My daughter and son-in-law are house-hunting right now, and they found a lovely 1950’s era house that looks to have been remodeled sometime in the 80’s. It’s close to their work and is on an acre of land, which would give my daughter the chance to get out all the repressed gardening urges from a decade of apartment living. It’s just outside the city limits and is on a septic system, which has just been replaced, and a private well. The house looks pretty well-kept, although the interiors are dated and they’ll want to replace floor coverings. In other words, it’s not their dream house, but it covers most of the bases. They put in an offer, haggled a little, and came to an agreement.
Unfortunately, their inspector discovered a serious problem in the basement. One of the walls are bowing in and there’s a bend in the support pillars on that side. The sellers have proposed fixing the basement, leaving the purchase agreement in place subject to satisfactory inspection after the repairs. They’re also open to allowing my daughter and son-in-law to monitor the repairs to be sure the company the sellers hire isn’t cutting corners.
The house is empty (the sellers are the heirs of the original owners) and my daughter’s apartment lease isn’t up until June, so there’s no pressure to close quickly. They’re continuing to house-hunt, but it’s tough out there, and there aren’t many houses in their price range that are the size they want, on a decent-size lot, AND close to work.
What do you all think? Is this something that you’d be open to doing, or is it something to run away from and not look back? Should they hire a soil consultant or structural engineer to give an expert opinion? Can a foundation problem like this be remediated well enough to invest a few hundred thousand dollars on the house?
If it were my kids I would want to know WHY the wall is bowed.
A good engineer can let you know if the builder undersized materials or the craftsmanship just wasnt there. In that case, I would say the kids are in an ideal situation as the seller seems willing to repair it correctly. Maybe get a quote yourself to see what a competitor recommends.
But if there is expansive soil, underground water problems, or soil issues (here in Philly they had to tear downs scores of homes built on ash fill)
then they should take a pass.
BTW, whats an acre of ground there worth?
I’m not sure what the empty lot would be worth, but a whole lot less than the $250 - 300K they’re looking to spend on a house!
This is where I’m assuming a structural engineer or soil analyst (is there such a thing?) would come in. The sellers are in the process of getting estimates from two or three companies, and they’re willing to share the information with the Realtors. My daughter is going to try to find an expert or two who can help assess whether it’s worth going ahead with the purchase. I’m kind of rooting for them to find another suitable house that isn’t in danger of falling into its own basement in the meantime, but I don’t want to be pushy with my opinion if I’m being too conservative.
They’re fully prepared for issues - a water heater, say, or a roof repair - but something like this could put them into serious financial trouble if it’s not repaired right. And if it’s going to be a constant expensive struggle to keep the house upright, they’d prefer to leave it with the poor souls who already own it.
It has to be done right, but it’s not a tremendous challenge. I’ve seen this done on a few houses. Sometimes they do a small section at a time, sometimes it makes more sense to do it all at once. Sometimes they’ll use jacks to raise the entire house, and maybe even move it to the side so the foundation can be rebuilt. With a good foundation in place they’ll have nothing to worry about in the future. Their foundation wall isn’t crumbling because Dune worms live in their backyard, it just wasn’t built right the first time.
Yes, soils engineers are a thing. This is the sort of thing they consult on and they’re often part of a firm that has structural and other relevant engineers on staff.
Our lake house is on strange, clayish soil, and all of the neighboring houses have problems with bowing basement walls. We had an estimate done, which came out to $21,000 to install interior steel studs that get adjusted over time to push the walls back to straight. That can be done, but the skeevy part of it was the company didn’t really do an inspection as much as a sales pitch. Over a meeting of about two hours, the company rep wanted me to watch a video, talked about total failure (unlikely), protecting your investment for your posterity, and especially use their very convenient financing. It was a hard-core sales pitch. The problem is there are two national companies that seem to run the same way (IB and AW). I’d much rather have a local company do the work, I’m sure for much less, than to pay a bunch of jackals, but I really don’t know what kind of company to use.
You can negotiate with the sellers for who pays the fees, maybe differentiating between if the sale goes through and if – because of the engineer’s findings – it doesn’t.
I’m liking the idea of finding an engineer more and more. There are already steel supports along the basement walls already - and they’ve bowed in along with the walls. I’m from a land without basements (although we’re much more likely to have the Dune sandworms here), but I’ve seen enough This Old House episodes to know they can be serious trouble.
One very good thing in this case is that the sellers, while shell-shocked over this unexpected hit, are aware that this will need to be fixed no matter whether this sale goes through, and they seem to be motivated to get it done right.
