KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How To Ensure A Home's Foundation Is Solid

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

And welcome to another edition of the nerdy agent podcast. Audio showing of the week. We are changing the name of this. Love it. We're working on planning out our topics a little bit more concisely to make sure we're bringing the best valuable content to you, the listener. And so this week, we are going to talk about foundations, specifically foundation repairs, but also what to look for on the main level of a house.

If a house might have an issue with the foundation. I actually toured a house a few days ago and it had the safe basement beams in the basement with a bowing wall. And so I thought this would be a good topic for this week. So to start, I just want to talk about if you're in the basement, you can see the exposed foundation. What are you looking for to make sure foundations in good condition? And to clarify, none of us are structural engineers.

We're just guys that research this stuff. So what do you look for in the basement when looking at the foundation in order to determine if you should suggest a structural engineer look at the house for your client? So typically when something like that's rigid moves, what happens to it? It cracks. It splits. Wood, concrete, a concrete driveway, right? If there's a crack in it that would suggest that it moved, right?

Because it's rigid, so it's not supposed to move. And when it does, it will give way. Foundations are no different. So whether you're looking at a block foundation or a poured foundation or a stone foundation or a brick foundation, we have lots of, you know, before the 1930s, we have lots of different styles, but the most common ones that we do see here, you know, from 1945 on would be a block foundation most of the time. New construction now, they do a lot of port foundations. But on a block foundation specifically, it's pretty easy to see if it's moved,

right? And that's my point is like, if there's a crack in it, that means it has moved. Now, through talking with our go-to structural engineer, Craig, we've determined that a horizontal crack is kind of your first sign of danger because that would suggest that the wall has moved forward like bowed whereas like a vertical crack may have just suggested that the backfilling put too much pressure on that wall when they did that so i've actually had him come out to a house and we were worried because it was a walkout backyard full foundation so it wasn't stick frame back there and you could see outside and it was on the back of the back of the the house, back of the house, and it was a vertical crack. And it was an investment property for my

clients. And so I said, we should have Craig. Just look at this if we get under contract. So he comes out and he looks at and he goes, yeah, that's not a problem at all. And I was like, we can see outside. He's like, yeah, I just cock it and whatever. It's not a big deal. Probably happened a super long time ago when the house settled. It just vertically just cracked right there. And he goes, but this one over here, one that we weren't even really looking at. Looks like they've been repairing it over time and it's horizontal, which is suggesting that this wall is moving in. He like put a level on it. It could show that it wasn't perfectly square. He's like that one I would probably keep an eye on.

So there's different things to look for. And I think, Luke, to your point, not to hog all the time on the podcast, but the biggest thing when I start to see if the block has moved, shifted, horizontal, if there's a stair step crack, whatever. And it seems like the floors are unlevel upstairs. So like you put a marble on the floor. That was the next thing I was going to talk about. Yeah.

So I was with the basement foundations first. Okay. So yeah, I'm just looking at these cracks. To your point, Luke, sometimes safe basements. might be a different local company in your area. Minnesota water systems does the same thing. If you see that they've likely when they do these repairs, they put in a sump pump and drain tile system,

that's to relieve what's called hydrostatic pressure here in Minnesota. The water runs off your house. It goes down into the soil. It doesn't just disappear. And then when it gets cold like it is now, as you all know, when water becomes hard, it gets bigger.

So that pushes on the foundation and can cause some of that bowing that you're talking. about and some of these companies will come out and try and square the wall up or do whatever. So a little bit in the weeds. I want to make sure the people that don't have any knowledge of foundations initially. So if you see crack on the foundation, that oven itself is a concern. A good thing to be able to say is horizontal crack typically is a little bit more concerning than a vertical crack. In both scenarios, I always suggest structural engineer as you should as well. So have one on your roller deck. Correct. So the next thing I want to talk about is let's say you walk into the house, you don't see the foundation right away. That's when you're looking at the

foundation, what in the house can you see that might indicate there's something going on with the foundation and showing itself on the rest of the house? So two things, because I'm not as privy to the expertise that AJ has about houses just in general. So I'd say my typical thing when I walk into a house is, A, on the front end, I'm doing my research. So I know neighborhoods, we talked about this before, know like the areas you're looking in, because if I'm looking in northeast Minneapolis where I know most of the houses were built around 1900 or before, and I know they have these old stone, they have a higher likelihood of having some of these issues, right? Because the foundations are older and they weren't built as well. So I'm going into it looking for some more things and I'm

