foundations issues fourplex (HOA, buying a house, buying)

[tamss13]

My daughter is looking at purchasing a Townhouse that is built in a fourplex style. We believe the HOA does not cover anything with the unit as the HOA dues are only 100 dollars a month.

She will have a Structural Engineer come out doing the option period.

My question is. Can you repair the foundation on one unit of the fourplex? or will we need all the owners to agree before we get the foundation repaired.

The reason I ask if the owner is selling as is...when she asked the seller about the other owner her Realtor replied with. That is something you will have to deal with.

So we are preparing for worst case senior.....the other owners don't want to repair the foundation.

[escanlan]

Originally Posted by tamss13

My daughter is looking at purchasing a Townhouse that is built in a fourplex style. We believe the HOA does not cover anything with the unit as the HOA dues are only 100 dollars a month.

She will have a Structural Engineer come out doing the option period.

My question is. Can you repair the foundation on one unit of the fourplex? or will we need all the owners to agree before we get the foundation repaired.

The reason I ask if the owner is selling as is...when she asked the seller about the other owner her Realtor replied with. That is something you will have to deal with.

So we are preparing for worst case senior.....the other owners don't want to repair the foundation.

Was foundation issues/movement noted on the disclosure? How were you made aware of the movement/issue?

That's a real tough call for you to face. First to answer your question you should review the HOA documentation to see if they have provisions for allowing one unit to perform major repairs without approval from the others or not. It might also be spelled out in the deed for the property since it is a multi-unit structure.

Now onto the foundation issue itself. You should speak with the Structural Engineer (SE) to make sure he is going to evaluate the entire structure and not just your unit. Obviously the other owners most likely will not let him inside but will they let him walk the outside to check for foundation distress indicators? The construction style is not readily known and performing a proper, and lasting repair might well require repairs to the other units as well. You might decide to repair your unit but if issues arise or exist in the others they can still have a potential affect on your unit.

Before you pay for an SE you might want to check these things out first. Otherwise you could be throwing money away for an SE now and other issues later! Keep us up to date on how it progresses.

[ChristieP]

We almost bought a townhome that turned out to have horrible foundation issues. Fortunately, the appraiser found new exterior cracks, and we hired a structural engineer. He said the house needed about $20k of foundation work (in 2001). The seller had known about it, and chose not to fix it. We walked away and lost our earnest money, but that was better than buying a house that was sliding down a hill