I Just Bought a Townhouse - 3 Beds, 2.5 Baths, Garage, Deck

[Bystander]

Prior knowledge of a flooded basement isn't too hard to prove.

 

[Moonbear]

I have no idea what you people are talking about.

From the photo, it looks like the house is built on a hill. Unless the house is really crooked and you were holding the camera at a funny angle, the street in front looks like a hill. I guess the small pile of snow in the photo reminded Hypatia of my winter adventures on icy hills.

 

[Moonbear]

Prior knowledge of a flooded basement isn't too hard to prove.

Yeah, the tougher ones are the "noticed some water seepage during heavy rain, so regraded the flower bed to correct"...and haven't had any heavy rains since to show that the flower bed had nothing to do with the problem...and "some water seepage" really means a small river was flowing through the basement. Don't rely on the disclosure statements, you can get away with a lot on those, and some things can be hidden that an inspector would find that the previous owners could claim they were oblivious to (and really might be oblivious to).

 

[Astronuc]

Thanks, but since it is only 2 years old and had to be inspected before the current owner moved-in and everything on it would have to be in the disclosure statement anyway, I consider that to be redundant - and my agent (buyer's agent) agrees. I'll ask again, though...

It was inspected by the building inspector, which may not mean much, based on personal experience. We hired a home inspector when we bought our house. He did point to some potential problems, but also missed a few. From first hand experience, I can tell you many builders skimp on material.

I would go with FredGarvin's and Bystander's advice. Or at least do a reasonable inspection yourself.

One issue would be any grade toward the house and the drainage. We have had two floods in our basement due to unusually heavy rains, and we are higher than many houses around us. However, there is a hill behind the property, and the water drains down the hill into our backyard, and the hydraulic pressure forces it into the basement.

I have to work on a drainage plan, which is on my to do list.

We bought our house at the end of about a 3 year drought, and the house had been vacant for about the same time. About a year later, we started having a wetter period. I discovered while trying to seal the basement on the outside, the septic line had sheard off outside the wall of the house. The builder had piled rocks and gravel on top of the pipe, and eventually the cast iron septic line suffered a guillotine break after a period of stress corrosion cracking. That was one of the things we missed in the inspection.

The basement was semi-finished with sheetrock in place. That also hid the fact that several of the cinderblocks in the wall had cracked. When I excavated the foundation, I found several blocks had disintegrated. I replaced about a dozen cinderblocks.

 

[russ_watters]

From the photo, it looks like the house is built on a hill. Unless the house is really crooked and you were holding the camera at a funny angle, the street in front looks like a hill. I guess the small pile of snow in the photo reminded Hypatia of my winter adventures on icy hills.

Slow day, sorry...missed that.

Actually, the photo is taken angled to the left (with the left half of it cropped out), so the slope down to the right is not that severe. It is pretty heavily sloped out the back, though (walk-out basement). So I'll have a double-decker-deck.

 

[Bystander]

Two years or less? You should be able to get a generic set of plans, prints for it from either township offices (whoever the permitting and inspecting authority is), or from the county (whoever the property tax assessment is). You will want them if you do buy --- hunting joist/truss spacing, headers, plumbing and electrical runs, ductwork, the like. What's going to be on file won't be the working plans for the exact property --- and there won't be an exact correspondence of outlets, phone jacks, or fixtures, but it beats groping blindly when you want to work on something.

And, yeah, they'll tell you, "No copies," and, "No, you can't leave the premises with them." That's what digital cameras and pocket scanners are for.

 

[arildno]

Congratulations, russ!
To me, it looks like a homey and friendly house.