<p>Don’t send notice of cancellation!! Send Notice to Perform and see what happens.</p>
<p>We had an interested buyer today. They spent at least 30 minutes in house today and asked a lot of questions. We have received several emails from their agent but I have a feeling they need to sell their house first before they can buy.</p>
<p>I might be willing to be contingent on the sale of their house but it has to be the right price. I’ve never even entertained the idea before. Usually nothing ever closes when you are waiting for buyers to sell their house. They will have an unrealistic price they need to get in order to have enough money to buy.</p>
<p>I love foundation problems!!! Those are houses I can get at a fair price.</p>
<p>Depends on type of foundation issues. If an entire neighborhood or street has foundation issues, it’s hard to get past the issue because local realtors will know about the issue and steer buyers away from the listing, no matter how well it is fixed. Also, it usually means soil or slope issues.</p>
<p>For crawlspace pier and post problems, those are easily fixed. Slab foundation issues are harder to fix but doable if the issue is isolated to cracks inside the house in the slab. </p>
<p>If repairs can be done by professional foundation company then everyone will have peace of mind.but simple pier and post issues can be fixed without a company that charges an arm and leg.</p>
<p>No by law you need to send the buyer to perform notice first and that was what i did. Well, as i expected, they cannot remove the loan contingency. So, i guess i have to wait. </p>
<p>I have seen “AC” sales pending for months at a time. All depends on how soon the buyer can close his sale. </p>
<p>The foundation problems i saw could be the entire neighborhood as the two i visited are almost next to each other and they all facing the rail track. I am not “local” enough to know the problem, but if i see more than 50 agents cards on the kitchen table and the house is not sold in 53 days, some thing is wrong there.</p>
<p>How much will it cost to rebuild a foundation for a 1000sf footing two stories home? Assuming the worst case scenario as seen on the TV show. In that show, they have to jack up the house, dig out the foundation and rebuild.</p>
<p>Is the 1000sf home on footings or a slab?</p>
<p>I think the main issue is to find out (maybe call an agent who listed one of the other homes in the area and ask what type of foundation issue???) whether the foundation issues are due to a slope issue or soil issue. If it is one of those types of issues then you have to do extensive work.</p>
<p>If the issue is because they are really old homes with crumbling piers and posts, you can replace all the piers and posts and re-level the floor for $3,000 (we just did that). That does not include earthquake strapping which really wouldn’t cost that much more but is not required on an old home (grandfathered).</p>
<p>Also inspect the stem wall around the house for big cracks. If the stem wall itself doesn’t have big cracks but the windows and doors have settling type cracks, this could be from the piers and posts causing leveling issues in house.</p>
<p>I don’t have experience on foundation issues on a 2 story house, have always been working on one story houses. I don’t know if 2 stories causes additional problems.</p>
<p>Essentially you are looking for whether the floor has become unlevel and can be fixed by piers and posts bringing it back to level or whether a whole corner of the house is sinking or something. Or whether the stem wall is crumbling or broken.</p>
<p>The $3,000 estimate quoted above is having qualified construction workers doing the work - not a foundation company. Foundation companies will be very expensive because they have to warranty the work.</p>
<p>^^ I got that much… in essence YOU are warranty the work…and take the risk of being sued. Actually, if you have to hire a lawyer out of pocket it is way more expensive than paying some one warrant for it. Of course it may not happen, but if it does…</p>
<p>My legal fee to fight with the prior owner is about 40K, in addition to the eviction cost of about 10k, fortunately, the insurance is covering most of that.</p>
<p>Oh, btw, the lawyer hired by the insurance company told me if the case went all the way to full jury selection and a grand jury trial, it will be costing around 100K, not counting appeal…</p>
<p>This case has nothing to do with construction, I am just showing an example of legal cost.</p>
<p>What kind of insurance is involved in a case against a prior owner.</p>
<p>On this property the prior owner should be sued for lack of disclosure since I have all kinds of anecdotal evidence from people that he was definitely aware of many issues. Especially going into the City and pulling a permit and not disclosing that!!</p>
