On a CentOS server running Plesk, new users are added for each new domain. The users' home directories are in /var/www/vhosts/. New users' home directories are owned by root, and need to have an admin with root access come in and chown them:

dotan@sh2:~$ echo $HOME
/var/www/vhosts/someDomain.com
dotan@sh2:~$ pwd
/var/www/vhosts/someDomain.com
dotan@sh2:~$ touch testFile
touch: cannot touch `testFile': Permission denied
dotan@sh2:~$ ls -la ../ | grep someDomain
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2012-08-07 19:47 someDomain.com
dotan@sh2:~$ whoami
dotan
dotan@sh2:~$ chown dotan /var/www/vhosts/someDomain.com
chown: changing ownership of `/var/www/vhosts/someDomain.com': Operation not permitted
dotan@sh2:~$ 

Why might the new users' directories be owned by root, and how might we fix this?

Thanks.