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Updated over 5 years ago on . Most recent reply

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13
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Richard Bickel III
  • Flipper/Rehabber
  • Saint Charles, MO
2
Votes |
13
Posts

Slab house a deal breaker?

Richard Bickel III
  • Flipper/Rehabber
  • Saint Charles, MO
Posted

I’m just starting as a investor in the Saint Louis market. The majority of the houses that I have encountered have a basement. Occasionally a house that has potential is sitting on a slab. My real estate agent tries to talk me out of the slab houses every time. Was wondering what the general consensus is about a slab vs a basement foundation.

Most Popular Reply

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257
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215
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Michael Temple
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Toledo, OH
215
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257
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Michael Temple
  • Rental Property Investor
  • Toledo, OH
Replied

@Richard Bickel III I would caution you to be careful on these. Not necessarily avoid them, but just be careful. Last year I came across what I thought was a fantastic deal. A house in a great area priced 40K below market. I made an immediate offer at asking price and my offer was accepted. The house was on a slab and had no attic. It was an open vaulted ceiling with floor to ceiling windows on a slab.

Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, except in this house the owner had some electrical issues and decided to take the cheap way out to repair it by running all the wiring outside the walls in channels like you would find in an industrial application. I didn't think anything about it at the time and moved to inspection. My inspectors and electrician flagged the issue and explained that while what they did wasn't wrong it was ugly and to put things back to normal and make it look good that they would have to completely tear out the walls and ceiling to run all new wiring because there was no attic or basement to run the wiring and we had to get new wiring to the other end of the house.

My numbers simply wouldn't work if I had to almost gut the house to run all new wiring and then replace all that work. I had tried re-negotiating with the owner, but they refused to come down so I had to walk. I ate the inspection fees, which was minor compared to what could have happened if I had moved forward.

So I won't say never do it, but you need to be very careful. Houses like I described can be a real problem if you need to run new electrical, plumbing, or HVAC stuff because it is either buried under the slab or in this case, had no attic to run it either. This can make repairs to these systems VERY expensive.

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