November 10th, 2016

This entire street of houses was built on the edge of a canal. The canal had been dredged out in the 1950s and dumped on the sides of the canal. Homes were built on top of the dumped fill in the 70s. Since then everything underneath has started to decompose and thus the soil is no longer stable.

​Every house on this street is broken to some degree.

In the home that I was inspecting, the seller's disclosure said that they had some Foundation repairs done. When I read the scope of work, they use leveling compound on the interior floors. So the floors were smooth and level. All of the walls were out of plumb by a full bubble. It felt like you were walking in a carnival Fun House... everything was crooked.... your mind could see it, but it took a second to figure out what was going on...

I spoke to the owner of the house next door to the one that I was inspecting. He just had underpinning done on his place. Cost was almost $50k....

The giant cracks are from the house two doors down from the one that I was actually inspecting. I used these pictures and pictures of the surrounding homes to paint a picture of what was going on in my client's home. The cracking was not nearly as bad in the client's home, but with all the walls out of plumb, the cracking that was there, the floors having been leveled... I used that information to paint a picture of systemic failure of all the homes on the entire canal.

I say it all the time that buying a home is a simple math problem... X+Y=Z... If the Price (X) plus the cost of repairs (Y) equals a number that you are happy with, then you buy the home.... The client now has some heavy ammunition to use to negotiate a better (X) . He really loves the home and the location could not be better for him (He caught a 2lb bass from the seawall while I was conducting the inspection...). I hope he and his Realtor are able to negotiate a deal on this.