Buy­ing a Flipped House? 4 Things to Look Out For

May 31, 2016 • By Matthew Stock.

Shiny new appli­ances, new sid­ing, new cab­i­nets and beau­ti­ful new floors, what is there not to love? The house is in the right loca­tion, has the right look and the price is right…time to put in an offer right? Not so fast, unfor­tu­nate­ly there can be a lot of major issues and agony hid­ing behind those new spark­ly fin­ish­es. All too often the excite­ment of the new house impedes ratio­nal deci­sion mak­ing which can come back and haunt a new home­own­er later.

I will have to admit this post­ing is a bit of a rant on the house flip­ping indus­try. While just like any indus­try, there are good house flip­pers and bad house flip­pers; the bad ones can real­ly wreak hav­oc on unsus­pect­ing home buy­ers, some­times to the point where a home­own­er walks away from the house or lets the bank fore­close on it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, with the increase in cer­tain tele­vi­sion chan­nels pro­mot­ing the glo­ry of house flip­ping, the num­ber of unqual­i­fied peo­ple doing house flip­ping has gone way up and the num­ber of hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ences home buy­ers have increased along with it. 

In the last few years, we have often times been called out to look at a seep­age issue on a new­ly ren­o­vat­ed home only to find out the unscrupu­lous house flip­per had tak­en great lengths to hide a major struc­tur­al issue with the foun­da­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this is the first time the new own­ers have been made aware of the issue, and are quite dis­turbed to learn that these struc­tur­al repairs cost tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to repair and its too late to do any­thing about it from a real estate trans­ac­tion per­spec­tive. I can give dozens of exam­ples of uneth­i­cal work that was done but rather than rant about it, I am going to give poten­tial buy­ers (hope­ful­ly a few home inspec­tors as well) some tools that can help them iden­ti­fy these issues pri­or to mak­ing an offer or clos­ing on a property.

4 Things to Look for on a Flipped House

1. Per­mits for the work that was done:

Ask if per­mits were pulled for the work that was done. Unless it is paint­ing, wall paper or pure­ly cos­met­ic work, almost every munic­i­pal­i­ty requires a per­mit for remod­el­ing work. Per­mits are typ­i­cal­ly avoid­ed so that sub­par work can be com­plet­ed or upgrad­ing defi­cient or unsafe items can be avoid­ed. If per­mits are not pulled when required, this is usu­al­ly the first sign some­thing sub­stan­tial can be wrong with the house as vil­lage inspec­tions on per­mit­ted work help pre­vent these scenarios.

2. Exte­ri­or clues that the foun­da­tion has a struc­tur­al issue:

Lean­ing foun­da­tion walls have a few signs on the exte­ri­or that are pret­ty easy to spot. Base­ment win­dows tend to be severe­ly out of plumb on a wall that is lean­ing or bow­ing inwards. If the first floor wall is sid­ing, there may be an exces­sive gap between the back of the sid­ing and the foun­da­tion wall. If the wall is brick, the brick may be over­hang­ing the top of the foun­da­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly or there may be a hor­i­zon­tal crack in the brick work along the first floor line. Anoth­er sign can be that the beam has cracked the foun­da­tion wall caus­ing a large piece of con­crete to start bulging out in the area of the beam.

If the foun­da­tion wall is set­tling or sink­ing the typ­i­cal signs on the exte­ri­or are step crack­ing in brick­work, brick­work that looks like it has been tuck-point­ed recent­ly or mul­ti­ple times, exte­ri­or trim and caulk pulling away from win­dows and doors, garage over­head doors out of align­ment and large cracks in the foundation.

3. Inte­ri­or Clues that the foun­da­tion has a struc­tur­al issue:

If the base­ment is fin­ished it makes iden­ti­fy­ing struc­tur­al issues a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult but there are signs that can be obvious.

If the foun­da­tion wall is lean­ing or bow­ing inward, the foun­da­tion will have mul­ti­ple cracks, often times angle cracks at the cor­ners, win­dows will be out of plumb, drop ceil­ings may be bowed slight­ly and dry­wall may be cracked in areas of stress. One oth­er trick is if you can find an unfin­ished area where you can see behind the fin­ished wall and look at the fram­ing of the wall. If a wall is lean­ing or bow­ing inward, you will see an uneven gap between the fram­ing of the fin­ished wall and the foun­da­tion wall. 

If the foun­da­tion is set­tling, the signs are again mul­ti­ple cracks, typ­i­cal­ly wider at the top than the bot­tom, cracks in the base­ment floor that run from foun­da­tion crack to foun­da­tion crack and cracked foot­ings that can be seen in crawlspaces. 

Foun­da­tion set­tle­ment also man­i­fests itself in above grade spaces as well. Stick­ing win­dows and doors, doors that don’t stay open and close seem­ing­ly by them­selves, floors that are out of lev­el and dry­wall dam­age in walls and ceilings.

4. Signs of seepage:

Seep­age is a tricky thing because unless you are in the base­ment or crawl­space dur­ing a heavy rain, it is hard to wit­ness it first hand. There are some signs that can point to pre­vi­ous seep­age issues that should be dis­cussed. The main signs can be the fol­low­ing; wood for the base­ment stairs and base­ment wall fram­ing looks dis­col­ored or dark­er where it meets the con­crete floor, you can see a dis­tinct dry­wall seem in the base­ment fin­ished walls about 2 feet off the floor, the lum­ber had been paint­ed white, cracks in the foun­da­tion that have been patched with hydraulic cement, and/​or a patch of con­crete around the exte­ri­or perime­ter of the base­ment floor indi­cat­ing a drain tile sys­tem was installed.

Now if any of these signs are there, does that mean the prospec­tive buy­er should imme­di­ate­ly walk away from the pur­chase? Cer­tain­ly not, as it was point­ed out ear­li­er, there are great house flip­pers that do the right thing and take care of these issues when they arise. The goal of these four points was to pro­vide some tools to help avoid a cat­a­stro­phe lat­er and to have an active dis­cus­sion about what the issues are on a par­tic­u­lar home and if they have been prop­er­ly addressed in the ren­o­va­tion. An eth­i­cal house flip­per will wel­come the dis­cus­sion and ensure that the repairs were done cor­rect­ly, sub­stan­ti­at­ing the repairs with per­mits, engi­neer­ing draw­ings and/​or a con­tract from a pro­fes­sion­al foun­da­tion repair company.

Anoth­er avenue that can be pur­sued is that if you sus­pect an issue may be present, the house flip­per is unaware or is insis­tent that noth­ing is wrong; ask that a licensed struc­tur­al engi­neer or a foun­da­tion repair pro­fes­sion­al be con­sult­ed for an inspec­tion and foun­da­tion evaluation. 

If you are look­ing at buy­ing a ren­o­vat­ed home and think there might be foun­da­tion or seep­age issues, con­tact us. Here at U.S. Water­proof­ing, our Advi­sors have the expe­ri­ence to help with even the most dif­fi­cult struc­tur­al and seep­age situations.

Tags: basement waterproofing facts, structural foundation damage, structural foundation repair, foundation cracks, foundation damage, home foundation repair, foundation waterproofing, house foundation repair

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