The Durham Herald Sun reported yesterday that builder D.R. Horton has notified the NC Attorney Generals office that they are going to return the mineral rights to some (but not all) homeowners who purchased a home from them for failing to properly disclose that they had retained and sold these rights to their own energy exploration company. D.R. Horton Returns Mineral Rights to Some Homeowners.
While this is a step in the right direction in my opinion it's not nearly enough. Regardless of the fact that they feel they did properly disclose this to most home buyers the simple fact is that they simply should never have even done this to begin with.
This is simply another example of business run amok. D.R. Horton is a home builder. Over the years they made enough money that they then opened up their own lending company to finance homebuyers in-house. This is not uncommon among large national builders however I would argue that the Government should not permit it. It simply fosters a likely environment for conflict of interest. Now they've decided to go into energy exploration and development, and while I initially suggested that I did not believe they had done anything illegal, it now appears that in fact they did and their hoping to evade any criminal or civil charges by returning the mineral rights they took improperly to the homeowners affected. Perhaps it would be better if they simply stuck to building homes.
What are your thoughts?
Hot off the press: D.R. Horton announced today that they will be returning all mineral rights they retained and will cease retaining mineral rights on property they sell here in North Carolina. I think this is great news and the right decision and they should be congratulated for making this wise decision.
Posted by Larry Tollen on
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