A home in North Dallas (buying a house, transfer, buying)

[Asut]

Hi all,
I am still new to this forum so please forgive me if I asked some similar question that has been posted before. I have lived in Dallas for 11 years now and love the DFW area. Currently I live in 3 bedroom home in North Dallas (Frankford and Tollway). Since our family is growing trying to find a new home in the same area but sadly the price of home in my area has increase quite a bit. But we just found a home that we like which the price is quite reasonable around $85/sf . I know the average price is around $90-$100/sf in this area. But this house has some problems although the owner has fix it very well and he has upgraded the house beautifully since he live there (btw he is the original owner). The 3 main problems are foundation, a little bit of termite and a little fire damage at one corner of the building. What do you all think and has anyone had an experience buying a house that have one of these problem at a low price? How will be the resale value of the house affected? Once the foundation problem is fixed will it ever happen again although you water the foundation reasonably. Same thing with the termite problem. We plan to buy a new home more for the children to have space to play in the house and in the yard (the home we currently live in is a zero lot home, very little yard for the children) also we will live in the new home till the children grow up unless one of us has to be relocated. We want to stay is this area since we just like the area so much though it is a lot more crowded now than we first moved to the area. Thank you so much for all your advises. Also if anyone knows a good structural inspector if you could email his/her name to me, I appreciate it very much. Again thank you.

AS

[GoPadge]

If repaired properly, those issues shouldn't hurt your resale value. But properly is the key word....

[momof2dfw]

True. Properly is the key word. I've had a house w/ foundation repairs done and sold it no problem, of course I gave full disclosure and a copy of all reports that had been done. Be glad you actually have a seller and a listing agent that is being honest. Trust me, there are some out there that are not (my mom is a realtor). There are sellers that will not disclose a thing to even the listing agent which can get them in BIG trouble. If you have found a house that is the right fit for your family, in your price range and in the area you want to be in and all checks out w/ the inspections then it was meant to be. Get a good inspector to check everything out beforehand and after repairs are made. Now, when we were selling our house we disclosed the fact we knew it had some minor foundation work that needed to be done and were willing to give the buyer the money for the repairs based on the estimates we had gotten from reputable companies. They wanted us to pay to fix it before closing but they wanted to pick who did the repairs. We nixed that as if we would have gone w/ their flakey foundation repair company they had talked to and something happened and they did not close on the house we would be stuck w/ a house that had crappy work done on it and no warranty. No thanks. If I still own the house I am going to pick who I want to repair it especially if I am paying for it. So we fixed it w/ our money while we still owned the house. Sad thing is in the end if they would have taken the money we offered and used the same company we did they would have had some nice money in their pockets in the end. Oh well.

Anyway, get an inspection for the foundation and everything else. And if all comes out clean after repairs, go for it. If it is repaired properly the house will be just fine and probably better than some that have not had any repairs or hidden damage that no one knows about. BTW, we used a company called Certified Foundation to do our foundation work and they did a really good job w/ a lifetime warranty that is transferable.