You’re house shopping. It’s exciting and fun. But what’s not fun is wasting your time looking at a home that you later find out has foundation concerns. You don’t even want to call a general home inspector or go any farther through the home-buying process for a house that has serious foundation issues.
Are there some easy ways to tell if a home you are looking at might have foundation problems?
At Anchor Foundation Repair, we understand that buyers are particularly anxious about making the right decision on a home. We have been fixin’ Brazos Valley foundations since 1985 and have inspected thousands of homes in our area for homeowners and homebuyers alike. We can give you some easy tips to help flag a home for more serious settlement problems.
In this article, we cover the top signs and symptoms of foundation issues in a typical slab home. We also discuss some signs that are easy to miss during the viewing process and how to put all the dots together to assess the condition of the foundation. You’ll have all the tools you need to do an easy foundation self-inspection for a prospective home.
Speaking of tools, you won’t actually need any for this super-easy homebuyer-style foundation inspection.
General Process for Inspecting a Home Foundation
This might seem like obvious overkill, but we want to be thorough here. When you’re looking over a home for foundation issues, it’s best to be methodical. Starting at the front door, walk through each room of the house, looking for the signs we list below.
Pay attention to every door and how it functions (including closet doors). Look around carefully at the walls, trim, and finishes. It’s less about the floor and more about what you see on the vertical. If a slab home has experienced foundation settlement, the biggest, most noticeable evidence will appear on those vertical surfaces that are getting stressed by the sinking slab.
Once you’ve looked at each room inside, go outside and take a stroll around the exterior. Again, look at the walls, around windows and doors, and look up at any horizontal trim. You’re looking for misalignments and things that don’t match up like they should.
Don’t worry, we’ll get into the specific signs in the following sections.
Typical Interior Signs of Foundation Problems
Go through the house and look thoroughly around every room. The most reliable indicators of foundation settlement or movement inside a home are as follows:
- Diagonal cracks in drywall coming off of window and door frames,
- Problematic doors that stick or don’t close or latch properly, and
- Interior trim separations around built-ins or countertops.
If you feel like it, sketch out a quick diagram of the house on a piece of paper and mark things you notice so you don’t forget.
Common Exterior Signs of Potential Foundation Concerns
If the home has brick siding, it’s easier to spot the telltale exterior signs of foundation issues, such as:
- Stair-step cracks in the brick mortar,
- Gaps forming on the sides of windows, between brick and window frame/trim,
- Separation of the brick frieze at the corners of the home (look up at the corner where horizontal trim covers brick at the top of the walls)
If the home has some other sort of siding material, look for stress points in trim or siding panels where it might look like things are pulling apart. It’s honestly much harder to tell if foundation settlement is occurring with non-brick exteriors. With these homes, rely more on interior signs.
Hairline cracks in the exterior concrete slab that you see around the ground-level perimeter of the home can be confusing and misleading. Often, these kinds of cracks are more cosmetic and don’t definitively signal a structural issue. If you were seeing larger, open cracks or cracks with displacement, then that could certainly be cause for concern.
If you’re making a diagram, jot down on the home sketch any exterior signs you spot.
Subtle and Easy-to-Miss Signs of Possible Foundation Issues
Often, home sellers *fix things up* around the house before they put their home on the market. There’s nothing wrong with this practice, except that it can sometimes mask signs and symptoms of issues. Here are a few things that can get easily missed or passed over when looking at a home for foundation problems:
- Door Adjustments – Run your hand along the tops of doors to feel for any makeshift shaving or cutting that might have been done to get a door to fit better in the frame. Sometimes, you can even see evidence of this near the top of the door if the workmanship was sloppy. Doors that have been sanded or planed would be extra smooth. You can also check for strike plate location adjustments. If the plate was moved to make the door latch or lock better, you can see evidence of this on the door jamb.
- Patched Drywall – You’re looking again at the corners of window and door frames or other cased openings for recent drywall repair work or repainting that could be covering those telltale diagonal wall cracks. Perhaps the new mud was not smoothed out well or not sanded at the edges. You’ll see a raised line where the new material was spackled on or you might notice a subtle difference in the wall texture on a patched area.
