So my husband and I (23F, 24M) bought a home last year. We knew going in that there was a foundation issue- so after our inspection we hired a structural engineer to come and take a look. According to the engineer there were a handful of smaller issues and all in all, after sending his report to a contractor the estimate was $10-15k, plus some grading/yard work to help fix water management. We feel this is within our abilities and buy the house.
We have spent the past year working on the yard grading/water management and saving aggressively to replenish our savings and get the work done. The 1 year anniversary rolls around and we book with the contractor to come by to look at the property and get started on the work.
The contractor does use a measurement tool and notices that the slope of the house points to an opposite area of the house having issues. He goes into our crawl space and says there’s a bit of HVAC duct work blocking the view of that side and asks to move it to look at the foundation. We agree, he moves it, and… no foundation. We have foundation around all but one corner of our home, and that corner appears to be sinking and causing damage. The other issues the structural engineer pointed out had to do with cracking in a wall on the opposite end of the house that was extensive, likely caused by this.
This is an extremely bizarre situation, and ultimately there are no good “quick” fixes. I don’t have an exact estimate but easily this could be a $50k+ repair. We do have 2 separate structural engineers coming out to provide us with more insight.
That said, my brain is switching to financial planning mode- we don’t have real equity in the home, and we didn’t plan on staying here for 10+ years originally- it’s a small older “starter home” with 1bed 1 bath. This is a resale killer of course, especially if damage continues.
We have $28k in savings, and save about $1k a month, but I’m looking to improve this. No debt outside of our home and $10k in student loans. Combined income is $110k a year. House was purchased for $315k, mortgage balance is $290k.
How the hell do I even start planning to deal with this large of an expense? We tried to do things right, we wanted to build equity and maybe use this as a rental property down the line, but now it seems like I’d be lucky to lose $25k on this.
Thoughts, ideas? Do we focusing on saving? Finance? Financing seems like something to avoid, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t know how quickly we have to get this done, but I desperately want to try to minimize fallout.
Submitted June 18, 2023 at 05:26AM by avybb https://ift.tt/Vu9we8H