<p>But I take these deals as “Buyer Beware” and its only my fault. Although no amount of due diligence would have discovered sewer blockage under the street (which he was fully aware of) without paying for a full video scope. That’s hard to do when you are looking at about 10 houses a week and you might get one out of 25-30 offers accepted.</p>
<p>When you buy occupied house from the bank that is where a prior owner came from. When i bought the house i insured it with a “rental home” insurance because it is occupied. When i tried to evict her she sued me. It is my liability insurance covered me.</p>
<p>We had a broker caravan today and there was a lot of traffic. My agent pitched the property at the local meeting and held a drawing for a $100 Home Depot gift card. The agents who came through had to ‘guess’ what the house will sell for and when it sells they win the card. This was a brilliant way to determine if we were priced right (well, at least as brilliant as we can get!).</p>
<p>The guesses ranged from $447,000 to $469,000. We are listed at $462,000 which I thought was way too high. I went into this project hoping to exit at $430,000 so anything above that will help cover my enormous budget overage 
The agent that said $469,000 said ‘just be patient, you will get it’. Uhhh, if we are patient and just wait for the right buyer, why would that buyer offer more than asking price? That only happens in multiple offer/bidding war type of situations. Which usually means you are priced lower than market to generate the multiple offers.</p>
<p>Oh, and another serious buyer came through today with her agent and stayed 30 minutes. No offers, but at least we have two buyers with serious interest.</p>
<p>“The guesses ranged from $447,000 to $469,000. We are listed at $462,000”</p>
<p>I like this … We did something similar when we sold our house. You are going to be ok</p>
<p>I agree with dstark. It sounds like the agents agreed with your list price. It also sounds like having two serious lookers means it will sell. Fingers crossed that it happens soon!</p>
<p>Good morning,</p>
<p>I had another frustrating day with the City yesterday. I went in on Tuesday morning and pulled the permit for ‘repair and maintenance’ of the garage, per their instructions. They took my permit and money and then said that they wanted to send out the Building Inspection Supervisor to ‘provide advice and consultation’. I told him that I needed to start work right away since I had been waiting 2 weeks for the Supervisor to call me. Our previous conversation was that they had their meeting, advised on this course of action, but said that the Supervisor was going to call me. I waited patiently for the Supervisor to call me for over a week, but he never did. So I went in there to pull the permit.</p>
<p>We set Thursday afternoon for the ‘consultation’. He insisted that the Supervisor was the one who was going to work with me (same guy that never called me). Yesterday morning the desk guy called me and told me Supervisor was out for the day but they would send the original inspector. Well, I waited from 12pm to 4pm and no one showed up. We are being very careful about what we do while waiting for our ‘consultation’. At 4pm I called the office and asked how late the inspector might come because it is very unusual for them to work after 4pm. She told me that they can come up to 5pm. So, I had to pay my guy to just sit there until 5pm in case the inspector showed up.</p>
<p>So, no one shows up and I call back at 5pm to find out that there was some confusion about who was supposed to come and they were sorry. Of course they are closed on Fridays so I have to wait until Monday for someone to show up. I begged them to let me start work and they gave me permission to do everything with the framing but I have to wait for their review before I can put the roof on. That’s fine because I won’t have new roof trusses until next week anyway.</p>
<p>But the standing around waiting was just ridiculous.</p>
<p>And then they have called and said “Oh, we need some kind of plan to put into our file”. What plan??? Why should I draw a plan for an existing building that is just getting some reinforcement and a new roof? "Oh, just draw the dimensions on paper and show us what you are going to do. So I have typed up a scope of work for review with this guy that might show up on Monday and then I will draw a plan on a napkin or something and take it into their office.</p>
<p>I have loaded pictures of the garage condition into our photo area so that you can watch the progress of fixing the garage. The main issue we are going to have is that it has original carriage style sliding garage doors which are rusted, lost the wheels and is nailed shut. I’m waiting to see if the City is going to force me to put a new operable garage door on this thing.</p>
<p>I have to say that these people seem grossly incompetent. What is it with the constant confusion? I have not encountered that here or in the town in CT where I last did renovations.</p>