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My wife and I made an offer on a house in the Easy Bay Area, and it was accepted over another offer! However, we then found out that the sellers lost a previous deal on the house because during the inspection, they found a crack in the corner of the house that was approximately 1/2-inch and the buyers walked away. Since then, the seller's paid $5,000 to install a bond beam to provide more lateral support. The same company also noted that there was some sloping in the floors at slightly over 1-inch for 20 feet. These are all obviously signs of foundation problems, and we're planning to have a structural engineer inspect the house. Should we just walk away from this or wait and see if the structural engineer thinks it's manageable? Some searching says that if the floors continue to slope then we could face $30-40,000 in repairs, which seems terrifying to me.
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Jun 8, 2014 22:49
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 16:13 |
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slap me silly posted:Jesus, if this is bad my house is apparently going to fall into the earth tomorrow. When was it built, what kind of foundation, how does it look generally? Not saying I know anything about foundations or that you shouldn't hire a structural engineer to look at it but my first guess is he giggles and pats you kindly on the back. Sorry I probably should have added that info. The house is almost 40 years old and sits on what I believe is a post and pier foundation on a hill. Other than the slight slope in the floors that is observable in some rooms, I did some scanning on the outside the two times we looked at the house and did not see any cracks, but that doesn't mean there may not be problems even with the repairs the sellers made. I might be acting paranoid about it and just wanted to see the opinions of some other home buyers since foundation problems tend to be red flags.
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Jun 9, 2014 04:04
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We had all our inspections today. We had a general inspector, pest, foundation and sewer. Although I was worried before that the foundation may be the biggest issue, it turns out that it is totally fine. The pest, general and sewer guys, however, found:
Improper linoleum installation in both bathrooms that led to some rot on the sub-floor next to the shower in the master bath and the tub in the other bath Related to improper linoleum installation in the master, there is some rot on one panel outside that sits directly beneath the master bath as an overhang The (likely) original furnace from when the house was built in the 1970s is still in use, though it did look like it was recently serviced Drainage on one side of the house was apparently leaking some water into the crawl space of the foundation Subterranean termites in the crawl space but no signs that there are termites destroying any wood (everything sits at least 3 feet off the ground) Evidence of wood boring beetles Three sections of the sewer pipe that have been damaged The pests were a surprise because the house was inspected by pest inspectors (different ones) in both April and May this year based on the disclosures the seller gave to us, and none of them reported termites or beetles. There were reports of rot from fungus, but it was supposedly fixed. I guess that job needed a little more attention though because there was still plenty of evidence of it. If the original pest inspectors missed the termites and beetles, they will be on the hook for fumigating and taking care of this according to my realtor. The sewer pipe damage looks very bad though. It drains downhill, and the three spots are: directly underneath the backyard balcony, directly behind a retaining wall, and underneath a large tree, which may not even be on the house's property. The inspector suggested getting a quote for pipe bursting to repair everything since trenching would likely be a nightmare with the tree. Once we have all the written reports, we are going to try and negotiate that at a minimum the sewer pipe is fixed and the pests are taken care of. We may try to negotiate a credit for the drainage pipe fix and the bathroom floors since the drainage is just replacing the current pipe and making sure it drains past the retaining wall and we would rather have the bathroom floors redone by a person we pick and finished the way we want.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:26
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couldcareless posted:I'm not sure if it varies by state to state, but would the lender even let the house go to closing without a clean wood destroying insect report? The sellers will have to handle that regardless if they want to close on the house ever. My realtor told me after the inspections were over that because a previous pest inspector had missed the insects that inspection company is on the hook for getting it cleared. We shouldn't have to pay for it, but I don't know what effect this will have on trying to close if the company or sellers drag their feet getting the house fumigated and sprayed. The sewer pipe is a little worrisome, and I'm really glad I added that inspection at the last minute when we were scheduling everything. A company went out today and gave us an estimate for the repairs: $5900. I would prefer that the sellers pay for this, but we don't know what their response is going to be yet.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:52
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I like turtles posted:Also I closed yesterday. Home owner Hello, fellow new home owner!  I think making less in an old job will not end up making much difference. Anecdotal evidence: my wife and I were able to qualify when my previous job was being a graduate student. The two places we shopped for loans were both concerned about my wife working in sales and possibly earning commissions (which she doesn't), but did not give a drat about my job.
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Jun 28, 2014 07:08
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We've been in the house for almost two months now, and just when things were getting to be a little normal, the water heater starts leaking (maybe as a result of an earthquake? probably not). Thankfully, our realtor got us a home warranty, so we aren't paying anything for it, but we have both had to shower at work this entire week while waiting for a new one. Why did we buy a house again? Our dogs don't even use our backyard!
