I’m looking at an REO that I plan to submit an offer on with an inspection contingency due some concerns I have with the foundation. It’s a block basement and I found stair step cracks along the mortar in two of the walls. As I understand it that would indicate that the walls are bowing. In fact the lower section below the cracks is about a half inch farther out from the section above.
I’ve never had to deal with foundation issues before. Can you anyone who has experience dealing with this type of repairs give me an indication of what has has to be done to make the repairs. Ballpark costs?
Just had a single story house jacked up 1 and 1/2 inches in one corner. Hired a foundation specialist who dug 5 holes, put in big metal screw-like rods and metal plates. Did hydraulic drilling down 20-27 ft. to bedrock. Then raised all 5 metal plates under foundation simultaneously. The house groaned and then screamed! It was amazing and scary. The screaming was wood and nails and stone being moved.
It cost $9,000+. Now I have a stable, solid floor and a house that doesn’t list
Get a free bid from a specialist. Every house is different.
FurnishedOwner
Here in TX we don’t have basements but we do have expansive clay soil.
I live in a house that has had foundation work. Have had foundation work done on 2 rentals. Around here there are two types of house: those that have had foundation work and those that will.
Basically they dig holes around the perimeter, and jackhammer through the slab next to certain load bearing interior walls. Drill piers, jack up the house to level. Exactly like you’d imagine.
I don’t know how the basement affects things, but I imagine the basic process is similar. Get references. Find a reputable company that offers lifetime transferrable warranty. Be prepared for interior repairs after things move around (takes some months to “settle”). Look for cracked/busted rafters, too.
Around here there’s two things that scares off the new investors, mold and structural issues. Mold doesn’t scare me anymore. You just have to know how much to walk away from. But foundation issues still worry me primarily due to my ignorance in how they’re handled and what the costs are.
Thanks for the info. I’ll put in an offer with an inspection contingency and get some estimates.
Foundation problems can be really expensive. Which is OK, as long as the purchase price is cheap enough.
You’ll have to have an engineer look at it and then get some bids for repairs. Each one is different.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is much better to do a complete and correct repair and then disclose when you sell. There is always the possibility of getting sued if you put a bandaid over the problem and the buyer thinks they are purchasing a sound house.
The courts are going to consider you to be the expert and hold you to a higher standard. Better to do it right and CYA.
I am learning much from this conversation. My wife and I are new wholesalers. When we look at a wholesale deal, we keep our potential investors in mind, who may want to rehab a property. My wife is working on a deal that has a similiar situation listed above. I know what we wholesale, but I would like your input from a rehabber standpoint. Maybe it will shed light on this situation as well.
The home is an older home with an addition. However, the addition does not have a basement. They built it on a crawl space instead. When speaking with the seller about the repairs that would be needed, he began explaining and issue with a support beam under the addition. The beam eroded. He tried to put pillars in before to fix the problem, but it didn’t work. The addition may need to be jacked to fix. What would you estimate the costs for that particular repair item?
You can’t jack up an addition without completely detaching it from the rest of the house. It’ll probably work better to have laborers go under the houe and dig out some access space.
This sounds like a house I’d pass on unless the price is an absolute give-away and the after repair sales price is high. I don’t like defective foundtations unless I know exactly, to the penny, what I’m getting into.
Get a couple of bids from licensed contractors so you know what repairs will cost.
Or else get the house cheap enough that you can just tear down the addition and remove it. If the foundation was incorrectly done, there are going to be other structure problems with the addition, and there is an extremely good chance it wasn’t built with permits and wasn’t inspected, which means it might have to come off, any way,
Another option that works in some houses is to go into the addition and remove the floor and sub floor and gain acceess that way, from inside the house.
If that beam is touching the soil, you now have a serious termite problem. You can support a sagging beam from undrneath by placing house jacks and just leaving them there, but if there is wood rot, especially at the ends of the beam, it all has to be replaced.