hey, do we have any Foundation guys here, dudes or non dude guys who know stuff about foundations? like how bad does this look
There wasn’t any noticeable shifting on the floors inside. The realtor used a phone app as a level but I’m pretty sure that’s real iffy as an accurate measuring device.
the big crack on the corner by the exposed cables is on a side of the house near a large tree on the neighboring property
the realtor thought the shifting in the foundation was caused by the drain (covered by leaves in one of the pics) dumping water straight down, but when I looked at it again I noticed concrete that was poured under the gutter, probably intended to slant away and divert it into a little ditch leading to the street
so I’m thinking the shifting in the foundation predates the drainage issue and was maybe caused by the tree? I didn’t see any big roots TOO close but, idk
this house is kind of small (smaller than our apartment) but it’s in a bourgie cracker restaurant neighborhood, or close enough to walk to it, so I imagine the ol’ housing-as-commodities we got going on means it will constantly increase in value as long
but idk if something like this means it’s like totally fucked because we can’t really afford to buy this place AND put tens of thousands of dollars into some foundation repair bullshit
p.s. side note it has a really nice neighborhood, neighbor across the street has a FREE SEED LIBRARY! and a COMMUNITY PLANT EXCHANGE! that’s amazing, the neighbor on the side grows peppers and idk what else in above ground containers, looks like spicy shit too. The other neighbor is a soccer fan but nothing can be perfect right?
p.p.s. the realtor kept speaking of insane plans to expand the bathroom but it also has a very large attic that like imo if finished could add like A Bunch of Value to the house? so, idk, it might be a good idea???
it’s so hard to decide because it’s so much money and contracts and like what if the foundation is totally fucked??? I guess the owner was a contractor and he checked it out when he bought it, but it’s been a rental property since 2007. The HVAC also looks old.
but if we take too long to decide, someone might just buy it up because like why not it’s in this great location! who cares if the foundations is fucked if you have a million dollars to spend fixing it!
how much they’re legally obligated to “find” and report to you really varies, as does whether they need any kind of certification at all to go into that line of work
the inspection that was done on the house we live in missed a lot of stuff, some of which became pretty fucking obvious once we had done a little bit of home improvement diy – like, there was a whole section of ductwork between the hvac and the upstairs that was disconnected and venting into the space between the floors, and it was totally obvious to the untrained eye looking with a flashlight in the right spot, you just needed to know where to look. we lived here 18 months before we decided to investigate why the hall floor always felt so wildly warm/cold compared to the rest of the house and saw it in the first 30 seconds of peering around the HVAC area.
so yeah, moral of the story is, don’t put your faith in them. dude found some obvious, surface-level code-breaking things, but there was no actual inspection of the infrastructure of the house, and we ended up finding a lot wrong. that broken ductwork wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
Fair.
Wonder if OP could get a quote from anyplace doing foundation repair work that they could feel confident about instead of a building inspector?