First, pay for a highly reputable expert to do another inspection and give you a ballpark estimate. That’s something you should have 100% control of, and might not be a good idea to leave the repair in the contract. Don’t be afraid to walk away from the house if there are serious structural problems.
I don’t know where you are, but that matters. Some places are going to be more trouble than others, depending on the water table, amount of rain, types of winters, etc.
If you decide to buy the house, get a good general contractor for any contracting work. This is where we failed in Galveston, and it turned into a money pit and more aggravation than I want to remember.
A foundation issue w/ a basement sounds like potentially a big issue. If the foundation is not stable the whole house will fail, usually one thing at a time from the roof on down. Our experience was so bad that I would rent now if I was interested in a home vs buying one. It gives you the freedom to just move, vs fixing one thing after another while your insurance and property taxes constantly go up each year.
I agree. And I would insist on dealing directly with the structural engineer, basically have them work for you (the buyers). That’s because it strikes me as a situation where they may be a range of possible solutions. While it might be quite safe to first try a cheaper approach and monitor it closely over time, that doesn’t work in this situation. You need a solution from the structural engineer that will decisively fix it.
Some friends of mine bought such a house in St. Louis in ~1997. Sagging cracked basement floors and bowing walls. Over $150K later (on a $200K original purchase) the house is still forked. They still live in it 25 years later, but they’ll be selling it as a lot with a teardown obstacle on it, not as a lot with a house on it. In a neighborhood where nobody does teardowns of the existing houses. Yet.
Why the problems in their house? Probably some inadequate fill into what had been a small stream before the area was lightly regraded for houses back in the 1960s. Filling in small watercourses was/is standard shoddy construction technique. But that doesn’t eliminate the water; it just migrates underground where it pushes against the side of your basement until the wall bows in.
Well, as I was kind of hoping, it looks like they’re going to pass on this house after viewing a couple of others today. They saw one they like enough that they’re going to make an offer, but even if that doesn’t go through, as my daughter said, “We kind of forgot that there are other houses.”
I really appreciate the feedback. It looks like the house may be one of the worse-case scenarios - it’s on clay soil, three of the walls are bowing in, and the sellers are trying to get the last company that did basement work to do these repairs under warranty. We all wish them well.
That’s one of those situations where I don’t wish the current owners any ill, but I’d be far happier it was them stuck with the problem than anyone I knew or cared about.
So tough as a parent when you see your kids poised to make a potentially costly and unnecessary mistake. Glad they passed. Not to say you can’t fix a foundation, but there’s have to be several darned good reasons for a prospective homeowner to take that on.
I have been general contractor on several structural foundation repairs and inspected a bunch more. I am working on one right now where we are just at the discovery phase to figure out what is going on.
Usually an engineer is involved, though in cases where we are just replacing compromised elements before an actual failure and everything is up to code we would just proceed with the obvious repairs.
This sounds like an engineer should be involved unless the cause is very obvious and repair process is just replacing individual elements. Tying in a new section of poured concrete foundation wall is going to require an engineer’s letter.
Usually the process would be temporary shoring to stabilize, excavation, replacement of compromised elements, removal of shoring and backfilling. Not cheap but should not cost hundreds of thousands.
It kind of looks like the company that came in to do repairs previously installed a drain tile system and new sump pump in the basement and then put in extra supports. Unfortunately, given the available evidence, it looks like they’ll need to do more extensive work on the exterior of the foundation in order to really fix it. I’m not sad that my kids won’t end up having to trust that the company doing the warranty work does it right.
25 years ago I got a quote to raise my house and move it back on my property for a new foundation to be built. Total for raising, moving, moving back, and lowering onto a new foundation was just $10,000, not including the cost of the foundation, which apparently would have come to less than $10,000 more if it was just poured concrete. Breaking up and removing the old foundation would have cost some more. I would assume that would cost 3 or 4 times as much now. It’s not necessary to raise and move a house just to fix a portion of a foundation, in my case I was considering the possibility of raising it higher and building another level beneath it. But looking back I’m stunned by how low it seems compared to current costs.
So no, not hundreds of thousands of dollars still. But pricier than you might expect if you haven’t been getting quotes for a while. Also, been so long the guys who dug out and contracted the foundation for an addition are all retired and out of business, as was the guy I knew from the house raising and moving business. I would expect new contractors to be facing costs they didn’t have to deal with in the past, yet I’m sure most price the job as economically as possible.