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Replies (8)
- Altair Ibn La-Ahad, "zandanel"
- Contributions:435
did you close yet? i'm not sure
- rmcdonal
- Contributions:14
I'm naive about these situations, but my gut reaction is that if city permits are not typically required for foundation work, why would they be necessary in this case. I can see that the realtor may want it for the client's protection, but I would argue against it. If you have a reputable foundation repair company do the work (one that the buyers approve) and if the company will provide a warranty for the reapairs that will transfer to the new owners, that should be sufficient.
I'll be interested to see what others say.
I'll be interested to see what others say.
- Altair Ibn La-Ahad, "zandanel"
- Contributions:435
i'm not even sure you can pull permits for work that doesn't need permits.
- Dan Hayden, "Dan Hayden"
- Contributions:293
Have you spoken to your REALTOR or the city code enforcement people about what the requirements are? It seems only logical because even if this contract falls apart, you will still have to disclose the foundation issues. If you need the permits you need the permits. Just because they were not pulled before doesn’t mean that the local building code doesn’t require them now.
- chickeninspector
- Contributions:71
They are researching the requirements today. That's why the the period between when the offer was accepted and the contingency's are lifted have been extended another day or so.
I guess I shouldn't be too worried about it. If the City had new requiring dramatic repairs to foundations, then no one would sell homes in this area because I think very few homeowners budget for this kind of expense. Thanks for the advice.
- chickeninspector
- Contributions:71
If the City had new code requirements...that is.
- Dan Hayden, "Dan Hayden"
- Contributions:293
how did it work out?
- chickeninspector
- Contributions:71
The contractor estimated about $7K in costs, and they wanted us to pay for it all. We countered with a reduction in $5K off the price of the home and an as-is sale. They agreed and we close next week. Glad this is over and everyone's happy.
Contingency's Extended to Repair Foundation Cracks
Hi There,
We recently went into contract on our house, and it was discovered during inspections that there were two cracks in the foundation. The first one we knew about and had disclosed, and the second we had no knowledge of--but it appeared to be previously marked so the previous homeowner must have known about it and decided to leave it out of the report to avoid having to repair it. Nice.
Anyway, we estimate these foundation repairs to cost about $2K, however, the buyer's realtor is talking about pulling permits, which is fine and quite inexpensive here. We're just concerned that once you start getting the City involved and poking around down in your foundation, they might start tallying up a whole list of things (as the story goes in contracting), and what we once thought would be a $2K repair could end up being a $10K+ repair for us. This would blow our whole contract out the water, and we already took a dive on the house to begin with.
What would you suggest? They did make repairs to the foundation before we moved in to one of the cracks (the one that was noted), but they did not pull permits. We've had some minor cracking on the walls, but nothing to write home about. BTW, we live in Calfornia--cracks and shifts are a fact of life here.
Anyway, am I being paranoid here? What is your experience with home repairs post-inspection?
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