Putting Makeup on a Pig

[Travis Glenn]

Good Morning BP, 

So yesterday I put in an offer for my very first investment property. It's a C class property that from my analysis would give a Cash ROI of about 20%. Needless to say I was pretty exited about it.

Last night, while I was out "celebrating", I happened to chance upon an real life inspector. Of course I showed him the property, and one of the first things he noticed was that the house had brand new vinyl siding...He then proceeded to speak 10 minutes about how vinyl siding is a bad thing and a lot of people use it to cover up issues with the house and that I could run into big problem down the road. This, in turn, scared the begeezuz out of me, so I went looking for answers, and since I've found a few articles in support of that claim. ie the forum post from Joel Owens below

Anyway, so my question is, what the heck do I do? One thing he also mentioned is that its not exactly easy to inspect whats going on under the vinyl siding. Have any of you had any bad experiences with Vinyl Siding? What steps do I need to take if my offer does get accepted? Should I pull my offer? Any advice would be extremely helpful. Thanks in advance. 

Travis

[Michael Lam]

Hi @Travis Glenn

What you have heard is true.  Not every case, but having vinyl allows you to hide such unwanted visuals.  Couple points I want to make out.

1.  I did a flip on a house that used metal siding.  Similar styles you'd see for Vinyl.  I had to do some repairs and I could not find the exact same siding.  No one sold it in my area.  So it was a huge pain in the ***, so I ended up putting stucco on an entire side.  Luckily buyers didn't care too much and I was able to sell it.  

2.  When I did open up the siding, I did see damage that was not and could not have been pre-inspected without damaging the siding.  (nothing huge but you can image it could have been anything)

3.  You will need to use other data/info to help gather insights to this vinyl situation.  What I would ask is how new is the Vinyl, and compare that to how old is the home.  

4.  I would ask before Vinyl what did they do?  was it wood panels, another set of vinyl..etc

5.  Look for any stains coming out of the vinyl, that is random, like somewhere in the middle of the exterior wall.  If vinyl not installed properly you could get water streaming behind the vinyl or leaks of it.

6.  If you have termite on your exterior wall but have not made its way up to roof or to interior areas,  a vinyl job would do a good job hiding this problem. 

7.  Tip:  Go around the house, take some small stick (heavy) and start tapping around vinyl.  Listen carefully to hear, change in sound like hallows as this could mean a gap present.  Or listen to hear "crumbling" (pronounced sound...not small ones) , as this could mean what the vinyl is attach to is deteriorating or at very least needs to be secured.  Inspectors will most of time only inspect what they can "visually" see.  Your doing more investigative inspecting.

8.  Tip:  Pay close attention to the color/pattern of Vinyl across entire home.  Look for any unusual patterns that don't match.  It'll help indicate some repair was done.  If you see this, seller is not being honest if not disclosed in their seller disclosure document.

Good luck and  hope I didn't scare you.  It may be a very good deal from what you have indicated, but do be cautious (as with any home you purchase)