Buying Bank-Owned Homes
Quick tips from my world as a professional home inspector.
I’m routinely seeing when the bank sends out their repair people, fast and quick “fixes” that offer little value and can even make some situations worse. As a construction science buff, I really like the outer envelope stuff. Often, all too often, the “painter” applies some color to make the house look better, but he forgets to prep and prime the walls. I show up in just weeks or months and the new paint is peeling off the wall. To illustrate my point when I describe this condition to my clients, I’ll wipe my fingers on the surface under the new paint. I then take a picture of the chalk on my fingertips next to the chipped area. This is typical of failed resin (glue in paint) and pigment (color in paint) rubbing off. Despite real estate contracts that describe paint as an aesthetic feature, I insist that paint is a function of the building envelope and the wall mount will not function as intended (key words here) without it or when it is not in good condition. So who cares? Water intrusion occurs even with small/short showers due to science, but we don’t necessarily have the amount of moisture to pass through the wall/window assembly and manifest itself inside. Water intrusion can occur and if it does not dry/evaporate quickly, fungal growth is not far behind. Growth behind the baseboard and on the back of the drywall goes undetected because it is not visible. Out of sight, out of mind. Could mold be a problem for you? Here are a couple of easy techniques you can employ to prove your point. Go to the garage and/or laundry area. These interior walls usually don’t have drywall, so if you can find patches of moisture on the interior side of the wall, you’ve proven your point! You tell the BPO agent, mitigator, salesperson, or girl that this condition could exist in other rooms but is simply not visible because of the drywall, baseboards, and carpet. These products have cellulose (food) content in which fungal growth can thrive. Also walk around the exterior walls from the inside, obviously, and look for delamination on the drywall and baseboards. Look for water stains on the sides and top of the windows. If the bank painter also painted the interior, use your official Leatherman investor tool and lift up the corners of the carpet and under the windows and look for spots on the tack strip. Look for a new skirting… dead giveaway! Find it once and you’ve proven your point. Similarly, if the paint doesn’t stick, neither will the putty. So previous leaks that have been “fixed” may not be.
Banks have a “Sams List” of approved contractors. I recently inspected a home where the bank approved, the repair people on Sam’s list installed the new door jambs with those new gravity nails. Really, just put yourself in their shoes. They also repaired the grout line cracks on the tile floor with a different color grout. Nice.
Here’s another good one. The roof that has been “repaired”. Gooping tar is a great temporary repair. Tar exposed to UV rays will dry and crack over time, leaving it in the same condition and the same reason it was “fixed” in the first place. Or the old new wood on top of the water damaged wood under the kitchen sink hack!
Also, look for small pieces of blue painter’s tape or fluorescent spots on things around the house (inside and out) and in the garage. Inspectors often use them to flag areas of concern, defects, and violations that they have identified during a full home inspection evaluation. Check these areas for things that just don’t feel right, and follow your hunch. Quick tangent here… after going up and down stairs your whole life, you expect them to be consistent. No big steps, no small steps. This is by design. The stair standards are quite strict and have a low tolerance for error to make you feel comfortable and safe. When a step feels unusually high, you’re probably right. Many build standards are similar, so when you “feel” something is funny, you might not be able to quote the code section, but you’re probably right!
If a licensed pest control operator or card-carrying WDO inspector has inspected the home for a previous buyer, the law dictates that they leave a tag in place stating what they have done, whether inspected or treated for detect organisms that destroy wood. Typical/permitted locations for placing such notices include the kitchen cabinet door under the sink, electrical panel, water heater, or on a truss within the attic access.
So we talked about some bank repairs and I went off on a tangent and didn’t follow the proper structure of the article, but hey, that’s how it all happened. Everything is fine and if we all stick together, no one gets burned.
