The majority of underground tanks (up to 80%) leak and if it does then you have soil and potentially ground water contamination to deal with.

The soil is clay based, so one of the mantras is "there's only two types of houses in Texas, those with foundation problems and those that will have".

Hi Sandy,You can check home steps dot com and homepath.com for free.

Remember, in these old houses, lumber was milled locally, in many cases on-site, and frequently by hand, so why would you invest effort to mill a support pier that will be unseen in the basement when it makes no difference to its function.As Brian indicated, houses were built experientially back in {pre}Victorian era and lumber was not graded as it is today - mind you, much of the lumber was of a far higher quality than what we harvest these days.The key thing to look at is whether these unmilled piers are set directly in the soil or if a footing (likely stone, but possibly concrete) was put underneath it.

This is the after-effect of hurricane Sandy, the recent Colorado floods, and other flooding/natural disasters.

Originally posted by Sandy Paris: So how do I contract from a seller.

It is too high considering the work it needs, but with Sandy, availability of housing and a large # of Asians with Cash in Flushing, NY -- I am trying to keep positive,I've gone down $11,000 since listing 2 months ago, but house needs about $100K of work.

Just look at the Super Storm Sandy damage along the Jersey coast.

The signature Waters of the Act is Congress Person Maxine Water.The Federal flood insurance program has been operating in the red for many years even before Sandy and Katrina, The premiums are just way to low to cover all the claims being made.

Over the weekend the local newspaper ran a story about a particular neighborhood having issues of high lead content in the soil.