There are a good many homes with foundation issues in the Berkeley Hills. Lots of underground streams that can affect the lay of the land under your home. The following home had lots of stettlement. A buyer purchaed the property at a "fire sale" price... way under market value for homes in the area.
He proceeded to fix the foundation as that was his "non professional" determination as to the cause of the movement. He failed to hire an expert, and relied on his own intuition... WRONG thing to do. Once he completed his "cosmetic fix" of the foundation, he watched it break apart duing the next few weeks and put the home back on the market suggesting it was haunted to my buyer.
When I refer to "my buyer" don't misunderstand me, I'm not a Realtor. I mean that they are my clients for the FHA 203k portion of the project and only as a consultant.
Of course we had an engineer look at the problem and found out that he was very familiar with this area, also good for the client. In any case he informed us that homes on this street (Keith BTW) were all sitting over an undergrown stream and that when anything that changed the condition of that stream would cause each house down the street to twist or move slightly.
This is what I saw the first time I went under this home.
It did make me wonder what would happen if an earthquake would happened while i was under the home.
It did make me a bit apprehinsive about this project.
All turned out okay when I saw what the seller had done to fix the problem.
He merely added some additional "patio piers" with new uprights to catch the home as it moved to the right.
What did we do to actually remedy the problem... the engineer told us we needed piers about 18' deep that extended below the stream's bed by about 6' then install a "grade beam" between the piers.
This home would sit on these grade beams and the piers wouldn't be needed any longer. The piers actually had to go to a 24' depth to achieve the 6' below the steam bed. The home was then stabilized and the ghosts moved on. No more settlement once the foundation was repaired properly.
The FHA buyer, as I recall had a home with about 50-60% equity once completed. Nice huh?
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