Yesterday, I had the pleasure of inspecting a 2-story home built in 1885. The Seller had paid a Contractor to remodel the home for $80,000. On the interior, there was new drywall, new carpet, 3 remodeled bathrooms, a remodeled kitchen. The windows were newer double pane. They had replaced all of the supply & waste lines for the plumbing inside the home. The furnace was a newer high efficiency unit. The electrical was updated throughout. The roof was newer. They had installed a 3-car wide driveway that led to a nice detached 3-car garage complete with a loft with a bathroom overhead. At first glance this place was sweet! I could see that the Seller had spent a good amount of money to fix this place up.
The listing agent had convinced the Seller to have the home pre-inspected. The Buyer's agent tried to convince my client that they didn't need a home inspection because one was already done. He even gave them the inspection report from this large multi-inspector franchise company in Omaha. I told my client up front that I didn't want to see their report until after I was done.
After I was finished with my inspection for the Buyers, I read through their report to compare with what I had found. Their report read like a real estate agent had written it with intent to sell the home. The issues they did find were softened and written so vaguely that an average person would think the house checked out pretty well. They even had a bunch of minor issues written in brief paragraph format to hide the bigger problems they found. In fact, I had to read through 4 pages of minor fluff before they briefly mentioned the brick foundation.
In their report, it stated "Settling with displacement at right rear corner, settling/curvature at left side, missing support/materials above door/ below support at center rear basement, damaged floor joists with repairs at left rear basement & settling/ cracking at right front by "floor drain"." That's 1 sentence to describe the foundation problems.
Their recommendation was a classic CYA "Suggest further review by a qualified basement wall specialist/structural engineer for additional information & or repairs as needed to ensure structural integrity." Keep in mind that all of the minor fluff also "Suggest further review by a qualified..." so by the time you get to this, unless you're paying really close attention, you're going to gloss right over this and not think there's anything really wrong with the foundation. In fact, the listing agent showed up to turn the water on and I specifically asked her if the Seller was aware of any foundation problems. She was quick to mention that she wasn't aware of any and mentioned the other inspection company's report as proof.
Here's the reality of the situation:
3 hours into my home inspection, a licensed Foundation Contractor showed up. At this point, I had a chance to take a close look at the foundation from the exterior and interior. I could see that the old brick foundation had serious issues. The brick foundation had been covered over on the exterior on the west wall by someone pouring some concrete into makeshift chipboard forms. They had to do this to attempt to level the floor under the kitchen that had been badly been eaten out by termites and also rotted. The brick foundation had settled approximately 6" in the NW corner. On the inside, rolled Fiberglass insulation had been placed over their "repair" job. After I removed it, you could see where they had placed more chipboard "forms" on the inside under the rim joist to hold the concrete in to fill that 6" space between the sinking/failing brick foundation and the exterior wall. To level off the floor, someone had installed 2x4's that initially looked like studs, but they nailed or screwed these 2x4's to the side of the joists. So the only thing holding the exterior wall up were a few nails or screws per 2x4 as the wood was not placed directly under the balloon framing. There were 3 joists remaining that had heavy termite damage. 2 of them were improperly sistered onto with short pieces of lumber as their "repair". The 3rd joists end was heavily eaten out and this was what was supposed to be resting on the foundation.
On the NE corner, the brick foundation was leaning outward 1 3/4". The mortar joints were heavily deteriorated along the bottom 1 1/2' of the entire E wall and about 10' of the S wall at the SE corner. Using a laser level, we were able to see that the foundation had settled multiple inches on the NE corner as well.
The main floor bathroom was located in what appeared to be an old enclosed porch. The tile floor was nice & level, but the wall and ceiling noticeably sagged. Underneath, someone had placed a girder (wood beam) to support the room. That girder was "supported" by a 2x2 on the E end, a 2x4 in the center placed on piece of wood laying on dirt, and a 2x3 shim on the W end that was on top of a leaning wood post resting on a sliding concrete block over mud. The N wall at this location had a clear path of water coming through the wall with piled up mud up against the brick foundation.
When I finished, the home inspection had taken me 6 hours (not counting the additional 2 hours it took to accurately describe all of the issues later). I had major concerns about the entire W, N, and E brick foundation, plus the S corners. I recommended a licensed Structural Engineer review the foundation and oversee any repairs by a licensed Foundation Contractor.
The licensed Foundation Contractor spent over 2 1/2 hours on-site looking at this mess. When he finished calculating everything out, the bid came to over $70,000 to properly repair this foundation!!!
I feel sorry for the Sellers, because they clearly spent a significant amount of money making the house nice, when they should have fixed the foundation first.
This is a real situation showing how 1 home inspection company is intentionally softening the issues compared to our company revealing the true condition of the property. It's happening every day in Omaha! BUYER BEWARE!!!
Check us out at www.omaha-home-inspection.com
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