Your home’s foundation is one of the most important things in your home. Here’s why!
The real estate market consists of different clients with different tastes. Some tend to focus on how many bedrooms there are in a house to accommodate a big family, or have it rented by college students. Others some pay more attention to how big the yard is for recreational or gardening purposes. Whatever your preferences are, you should know that the home’s foundation should be one of the first things you should really check before everything else.
What Makes The Foundation Important
Be it rain or shine, the roof and walls of the house shelter you from any the harsh elements. These parts of the home allow you to live a comfortable life through all but the most extreme weather. Meanwhile, the foundation is constantly under the strain of those features, plus the rest of the house.
Because everything’s built on top of it, you can say the foundation is the heart of any residence. With this principle in mind, if the foundation is undamaged and stable, its integrity will allow it to support the distributed weight of the house. When looking for a new place to move to, you should limit your options to houses with a solid foundation.
Why Foundation Repair Raises Home Value
Let’s imagine being in the buyer’s shoes for a while. You see an expansive, well-kept property that’s perfect for many activities. Inside, the rooms are mint-clean. The walls are free from cracks, and the floors look good as new. You can already see yourself living in this house.
However, once you go down the lower level, you see water seeping through cracks along the basement, with the musty stench of mold thick in the air. These signs of water damage are potential deal-breakers, and you would have likely changed your mind if you come across these problems.
As the seller, you must make the house as attractive to potential buyers as possible. Unless you got lucky enough to catch the eye of someone who adores renovating their home as a hobby, then you should hire a foundation repair company to come and work on the home’s damaged foundation.
Aesthetic purposes aside, shouldering the task of repairing the foundation beforehand may lighten the load for your buyers because a damaged foundation is an invitation for common house problems, such as the following:
- Mold
- Flooding
- Poor insulation
- Pest infestations
By having the foundation repaired before selling the house, not only will you be helping your buyers, but you’re also avoiding any liability for selling a house that can cause various problems due to poor foundation.
Furthermore, having the foundation repaired also gives you (or the buyer) more opportunities to renovate the house, as a fresh foundation could make it possible to install new features that wouldn’t be possible before repairs. Therefore, if you’re planning to invest in this house to redesign further or improve its layout to increase its value, then prioritizing a stable foundation is the best way to start.
What To Consider When Repairing The Foundation
Hiring a foundation repair company again and again because you can still see hairline cracks along the foundation is a tremendous waste of money. Before you proceed to have the foundation repaired yet another time, why not check on outside factors that can affect the foundation, such as the following:
1. Landscaping
Although surrounding the house with nature makes it look more attractive, it’s notalways a good thing for the foundation. As trees and other plants grow, their roots tend to go so deeper into the soil, some of these roots might end up digging into the foundation, causing cracks in it.
Learn all there is to know about the plants you want to grow in your property. Their lifespan, the length of their roots, the distance they need to grow—everything. This way, you can plan how to arrange the plants that are pleasing to the eyes without putting the house at risk.
If you want to play it safe, why not try potscaping? Instead of wracking your brain on landscaping, you can use potted plants to bring life to your property without having to worry about the soil around your foundation. Furthermore, your buyer will have the freedom to move these plants around in case they want to change things up after acquiring the property.
2. Drainage System
Because your home’s foundation is surrounded by soil, it may not be easy to know what will happen or how the ground will shift, especially with groundwater involved. Soil is somewhat similar to wood: it expands a little if it absorbs water. While this won’t be a problem for your plants, this can be a serious threat to your home’s foundation.
House foundations are often surrounded by clay soil. This type of soil does the job of holding the water to keep it away from the foundation. However, if you leave the ground dry—especially during the peak of summer it could be prone to swelling when it absorbs rainwater. If a rainstorm comes rolling in, the water will oversaturate the soil, forcing it to expand so suddenly that it pressurizes the foundation to the point that it can cause cracks. To keep this from happening, regularly hydrate the soil immediately around the house.
3. Land Preparation
The soil’s moisture absorption could also be affected by how sloped the terrain is. If the land slopes into your house, rain water runoff is naturally channeled towards your building. Causing soil saturation. This could cause the foundation to shift and become uneven, which itself could compromise its structural integrity.
Resolving this problem may require significant foundation repairs because workers need to go under the house to check the soil out. In most cases, uneven soil is stabilized and reinforced by saturating the soil with concrete aggregate.
Building Up
The foundation is an often-overlooked part of the house, ignored in favor of having a better-looking home. However, that doesn’t make it any less important, and it deserves more attention especially for those looking to sell a house. For the seller, keeping the foundation in top shape will increase the value of the residence. For buyers who are still new to the real estate scene, learning how a solid foundation can affect the entire house is a must if they’re looking for the home of their dreams.
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