Should I buy a house with recent foundation repair? (Houston: for sale, how much)

[futuregleam]

I've been living in Houston with my parents, and I'm looking to buy a house and move out. I saw a patio lot house that I really liked in 77077. The school district is ok. It's close to Eldridge and a few minutes drive to energy corridor. The house looked nice on the inside, and the price is fair. Then we found out that the house had a foundation repair a few months ago. More than a dozen of pilings were put in under half of the house. The house still has a 1 inch to 1.5 inch difference in elevation between the high side and the low side. It comes with a lifetime transferable warrantee.

Do you guys think it'll affect resale value? Can I use it as a reason to negotiate / lower price and if so, by how much? What would you do in this situation?

Thanks for the help!

[Oskar_Z28]

No problem with that. At least it's done already. My house has 50 piers that were installed in the 80s and is still good today.

[travelguy_73]

I think the conventional wisdom is houses in Houston have either had foundation work or will eventually need it. Better to have let someone else go through the dust and dirt than you. With that said, you will want to make sure it was done properly, and that an independent foundation inspection occurs.

Others can chime in, but I don't think a price adjustment would happen. Like I said, foundation repair is common with our soil, especially with older houses. My house (1960s) has 35 or so piers underneath now.

[jerbear30]

My wife and I are in the option period on a house in the exact same area, also with foundation repairs done earlier this year. In Houston, it is apparently quite common to have foundation repair, especially before selling a home as it will alleviate buyer anxiety. I definitely don't think the foundation repair will negatively affect resale down the road. My wife and I were in an option period a couple of months ago on a house that we discovered was in bad need of foundation repair so we backed out. Finding a place where that work has been recently done was as selling point for us.

I'm happy to be buying a home that has had recent foundation repair but there are a couple of things to consider. First, if I understand the issue correctly, it is possible that if the foundation work is very recent, there may be other cosmetic issues in the home like small cracks that occur as the structure adjusts to the new placement. I don't know how long this would take to show up, but it's a possibility. In my view, it's not something that should put you off from buying the house--it wasn't for me anyway. The other thing that can be an issue is that the foundation repair may only be done on a small part of the house. You or your realtor should be able to access an image that shows where under the house the work was done. If the repair was only done on a small part of the house, you may need to have more work done in the future and that could be a bargaining point.

Because the house still has a bit of a lean, you might also want to have a different foundation repair company come and give you a quick sense of what's going on with it. They all apparently used to do this kind of thing for free, but more are charging for the service since so many people are buying homes right now. The company we used, precision foundation, charged 75 bucks I think.

[Houston parent]

More important is WHY the house needed the repair. If it was just a cheap foundation on top of clay soils, that's one thing. I grew up in a house like that in the Rice Village area. If there is a fault line running through your neighborhood, I'd stay away. Most people don't realize there are fault lines criss-crossing parts of Houston, because we have no real seismic activity here. There is still ground movement that can really damage your foundation if you are on or near a fault line.

[futuregleam]

Originally Posted by Houston parent

More important is WHY the house needed the repair. If it was just a cheap foundation on top of clay soils, that's one thing. I grew up in a house like that in the Rice Village area. If there is a fault line running through your neighborhood, I'd stay away. Most people don't realize there are fault lines criss-crossing parts of Houston, because we have no real seismic activity here. There is still ground movement that can really damage your foundation if you are on or near a fault line.

That's a good point. I'm not sure. There's another house on the same street that is also for sale, just 2 houses down from the one I was considering. In that house, one of the room toward a corner on the second floor was obviously not level, and there was a crack above the corner of a door on the third floor. We didn't consider that house because, aside from other issues, we suspect the foundation has problems. So I'm not sure if a lot of houses in the neighborhood has issues, or if it's because of poorly made foundation, or if there's a faultline.

Also thanks for you guys feedback! Right now I'm deciding to look for other houses in surrounding area, since I'm not on a tight timeline.

[futuregleam]

Thanks to Houston parent for pointing out fault lines! I did quick search and found the following maps. The house I was looking at was not on the long point fault line, but there is the long point splay that is near (hard to tell).

I'm linking the maps here. If you guys have other easier to read maps please share them
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig3_237842253
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer...105445803&z=14
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig4_277516718
https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/...4-34c8757a2ae9

[jerbear30]

There also may be a plumbing leak coming from under the house that is contributing to the foundation problems. That's what happened with the first house we made an offer on. It turns out that the main pipe leading from the house to the street was cracked, right at the house. This meant that lots and lots of water was leaving the house and just going into the ground underneath it instead of out to the sewer, which in turn made the house settle.

[perro_peluo]

Originally Posted by futuregleam

Thanks to Houston parent for pointing out fault lines! I did quick search and found the following maps. The house I was looking at was not on the long point fault line, but there is the long point splay that is near (hard to tell).

I'm linking the maps here. If you guys have other easier to read maps please share them

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/...4-34c8757a2ae9

A bit off topic, but a pet peeve.



This is the best link on the list that you posted. A fault is usually represented on a map with symbols to indicate the down thrown block, so that you know direction of movement of two relative fault blocks. The BEG map on your geocache link shows the tick-marks.



A single line on a map tells very little, and is likely represented this way simply because of the low amount of displacement, especially if this is mapped via Lidar.




Foundation issues in this area are typically associated with type and clay content, which is the reason why soil studies are now done before foundations are poured. Certain types of clays have water molecules bound to their structure, over time and amount of overburden, they begin to shed water molecules and de-water. The de-watering does not occur uniformly, which then causes small scale subsidence over portions of foundation footprint.


Not saying that the faults cannot be the cause, but simply a much lower chance that they are the root cause. The faults in this area are related to sediment deposition and usually show displacement averaged over a larger area. The line on that map could realistically represent 100's of feet and can move over time.




Thanks for posting the link, the site was an interesting read.

[tewest86]

Originally Posted by perro_peluo

A bit off topic, but a pet peeve.



This is the best link on the list that you posted. A fault is usually represented on a map with symbols to indicate the down thrown block, so that you know direction of movement of two relative fault blocks. The BEG map on your geocache link shows the tick-marks.



A single line on a map tells very little, and is likely represented this way simply because of the low amount of displacement, especially if this is mapped via Lidar.




Foundation issues in this area are typically associated with type and clay content, which is the reason why soil studies are now done before foundations are poured. Certain types of clays have water molecules bound to their structure, over time and amount of overburden, they begin to shed water molecules and de-water. The de-watering does not occur uniformly, which then causes small scale subsidence over portions of foundation footprint.


Not saying that the faults cannot be the cause, but simply a much lower chance that they are the root cause. The faults in this area are related to sediment deposition and usually show displacement averaged over a larger area. The line on that map could realistically represent 100's of feet and can move over time.




Thanks for posting the link, the site was an interesting read.

Just curious, are you a Geologist? I was just going by the words you used. I can tell you studied Geology or you could have copy and pasted from Google. I do Geotechnical work so you post stood out to me.