It is a small question with an expensive deadline attached, and most agents answer it on instinct rather than with a framework. Also worth reading: How Small Brands Can Build Visibility With Search and Video.
Here is the framework.
Why the Call Comes at Month Eleven
By month eleven, the house has been through a full seasonal cycle. Framing lumber has dried through a heating season, humidity has returned, and every defect that was going to surface has surfaced.
It is also, not coincidentally, the month before most builder warranties expire. Home inspectors have built an entire service category around that timing. Your client is asking a cosmetic question. What they actually have is a closing window.
Tennessee Has No New Home Warranty Statute
This is the correction worth making early, because it changes the advice. Tennessee has never enacted a New Home Warranty Act. A bill to create one was filed in 2006 and never became law. What your client has is whatever their purchase contract says, nothing more and nothing less.
The familiar one-year, two-year, ten-year structure is an industry and insurance convention, not a legal requirement. It is common because it is standard practice, not because a statute mandates it.
There is a background protection. Tennessee courts have long recognized an implied warranty of workmanship in the sale of newly built homes, established in Dixon v. Mountain City Construction Co. in 1982.
Nearly every builder also offers a written warranty for this reason. Under the Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act, a builder who provides one on a first sale is exempt from completing the seller disclosure form.
The Deadline That Runs Independently
Separate from any warranty, Tennessee sets a four-year statute of repose for construction defect claims, measured from substantial completion rather than from the date a defect is discovered.
That distinction matters. A defect found in year five is generally time-barred even if nobody could reasonably have spotted it earlier.
A narrow extension applies when the injury occurs in the fourth year. Beyond that, the door closes on schedule regardless of what the warranty said.
What Is Normal Movement and What Is Not
Half of these calls resolve once the client understands what their house is actually doing.
Usually cosmetic
Model codes permit framing lumber to be installed at up to 19 percent moisture content. After a first heating season, it dries toward 10 percent; the stud shrinks, the fastener does not, and a nail pop appears.
The Gypsum Association identifies lumber shrinkage as the leading cause of fastener pops. Their guidance also suggests waiting until the heating season ends before repairing them, since fixing mid-cycle usually means fixing twice.
Hairline cracks above door and window corners, gaps opening at trim joints, and doors that bind in spring and swing free in winter all fall in the same category.
Worth escalating
- Cracks that measurably widen between visits rather than reappearing at the same size
- Stair-step cracking in brick or block
- Floors visibly out of level, or bouncing underfoot
- Doors and windows binding together across several rooms at once
- Any of the above arriving alongside standing water or grading problems
That cluster warrants a structural engineer, not a repair crew and not a warranty claim form.
What to Tell the Client to Do
Give them a sequence, not an opinion. It protects them, and it keeps you out of the middle.
- Walk the house at month ten or eleven, never month twelve, so there is time for the builder to schedule and complete repairs
- Photograph everything with dates, including items that look trivial
- Submit the claim in writing; a conversation with a site superintendent is not a claim
- Read the warranty’s own notice provisions, since Tennessee courts generally enforce express terms as written
- Keep copies of every submission and response
Anything the builder denies as cosmetic or as homeowner maintenance stops being a warranty fight and becomes ordinary repair work.
Once the builder’s denials come back, the leftover items are just handyman work. Around Franklin and Fairview, Harper’s Handyman Services knocks out a full first-year punch list in a visit, which is usually the fastest way to close the file.
Where Agents Get Into Trouble
The risk is not in referring a client to a resource. It is in characterizing a defect. Telling a client that a crack is just settling is a technical judgment, and if it later proves structural, that reassurance is why nobody filed in time.
Point at the process instead. Note the deadline, recommend documentation, suggest a professional inspection, and let the qualified party make the call.
A Two-Minute Answer That Protects Everyone
When the eleventh-month call comes, the useful reply is short. Most of what they are seeing is seasonal wood movement, some of it is warrantable, and the deadline is closer than they think.
Tell them to document everything, submit in writing before month twelve, and get a professional opinion on anything that looks like a pattern rather than a one-off. It is a two-minute conversation. Handled well, it is also why clients call you first on the next transaction.