going to be a little bit more sensitive to the feel of that house. On the main levels and specifically the upper levels, you can tend to feel when a house is settled in ways that may or may not be problematic. But if you walk into a house and you're like, well, this is an older house. So sometimes in these older houses, we tend to see foundation challenges. So we're just going to kind of feel around and make sure we don't feel like we're walking downhill or we're slanting, things like that. You can typically tell when there's some sort of settling happening because you're going to feel a little bit dizzy and a little lightheaded almost. I tend to feel a little uncomfortable in those houses. I don't know how people live in them, to be honest with you. But I say that going into the house

because then the clients are prepped for it. And then I tell them like, hey, it feels like I'm walking downhill a little bit down right here. Let's look at this spot in the basement because this is where it seems like maybe there's some settling going on and we just have to make sure that there's proper support, et cetera, in that spot. So I'm trying to like prep them, then show them, then kind of go downstairs to like look at the stuff AJ's talking about and see if there are cracks or see if there are, you know, maybe support posts that were put in after the fact because it was settling in, et cetera. Because that's from an experiential standpoint, I think important that they know that you're looking out for them in that way. So that's kind of how I'm looking at it from a showing standpoint.

You do make a good point on the age of the house does matter a lot. I typically tell people if a house is built before 1940 and your ages might be different, seeing some sort of movement in the floors isn't abnormal because of those foundations. If a house is built in the 45 or newer and the floor is moving, it's a lot more concerning to me about the foundation because those I barely ever see movement in those floors. The last thing I want to talk about was there's other things in the house you can see. So like at this house that had this foundation repair, we walked in and I already knew they had the foundation repair because they had listed it. But I started looking around going, sheetrock is cracking everywhere.

The foundation repairs on this sidewall, but the sheetrock above these windows is clearly moving. And that the opening for the door is slant in three inches, right? And that's like, that's the main thing Craig will do. He'll walk into a house. And before he even goes in the basement, he starts opening and closing all of the doors. Because those doors, likely, if they haven't been replaced, have been there since the house was built. And if they're catching on every single door, you know that the framing has been moving because of what's going on in the basement. So it's, it's an important point to make. Sometimes the windows

just open open, yeah, because it's out of square. Um, and that is a definitely a cause for concern. All of this, by the way, guys, oh, I should say 99% of these problems are water related. So the first thing you can check for, especially in a 1920s house is, do they even have gutters or has it had no gutters for 103 years? And the water is just pouring now next to the foundation, freezing, pushing, getting underneath the, um, the floor of the basement, screwing with the footings that are in the middle of the house because to Josh's point, you might get upstairs and you can sense that there's a spot that the floor just dips down in the middle. Well, that suggests that that footing has gotten eroded away or it wasn't properly built in the

first place. And now you've got that slanty situation. Is there anything else that you're looking for at a house outside of looking at foundation, outside looking floors, sheetrock, doors, windows that we would look at. Not really. I mean, you'll see some cracking on the ceiling sheet rock as well from time to time. One thing to note is there's a lot of situations where cracking on the ceiling sheetrock is not as concerning. Notably, if there's a vaulted ceiling, it almost always cracks in the middle. So just keep that in mind. It's called trust lift because as that framing starts to move, it pushes together and it can cause those cracks to happen. I see that on five-year-old houses all of the time, so it's pretty normal. But again,

call a structural engineer if you have any concerns. It's the easiest way to cover your butt and to cover your buyer's butt by saying, let's just pay 350 bucks, have a guy who's went to school for this, has been doing this for a very long time, give us a qualified opinion. He might tell you it's good, it's bad, or it might be somewhat gray. But he's going to tell you if it's gray, hey, here's three things you can do to make sure this doesn't get any worse. Any agents out there that have concerns on how their clients will feel if they say that they don't know enough and need to talk to a structural engineer for potential issues, all you need to be able to do is point out if you see cracks, if you see doors not closing correctly,

see windows not opening correctly, anything that looks of concern. And every time I've looked at my clients and said, in this scenario, I'd highly suggest a structural engineer because they went to school for that and they're really good at it and they know more than me. Never had anybody balk at that. They've always been like, oh, that's really helpful.

Actually, to know that we have that option. So that's all we have this week for the nerdy agent podcast, first ever audio showing. Bye bye.