Purchasing a house with Steel Ibeam repair.

[Wes Peters]

Hey folks, i went and checked out my first potential deal today and wanted to see what folks on Bigger Pockets had to say about an issue that made me a bit uneasy. The basement has some concrete that has bowed in a bit and has been reinforced with a few steel i beams. I was wondering if this is something that will cause trouble down the road? Or effect resale value?  Are the beams a permanent fix or just temporary? Any info would be appreciated! 

[Dustin DuFault]

Hey Wes! I think you will want an engineer to look at this. It looks to me form your picture that the concrete wall is bowing into the basement there, is that it? So the I-Beam was installed to hold the structure up since the concrete was no longer structurally sound, right?

As far as residential construction material, I-Beam is just about the strongest you can get, but my concern, as an amateur, looking at it would be how they are transferring the load to the ground. There needs to be something with mass under the beams to support the weight above. Normally this would be a footer --- a mass of concrete under the original concrete wall and underground. If the I-Beams are not resting on something solid like that then they will do very little to hold the weight of anything above the.

In short, I would ask the seller for documentation that what they did was done to an engineers specifications and if they do not have that already, that's certainly a concern and a warning that they may have put this together themselves... either way I'd get an independent person to look at it and say it's either good to go or needs to be corrected.