Foundation Repair or Not

[Mike Watts]

I have a 1998 build 2300 ft2 single story SFR south of Houston with some foundation issues that we will be closing this week as a buy/hold rental. We received bids from three companies to repair the foundation who all said the house has about 2-3" of settling across the length of the slab and would require 70-80 piers including some interior piers to fully repair the foundation. There are some cracks in the sheetrock in two bedrooms but in most of the home the slope in unnoticeable and has not affected the finish. I own several rental properties in this area but this is my first experience with this type of repair and am tempted to just fix the sheetrock and hope that the house is done settling. Should I bite the bullet and pay the $6k-$7k for the work or patch and hope for the best?

This is also my first post to the forum and I am honored to be part of this amazing community. I have listened to nearly all of the podcasts and find the information here to be unmatched. Thanks to Josh and Brandon for creating such a worthwhile site and thanks to everyone in the community for the open and selfless advice.

[Kevin Brown]

Mike

I didn't really touch on this in my first post. If it were me, I wouldn't mess with the foundation. Theres a good chance the tenant you have in the house will not keep up with a foundation watering program (even if the house has a sprinkler system, they probably wont use it), If you level the foundation now, youll still probably need to make additional repairs when you go and sell for retail in 5 or 10 years or whenever. Id wait, and then that way if you do break pipes when you lift the slab, you were probably going to be updating the flooring before you sell anyway

Just my opinion though