Stand in front of most new-construction homes around Austin and you'll see a tidy gutter run over the front entry. Walk around the side and it's gone. Bare roof edge down the whole flank of the house, and the same around back — usually the two biggest roof planes on the structure.
That's not a mistake somebody made on your house. It's a line item. Production builders price homes to compete on the sticker, and gutters on three sides of a house are a cost that doesn't show up in the model-home walkthrough. The front run goes on because buyers see the front. The sides and back get skipped because the water damage they'd prevent happens after closing.
What the closing folder says about it
Most builder warranties around here put site drainage on the homeowner. The paperwork usually says the lot was graded to drain at closing — and what happens to that grading afterward, including what roof water does to it, is yours. It's worth pulling that folder out and reading the drainage section. It's short, and it explains why nobody from the builder is coming back about the trench in your mulch.
One rainy season, itemized
Here's what a spring storm season does to a bare roof edge:
- The drip-line trench. A clean-cut channel in the mulch and soil directly under the eave, where every drop off a whole roof plane lands in the same line.
- Mulch washout. Beds pushed onto the sidewalk after every hard storm, and the low corner of the yard collecting what used to be landscaping.
- Dirt splash on the siding. A gray-brown spatter line a foot or two up the wall, which is roof water hitting bare dirt at speed.
- The fence mildew line. A black-green stripe along the bottom of the fence panels nearest the roof drop — the one the HOA letter mentions.
- The slab. The quiet one. Central Texas clay swells when soaked and shrinks when it bakes, and concentrating roof water against the foundation feeds exactly that cycle.
None of that is dramatic on any single day. All of it compounds. Gutters sized to the roof, with downspouts that carry water past the beds, stop the whole list at once — which is why fixing it is usually a one-day job. If you want to know what your house specifically needs, that's what the free on-site estimate is for.