This is the response I got to a question about a house that “needed work.”
“A lot of cosmetic work needs doing. The roof needs work and the floors sag. If you are handy ( I mean really handy) this could be a good deal fo you. The area is good and it is a 4 family and the seller understands the problems.”
What exactly causes a saggy floor, foundation issues? Is a saggy floor a walk away from it problem or should I investigate further before making a decision?
I wouldn’t classify roofs and floors as cosmetic. Saw a two family near Boston with an original asking price of $489, now it’s down to $429 but I bet it’s going to go a lot lower as the whole house has settled and it tips about 6-10 inches on one side. You can really feel it in the floors as you walk around. Big turn off and really hard to rent and fix.
Roofs, foundations, plumbing, and maybe electrical are major money expenses where you can spend a lot of money, but not get much of a return on it when you sell.
I don’t think anyone is really handy enough to fix sagging floors, that’s more of a contractor type job. There are books out there on jacking up a house, but it’s a lot of money to do so. I’ve seen houses where there was something like $100-$150k worth of deferred maintenance like roofs, rotting floors, chimneys pulling away, whole house tilted a few degrees from center, termintes and so forth. In the end, they never sold.
What’s a roof cost these days, about $10k or so? If floors aren’t horribly sagging as you describe above is it something that needs to be fixed or can it be safely ignored? Does it point towards an even worse underlying problem in the structure?
If the floors “sag” there is a structural problem under the flooring. This might be as simple as rotten sub-flooring or as major as several floor joist broken/rotted at the sills…or it could be a foundation problem. I would look and if you can’t tell yourself, hire a contractor to look at it.
Roofing costs are determined by geographical area, the quality of the materials, the size of the roof, the difficulty of the job (lots of peaks, valleys, dormers, etc?), and often the height of the buiding. A small, simple one can run $1500 and a large complicated one with specialty roofing (slate, etc.) in the tens of thousands. I saw a solid copper roof on a barn conversion once that was reportedly $100K…most roofers will give you a free estimate.
Keith
I’ve seen a bunch of old houses where there just wasn’t enough supports in the basement so the whole thing ends up in sort of a U shape where the center of the house has the most sag. A home inspector also once said to me that sag isn’t really a sign that the house is unsafe, he posed the question “How many times have you heard of a house falling down”? As to that one, I can’t say that I have heard of that happening too often.
As for roofers, get several quotes and get educated on what it would cost. I’m told that in the construction trade, roofers are the craziest ones out there as you may have to be in order to do roofs all day. They’ll bid whatever they think they can get away with. I ask one guy doing the roof on the house next door how much it would be and he said $13-$15k. As I didn’t know anything at the time, I just noted it as a price point. Talked to another guy who has a construction license and he told me that in this area the cost was about $300-$400 per square (I believe a square is 100 square feet of roof) so mine at 20 squares would have been about $6-8k. I think it’s like 1/3 of the cost is to remove and dispose of the old roof, 1/3 to put on the roof and 1/3 for the roofing material. Or something like that.
Yes, I do know for a fact that a square is 100 sq/ft (10x10)…you are correct.
…and there are 3 bundles of shingles to a “square”.
…and a square of standard 3-tab shingles weighs 279 lbs (93 lbs per bundle).
LOL
Keith
I just rehabbed a house with the same problem. First you get an inspector in there to determine how bad the foundation is. Assuming it is “workable”, then you add reinforcing to the beams. They even have metal expandable beams for this. Then you get a few of those metal support columns under the reinforced beams. I found it common for floors to sag in old houses with fieldstone and cmu on top foundations.
As far as the floors, get some level cure and level it out. It is like cement, but don’t spread it too thin or it will crack everywhere. I believe it is no less than 3/8 in. but dbl check. I have done this several times and have found it to work. Also, you can get a pretty steep discount if you are willing to fix this problem and it may not take that long.
Good Luck,
J
I just bought a property that has a sagging floor and roof… I have hired a contractor to jack the house up, and is costing me about 2 grand to do it…(Luckily this man is my boyfriends Uncle so he is doing it for a VERY reasonable price… so you may want to research the price further.) The man that did the house inspection before we bought the property said that the sagging floor in this case was very fixable. The foundation was excellent, and the sagging was due to the house being built with green rough solid oak. Because they did not let the wood age before building the house, the floor has shifted due the the wood beams settling…
We have had much success with the floor jacking. It has been raised 3 inches so far with no damage other than dry wall cracking…
I hope that helps.
So with jacking I can expect to fix some drywall as well? Good to keep in mind…not brutally expensive but one more cost to see if it is worth it or not.
I think that the damage can increase depending on why the floor is sagging in the first place.
I should note that when the contractor came and inspected the sagging floor, he said that when he jacked the floor up, that there may be a chance that the floor will detach from the foundation on one side of the house. This is mainly because the people that built the house put the supporting beams in the wrong spot, so the place that the contractor had to jack up was really close to the wall, which may have lifted the floor from the wall. He siad even if that happened it is still fixable, that the house would settle back down. Luckily that didn’t happen.
But definately expect some drywall patching…not a huge deal but still important.
Do you know how many inches the house is sagging?
Not exactly sure, the realtardtor wasn’t very helpful in answering my questions, insisted I check it out in person. I’d really hate to drive 35-40 mins each way to find out that it isn’t going to work. Wish she’d just answer my questions and save us all some time. How much work needs to be done will greatly affect this project’s affordibility as its not THAT cheap to begin with. If there is anything more than a few thousand bucks in work needed they better be prepared to discount the price heavily or its not even worth bothering with.
Sounds like you should pass if you’re not interested in making the drive. The realtor probably wants to get you as a customer so she wants to meet you and perhaps show you a few other houses that might work for you if this one doesn’t pan out. She’s not about to kill a potential sale without you even looking at it. What’s really bad for some people might not be that bad to someone else.
The property that I have had similar problems with is a 45 min drive from my current location… but it is worth it.
I think you should make the drive to check it out… you don’t want to take your realtors word on the condition of the property, especially since there are known problems with the floor. You may find that the problems may be worth fixing and then you can fix it and re-sell. That way you don’t need to have a rental propertt 45 min from your house…