot. Just being frank that is the way most houses are built today.

Tract or spec houses built today are plagued with the same quality issues that have plagued such housing forever. A structure is only as good as the buyer insists it be....building codes are, for the most part, meaningless. They are a bare minimum and are often detrimental to the end product....arc fault breakers jump to mind immediately as does whole house surge arrestors. At the end of the day IF you are paying someone to build something for you it is incumbent upon you to make certain it is done in a manner that suits you...which would include satisfying the bare minimum required by the AHJ. The problem is, especially in residential construction but it is true to some extent in commercial and industrial construction, the buyer has no idea what right looks like and assumes the local authority does. They do not. They are paid squat and have no liability (no skin in the game). They act as if they are experts, however, going through plan reviews and nit picking standard practices while not having the experience or knowledge to find things that are blatantly incorrect...and their pretending to be experts leads the public into a false sense of security.

I am in the process of permitting a timber frame shop and pavilion. I have a PE on board but the design is mine. Specs call for green ungraded SYP timbers, a building practice in the south for HUNDREDS OF YEARS. Again, have PE on board...a licensed professional in the state of Georgia. The county is balking, insisting that the timbers be graded, which is of course nearly impossible and, if it is done, consists of a person who has taken a 40 hour online course to come out and "inspect" the timbers to determine, among other things, the species and moisture content (they are green, they are what they are...and the moisture content in ALL wood eventually reaches equilibrium with the environment it is in no matter how dry it may have been at one time). There is nothing magical about a grade stamp or a paper trail supporting the grading of lumber...a pine tree is a pine tree. I have a PE on board, I have 40 years experience in the construction industry and I know what a pine tree looks like. It is the magical stamp which means nothing more than someone who took a 40 hour online course says it is a pine tree that really matters. This is how backward the system is. Companies like DB Horton can do all manner of ill shite and lawyer up and berate the AHJ into submission....an individual, with as good credentials as anyone involved, has to jump through hoops to do something that has been done for hundreds of years. It is ridiculous....and it has not happened organically, it is by design.