The Weight of Money

Time to discuss last week’s inspection. Obviously, it wasn’t simple, otherwise I would have said “things look great!” and moved on. While the following faults are not necessarily minor, both the inspector and we agree that it is a great old house.

First, the biggest issue is some unexplained shifting obvious in the second floor interior. Old houses settle and shift over time but this isn’t “old sag.” This is clearly recent and active shifting and we don’t know what is causing it. There is no access to the foundation under the addition and that limits our ability to get a better look. What confuses us even more, evidence is only visible on the second floor, no visible indicators on the first floor interior or in the attic and the exterior looks great (well 100-years-old kind of great). So, we don’t know what is going on, but we’re concerned. Do we think it is going to fall over anytime soon? Not at all. But it is something that could cost a considerable amount of cash to fix in the near (within 5 years) future. Strike One.

Second is another structural issue that is low on our priority list, yet high on our response list. There is a newer exterior chimney, probably new within the last several years, that is moving away from the house. Obviously bad news for the chimney and the foundation but it is something that we can clearly point at and say “look! problem!”. But, it isn’t high on our priority list because the broiler has only a few more years left in it and then we would replace it with another heating system that doesn’t need the chimney. So, we want them to pay for a chimney replacement (replacement is the only option at this point) and we’ll hold out another year or so and take it down and the boiler out. In the mean time, we’ll do what we can to ensure no further shifting, that there are no cracks in the chimney liner, and that it doesn’t take out the side of the house or any parked cars. Strike two.

The first two structural issues are not related, at least not obviously. The first issues affects the addition that was added to the house at some point in time. The chimney is attached to the original part of the structure and that part isn’t going anywhere. The primary structure has the heftiest, thickest, and most close-set support timbers I’ve ever seen and a stone foundation that goes down a good 6 feet. That portion is sturdy, but the other part? We don’t know.

There are a bunch of other little things that add up as well: repair a post and bean in the basement that is deteriorating, replace all rotted exterior wood (fascia, soffits, etc.), sand, prime, caulk, and paint exterior, replace side entry roof, repair and clean all gutters, get the kitchen drain working properly.

We’ve made up a price list of the repairs — all numbers are pretty much pulled out of the air.

• Shifting Addition: unknown, $30,000+
• Replace Chimney: $8,000
• Replace post and beam: $500
• Fix drain in kitchen: $300
• Paint Exterior (replace rotted boards): $2,000
• Replace side entry roof: $2,000
• Replace broken windows: $500
• Repair and clean gutters: $500
• Total: $43,800

Our first round of negotiations is to tell them to fix everything. Seeing as this is an “as-is” sale, that isn’t going to happen. Our agent was talking about us getting more cash back at settlement, but we don’t think that’ll work cause our lending agency wouldn’t like it and we don’t want that cash going straight to a contractor. What we want is a reduction in price, even if it means it only saves us a couple dollars a month — that’s a couple of dollars that could be going to principal.

Do I think we’ll get a 40K reduction in price, not at all, but I will be pushing pretty hard on the structural stuff because we don’t know what is going on. That alone means that 30K could be a drop in the bucket to the reality of the situation. Or, it could be what we think it is and the cleaning the gutters an rerouting water will help solve the problem — when you don’t know, you don’t estimate low and hope that you’re right. For now, I’ll assume that we need to replace every single joist-timber under the addition (which would be way more than 30K, I’m sure).

To clarify, we don’t think the house is in serious trouble and our inspector didn’t either, but it is indeed a bargaining chip. We’ve set up a time for a structural engineer to take a look, but we feel she may not be able to tell us much more than we already know because we don’t have access to the foundation under the addition. When we buy the place, we’ll be fixing the grading and redirecting water that is probably not helping the situation. In the mean time, we’ll see what we can do to drop the price of the house somewhat.

Next steps: wait for the seller’s response to our request to fix everything and see what this week’s termite inspection says – maybe that’ll throw in another bargaining chip as they are required to spend up to $5,000 to fix any problems found. However, I’m hoping that nothing is found in terms of termites.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under housing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.