Anyone Have any idea on how much it would cost to fix a house that is settling? I got a estimate of $27,000?

Question

I am looking at a house that has settled and needs repair work done to the foundation, they said it would cost....$27,000, is this high or normal??

Answer 1

There is a very crude check for this and it is NOT 100% accurate:

the assumption is that your foundation is either poured concrete, concrete block, or brick...

Look for cracks in the foundation. If they are more or less VERTICAL cracks (top to bottom) then it is a settling issue and not necessarily a horrible thing. If they are HORIZONTAL cracks, then it probably is structural and should be tended to immediately.

If there are parts that are disintegrating and produces a hole or gap more than 2" deep and 3" round then, again, it is very possibly structural and further inspection is needed.

Pricing is a very regional issue, so costs will vary with building codes and traditional charges in your part of the country, but I don't think that $27K is all that bad for a foundation repair problem

Answer 2

Need a better description of the damage to get the best answer. We had some settling on the house we are in now. We moved in about 3 years ago, but the price should not have changed that much. We had 5 piers put in at a cost of $300 each. These were under our porch and garage, so this repair is only or settling on a slab. I do know that some of our neighbors at our old house had a problem with large cracks in the basement walls causing the wall to crumble. They all had those big steel I-beams put in to brace the wall and then the cracks filled and the walls skim coated. That was running about $8,000 per wall (about 40 foot walls) about 5 years ago. If the area of the basement is finished, you also have to have the walls sheetrocked again and painted on top of that. Then it will always look funny as they sheetrock around the large I-beams, you have all these protrusions in your wall about 10" square.
Hope this gives you an idea. Foundation work is about as expensive as it gets and you have nothing really to show for it once its done, so be really sure about this house. Also, make the seller get you a structural engineer's report to see just how extensive the damage is. There could be so much that you cannot see that even the home inspector is not qualified to check for.

Answer 3

Can't estimate what it would cst without looking at your house and the specific issues you have to deal with. Anyone who just wings a number at you without seeing what the specific problem is with your house is just guesing.