Bart conducted a structural engineering inspection of a home that I was under contract to buy. He was generous with his time and added helpful diagrams to his report upon my request. He also provided me with a lot of photographs that he took during his site visit. Altogether, I paid a little over $1,000 for his services.
I hired Bart because the home that I was interested in buying had very uneven floors in several areas, and a portion of the front porch was sinking. His report documented these issues and proposed remedies for them. However, I think that it also overstated the current condition of the home.
Like most people, I have been in a lot of houses. I can say without exaggeration that the master bedroom of this particular house had the most uneven, sloping floor of any house that I have ever visited. Yet in his report, Bart repeatedly used the word, "slightly" to describe the degree to which various aspects of the home were less straight and level than normal. I feel that such language minimized the importance of his findings and made his report less useful in the negotiations with the home seller that followed.
I think that Bart's report should also have emphasized that some aspects of the home's construction were substandard, and frankly bizarre. For example, someone had begun to install a supporting beam under the floor joists beneath the master bedroom, but quit midway through this project and left half the beam lying on the ground in the crawlspace, and the other half literally hanging from the floor joists (thus providing no support at all, and in fact further stressing the unsupported joists by adding its own weight).
To be clear, I would not have wanted Bart to exaggerate any of the home's problems. I simply would have preferred language that more accurately described the state of the home. Also, Bart would not provide estimated costs for the foundation work that he suggested. That information would have been extremely helpful, and I think that it is reasonable to expect a structural engineer to be aware of the going rate for foundation work in his geographic area.
I would consider hiring Bart again, but probably not under the same circumstances. In part, that's because I learned enough from him that I feel more confident in drawing general conclusions about the structural soundness of homes without enlisting an expert. But it's also the case that his report was for the most part not actionable. I already knew that the front porch was sinking and the floors were uneven. What I really needed to know was how much it would cost to fix these problems, and Bart did not want to give his opinion on that. read more
