Are you looking to sell your home in Pennsylvania despite your property possibly having foundation problems? If you want to learn how to know if your foundation needs repair, the guide below will provide all the answers you need.
Foundation repair may become necessary if your house has uneven floors, foundation cracks, bowing walls, or water damage. Read the information below on how to know if your foundation needs repair. Now, let’s get into it!
How To Know if Your House Foundation Needs Repair
It is not always easy to know if a home’s foundation has serious problems, and you may need assistance from a foundation repair expert. Some signs of a foundation problem might look minor, such as a few cracks in the brick exterior walls. Is a crack in the basement wall mean your house is sinking?
Other signs of foundation problems include door frames and window frames separating from the walls. The most common signals of foundation issues include:
- Excess moisture and leakage in the home
- Drywall cracks, hairline cracks, and vertical cracks appearing on walls
- Sticking doors and door gaps showing up
- Bowing walls showing foundation damage
- Sagging floors
- Windows start sticking
- Uneven and sloping floors
Once you have worked with a foundation expert, you should learn what rooms need repairs. Then, you will need to decide whether to repair the foundation before selling the home or sell the property in its as-is condition.
There’s Leakage in Your House
Older homes may have foundation shifts. One clear sign of that is any leakage or water drops showing up on your floors. Water damage, in general, can cause wood to rot and lead to foundational problems for your home. You might find mildew and moisture in the basement or the crawl space, which can lead to foundational damage.
A damp crawl space indicates that you have foundation issues or may have them soon. No one wants to see puddles in their crawl space. However, the moisture will lead to mold growth and rotting wood, which causes structural problems for the home.
You may need to hire an expert to conduct a foundation inspection and see whether the leakage in your house has caused structural damage to the home’s foundation. To prevent future leakage problems, you will need to pursue waterproofing strategies.
Cracks Are Starting To Appear
Do you see any drywall cracks in the house? Are there any vertical or diagonal cracks? Typically, walls are built to last. So if you notice any cracks, it’s not a good sign. Pay attention to any cracks that show up in your home.
Homes with a strong foundation will not have any wall fractures over many decades. If you have wallpaper, look at any wrinkling that may have occurred. The foundation may have problems if you see any crumbling or cracking in the drywall.
Furthermore, if you see too many cracks in your kitchen or bathroom tiles, that could signal that your home has foundation problems. Interior sheetrock cracks that run nearly the entire height of the wall are also problematic. Such cracks show high potential for major foundational problems.
Door Gaps Are Showing
No homes are perfect, and settling could occur a couple of years after construction. However, any doors that have visible gaps and are out of the square should get inspected. These door gaps may show that the house has foundational problems.
Furthermore, pay attention to whether there are any cracks in the wall right above the doors. In addition, you should check the door frames to see if they are pulling away from the walls as well. Door frames separating from the brick wall are a real warning sign of foundational issues.
So, pay attention to the doors and their frames if you want to avoid foundational problems from worsening. Foundational troubles need to be repaired whether you hire an expert or disclose the issues to new buyers, and they fix the problems.
Walls Are Bowing
If you notice the walls bowing or bulging out in your home, you’re in trouble. That is a serious sign of foundational problems in the house. Usually, bowing takes place on the ground floor walls. Check the walls in your basement to see if they have begun bulging out.
You can get a home inspection completed to check for any deviations in how straight your walls are in the basement. Bowing walls need to be looked at and fixed immediately, or the entire house may come tumbling down. It may require costly and complex repairs for the entire home.
As such, if your foundational problems are extremely severe and your walls are bowing, you may want to consider selling the property as-is to a real estate investor or cash buyer. These investors can either repair or demolish the home to build another property for sale.
Floors Are Sagging
Some of the most common causes of sagging floors include:
- Undersized beams
- Settling soils
- Water leakage that leads to rotting wood
- Termites and other wood-eating insects
Often, you will need to put in stronger support beams to keep the floors from sagging. Steel is usually the best material for your support columns. Steel is stronger than wood in the majority of scenarios. In addition, solid-steel shims are usually relatively easy to install. The best way to repair sagging floors is to hire a residential structural engineer to fix the damage.
With their help, you can get a specific outline of what needs to get done to repair the foundational issues. With that, you can hire the best contractor to follow the guidelines and ensure your floors are no longer sagging.
Windows Are Sticking
Are your windows or doors too hard to open and appear stuck? There are tons of reasons why your windows may start sticking. Even humidity may cause doors or windows to get stuck.
Some other possible reasons for sticking windows include loose or worn-out mechanisms and hardware, high humidity expansion, windows that are too large for their frames, or warped wood. Lastly, sticking windows could occur due to home foundational problems.
Windows can bend and become uneven whenever the foundation settles too much, or the foundation sinks too low. Hire a foundation repair expert if you have tried fixing all other possible causes of stuck windows, and the problem still exists.
Once you have repaired your foundational problem, you can then replace the windows and frames.
Floors Are Becoming Uneven
If your home has become more uneven over the years, you likely have a foundational issue at hand. You should especially look to fixing the problem immediately if your floor’s gradient drops by one or two inches every 15 feet.
Try putting a marble down on the floor and see how quickly it starts rolling in one direction. If everything starts to roll on the floors, you’ve got a serious problem and need to repair the uneven floors.
To do so, you will have to figure out the foundational problem. Then, hire a foundation repair expert to see what can get done. Usually, installing a support beam should help keep your floors more even.
You should also keep an eye out for bouncy floors, as these also indicate a structural problem with the foundation.
Should You Repair or Fix House Foundations Before Selling?
Is it essential to fix the foundational problems in your house before selling the place? The answer to that question will depend on how severe the issues are, how much money you have to spend on repairs, and how quickly you need to sell the property.
If you have plenty of time for the sale and enough funds to cover the repairs, you can likely fix up the foundation before putting the home on the real estate market. You’ll need to consider the average cost to fix up a house to sell and whether you can handle the bills.
However, the best part about renovating a house before the sale is that it will increase your home’s value and leave you with more profit.
If the foundational issues of your home are too expensive to repair, you may want to consider selling the space in its as-is condition to a real estate investor or cash buyer.
Conclusion
The guide above provided the necessary answers on how to know if your foundation needs repair. The issues to keep an eye on include any cracks in the walls or leakage in the house. You also don’t want to see sagging or uneven floors, bulging walls, and sticking windows.
If the structural issues are minor, you should likely get them repaired before putting your home on the market. However, if the foundational problems are severe and you need to sell a house fast in Pennsylvania, consider selling as-is to cash home buyers.
Cash home buyers in Philadelphia can complete the purchase of your property in only a few weeks. We buy houses Willow Grove owners want to sell, as well as in other parts of Pennsylvania, so contact us immediately!
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