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To keep the history short, my wife and I found a home that was within our price range and in an awesome neighborhood with great schools. We did inspections yesterday and found some of the following issues:
- Section of sill plate on one side of the house (that could be seen from the basement) is rotting.
- Previous water intrusion in the basement, the sellers claimed it was during a rainstorm when they had the gutters off the house (they were getting new ones). Some of the insulation near the joists looks black.
- Termites were found in 2004 around the garage, no current sign of them. No damage was noted.
- The porch near the front of he house actually grades toward the foundation. Water pools there, we suspect it attributed to their previous water intrusion in the basement.
- One crack was found in a basement wall that had been sealed, but not with injection sealing. We're not sure when it was done. It doesn't appear to be the appropriate fix.
So, I'm concerned. The inspector seemed honest but made these problems seem fixable. He did recommend getting a basement guy to come and look at the crack. The main thing keeping me from walking away at the moment is the stellar location and the space (it has 4 bedrooms and a non-conforming). What should I push the seller on? Am I being obtuse and should just call it quits?
If you want a brand new home, buy a brand new home. Sorry, but that is what it sounds like you were expecting. Any used home is gonna have issues, getting those issues fixed is part of the negotiations.
Contact a mold remediation company and have them look at the damage and give you an assessment of the cost to re mediate, if necessary. Otherwise, the issues seem pretty normal.
Hopefully you have a civil engineer friend or at least a landscape architect to look at the grading issue.
That one would concern me. It could be normal or abnormal house and land settling.
But, still, if it is decided that the house settling that pulled the porch down where it connected to the house (if I understand you correctly) is normal and any issues can be fixed....still the issues of water run off toward the house need to be fixed as well as the slanting porch. Then what looks like black mold in the basement joists can be fixed with new joists or whatever.
Looks like a lot to me but some people may want to tackle it. Even then, I'd have to wait a while to see how repairs worked out.
Black insulation could just be from air flow. Insulation acts like a filter and soaks up all particles in the air passing through. As far as backing out that's not something anyone can really advise you on. It's your time and money not ours.
The is a big issue, since it lies between the "foundation" and the base of the house. But in the main, it sounds like rain and runoff are doing the damage. Channeling rain water away from the foundation and basement is expensive and, in some cases, not really possible if you have persistently high ground water levels.
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