- Recent Brick and Mortar Repairs – If stair-step cracks in brick mortar have been covered up with new mortar, you might notice a difference in the mortar color over any repaired areas. It will likely appear lighter and wider than the rest of the mortar.
- Extra Exterior Caulking – Look for areas of heavy or different caulking that appears recently added or seems excessive compared to other caulked areas.
These sorts of quick-fix remedies are often done to maintain the functionality of doors and camouflage gaps and cracks. The home seller is not necessarily trying to fool you, they may just be trying to make their home look its best, not realizing that some of these signs are foundation settlement related. Or the remediation repairs may have been something done a long time ago before they owned the house as well.
Don’t assume the worst. Sometimes homes experience initial settlement after they are first built and then don’t move again. Homeowners also tend to *learn to live* with small flaws and don’t think about making them look better until it’s time to sell the home.
Putting Together the Whole Story of a Foundation’s Condition
The big thing about signs and symptoms of foundation issues is that you’re going to encounter a number of signs that all point to foundation settlement. It’s not going to be just one sign, it will be a combination of several things. So if you only see one of the issues listed above and nothing else, it’s likely nothing to worry about at the moment.
Also, there’s a difference between signs that are minor visual flaws compared to signs that cause things to not work right. If you see a crack or two in the walls but don’t see evidence of doors that don’t close or lock, then it could be a sign of foundation settlement and not a major foundation *problem*.
Determining true foundation problems can be somewhat subjective. How you feel about the sign that you’re seeing has at least a little to do with whether it needs repair or not.
Here’s an article you might find helpful if you want more guidance on how to tell if foundation repairs are needed: When To Get a Foundation Inspection (How To Tell If a Slab Has Issues).
Options After Your DIY Foundation Inspection Is Complete
After you’ve completed your do-it-yourself inspection, you have a few choices. Perhaps you have enough information to walk away or move forward, or maybe you are still unsure and want a professional opinion.
- If you saw too many signs already and don’t want to mess with foundation repairs as part of the home-buying process, you’ve saved yourself some time and money. Walk away and continue shopping for a different property.
- If you love this home and are not deterred by the prospect of getting foundation repairs, then use the need for repairs as a negotiation point.
- If you see a few signs of settlement but nothing concerning, then move forward with an offer. You should get a general home inspection and see what the inspector mentions or thinks about the situation. You can always back out later before the option period ends if the inspection results are unfavorable.
- You can also use the general inspection results to prompt you to get other professionals, like a structural engineer or a foundation repair contractor, to look at the home and offer more expertise or a quote for repairs. Again, you can use the information you receive for negotiations for repairs or to buy the home for a lesser price.
Keep in mind that getting additional inspections can cost money, but it’s worth it if it gives you the confidence you need about the foundation’s condition.
At this stage of the home-buying process, rely on the expertise of your real estate agent to guide you. Homes are bought and sold with foundation problems all the time. Any experienced Realtor® who serves areas where expansive clay soil and foundation issues are prevalent should know how to handle foundation concerns and repairs during a home sale.
Don’t Overreact To Signs of Foundation Settlement Just Yet
So now that you know all these signs to look for, and you see some of them in the home, don’t overreact. Always remember that foundation problems take many, many years to develop. Seeing some signs of settlement doesn’t automatically mean that a foundation problem is guaranteed.
Typical Texas homes with signs of foundation issues are safe to live in and it doesn’t mean the house is about to fall over. Focus on how much you love or don’t love the home and its location because those are things that you can’t change, whereas foundations can be repaired.
We understand the stress and anxiety that comes with the home-buying process, let alone a home that might have foundation issues. At Anchor Foundation Repair, we offer fair and impartial assessments, empowering education, and a fully transparent repair process. After 40+ years in business, we want you to know as much about foundations as we do so that you can rest easy in the home you love.
Want to know more about what a structural engineer or a foundation repair contractor can determine about your home? Check one of these out:
Determining Foundation Problems: Engineers vs. Foundation Repair Guys
Structural Engineer vs. Foundation Repair Specialist: The Pros and Cons