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Aug 28, 2014 04:50
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Can anyone explain the benefits of a FHA streamline refinance (sorry if this is the wrong thread for such a question)? I have tried reading HUD's explanation, but I guess I'm still a little confused. We bought a house in June 2014, so I think we are eligible. If I'm understanding HUD correctly, a lender has to guarantee at least 5% less in PIMI, but would we still need to pay refinancing fees? It doesn't seem worth it, if we have to pay any money towards it considering we haven't been in the house for very long.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:10
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I am not actually trying to refinance. Our situation is fine, and we are definitely not underwater or having trouble making payments. I have just seen it advertised, but assumed it was not worth doing. The only reason to refinance would be to get out of the old FHA PMI rate, but like I said, it looks to me we shouldn't bother unless the HUD program was basically saying, "Here, save 0.5% on PMI for free since you bought a house right before we changed the rules."
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Apr 5, 2015 18:29
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Hey thread, we moved to a new part of the country and put in an offer on a place that I think we were initially pretty excited about. We had moved from the Bay Area so we were excited to be able to afford more than a small house. The inspection report came back though. Some info about the house: it is about 7 years old and has a basement that is maybe 1/3 below ground (sits on a hill so the other part is not completely underground). We just left a house where there were foundation issues that we ended up paying a good amount of money to fix before we put it on the market, so we are very hesitant about anything related to it. The inspector found vertical cracks running maybe 4-5 mortar blocks down in several areas where the foundation is up against soil. There was also some treatment on parts of the basement wall for moisture in that same area. On the outside of the home on this same side the inspector couldn't find where the drains let out for the gutters and there was some grading that showed sloping toward the house. In another part of the basement there were what look like salt deposits and it looked wet. It was raining that day. There was no standing water or evidence of standing water in the basement, and we also had a mold test that came back with very low spore count. So are we overreacting toward some cracks that are due to settlement and moisture that could maybe be addressed by fixing drainage to run away from the house or is this a situation where we should cut out from? We are in a price range where we feel like we should be getting a mostly done house ($400-500K in TN) so it feels a little crazy to be going in to buy another house that may have foundation issues when we just left one. FWIW the inspector recommended we get a contractor to give us an estimate (what we'd do if we move forward anyway) and that this was the only thing they found concerning when going through the house (there were other issues in the report but they all seem small or fixable).
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Nov 28, 2020 00:29
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Motronic posted:Is this a development house? If so you want to find out about your neighbor's issues. It's a development house. We are looking into a neighborhood FB group to find out more. I also tried pulling up permits for the house but there was nothing from after the home was built. I'm not sure if that is an issue or not since they have remodeled the kitchen recently.
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Nov 28, 2020 01:59
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Motronic posted:Yeah, so development house means you need to look for other houses on similar elevations/that could have water problems. There are a few (2-3) more currently being built/under contract with someone. I think there is one empty lot on the street as well, but other than that I don't think there is anything else in the development.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:18
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Motronic posted:You best be drat sure what they are selling those (I'm assuming very similar) houses for. Price per square foot are the same but your previous comment about long term equity has me second guessing if we should be looking at older houses in developments that have homes going up still. Edit: related to neighbors snooping on Redfin shows all the other homes around it have finished basements so either this house has the water/foundation issue and wasn’t finished or the other homes are hiding the issues behind walls. Yoked fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 14:23
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Update after meeting with a GC to look at the foundation and water drainage around the house: Right side near the garage has a grading issue that may have been part of reason for pressure on the foundation. He recommended French drain along the side of the house and to point the gutter drain toward the street rather than back of the house. There was no flashing to divert water into the gutter right above where the ground level where the basement starts and there was maybe a 1/2 inch gap forming between house and concrete. He recommended epoxy and flashing to divert the water. Last thing was perplexing because left side which is not below ground showed water intrusion. We looked around the outside and found a maybe 1.5 inch gap where small piece of brick had collapsed inward and there was no flashing there either. I felt better after walking the house with the GC and we may go forward now. Repairs seem very minor and we looked at some other houses in the area and this basement looks to be in significantly better shape than anything else we saw (granted it’s only 7 years old).
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Dec 1, 2020 16:21
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 16:13 |
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We do a final walk through Thursday and close Friday. Appraisal came back over our offer and we got a credit for some minor repairs, so I look forward to posting in the home ownership thread about all the problems we missed because clearly something has to go wrong.
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Dec 15, 2020 19:12
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