My stucco crew is a great bunch of guys, lead by the super friendly Sam, a Lebanese import to Calgary. He works very hard all season and spends some of the cold months in Lebanon (I assume living very well on his Canadian earnings).
He was telling me about some crazy low prices I was hearing about for stucco. He felt the prices I was encountering were impossible, and basically were his cost of materials only. So to match that price he'd have to work for free. I don't expect Sam and his guys to work for free so I am paying the usual price for stucco.
He said you could cut some extra corners if you wanted a lower price, but there would be problems. He knows this because he spends half the year fixing poorly done stucco (for good money I imagine, more than the cost to do it properly). He sent me a video of himself tearing off two year old stucco. I am going to attempt to post this here. It is amazing to see someone tearing off stucco with just their hands. He explains that the company that did the job likely didn't use enough cement in the mix (because they wanted to cut some cost). So they were basically applying stucco to the wall with wet sand! Not surprisingly, it fell off.
I can't embed the video here. But I can link to it
https://www.facebook.com/pg/integerhomes/posts/?ref=page_internal
This is the stucco falling off the wall. Sam and his guys are tearing it out now and replacing it. Cost to builder $30,000. I guess the warranty is helpful to the buyer here. Of course the original stucco company is nowhere to be found.