Flipper Fix!

Sometimes I smile and sometimes I cringe when someone calls to schedule an inspection and they say that the house was a foreclosure but an investor bought it and fixed it up and it is "beautiful now."

Well, to each his own.

This is what greeted me as I approached this three year old house!

The sidewalk has settled about 2".

This presents a couple of problems - that first step is a doozy, about 10" high.  Forget Grandma, it was hard for me! That is too high for most codes.

And secondly, as the sidewalk, and soil, settle around houses, and front stoops like this, holes are opened up which are very attractive to small animals and snakes.

Once I was explaining the animal attraction to someone when a rabbit darted out from under the stoop right through my legs!  Convenient object lesson!

There are various fixes for this kind of gapping, which I won't go into.  But, importantly, if you set out to "FIX" it, please FIX it!  Sheesh...

I don't know about you, but I can hardly see this "fix..."  I wonder what grade my shop teacher would have given me for this one!

You can bet that when I see something like this as I approach a "beautiful" flipped house, what I will find inside is often a laugh riot.  This case wasn't so bad, except for one very dangerous thing which will be the subject of another post.

My recommendation:  When you show flipped houses, have a good look.  You will probably see what is and is not properly done.  But ALWAYS hire a home inspector!  You never know what lurks in one!