How a Base­ment Water­proof­ing Com­pa­ny can Help Sell your Home

Apr 22, 2012 • By Matthew Stock.

You can tell it’s spring because all the signs are there: daf­fodils, base­ball, aller­gies — and ​“For Sale” signs pop­ping up on front lawns. As we con­tin­ue to strug­gle with eco­nom­ic recov­ery, sell­ing a home is a tough job in most parts of the coun­try. Home­own­ers are fac­ing low­er prices, pick­i­er buy­ers and glut­ted mar­kets so it makes sense to elim­i­nate any poten­tial stum­bling blocks to sell­ing a home, right?

One of the quick­est ways to kill a home sale is to show a poten­tial buy­er a damp, leaky base­ment or crawl space. Even if the leak is minor and hap­pens only when there’s a tor­ren­tial down­pour, most buy­ers will make a fast exit and head for one of the many sim­i­lar homes for sale that have dry base­ments. Of course, in Illi­nois, Wis­con­sin and Indi­ana sell­ers are required by law to dis­close any sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems with their homes; foun­da­tion and seep­age issues are men­tioned specif­i­cal­ly on these states’ real estate dis­clo­sure forms. 

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Ask your Real­tor® about how these base­ment water­proof­ing prob­lems may affect the sale of your home:

Do you have Seep­age Prob­lems? In the cur­rent buy­ers mar­ket, most buy­ers will avoid a home with a seep­age prob­lem, so why not address the issue before show­ing the home? Most base­ment water­proof­ing war­ranties are trans­fer­able to a new own­er, so you can offer prospec­tive buy­ers the secu­ri­ty of know­ing that any future repairs will be done with­out cost to them.

Also, real estate pro­fes­sion­als have told me about the ​“rule of five” — when a home inspec­tor iden­ti­fies a prob­lem, the buy­er will seek five times the actu­al cost of repairs as a cred­it at clos­ing. FIVE TIMES! Why give away the farm when the actu­al repair might be as sim­ple as repair­ing a foun­da­tion wall crack for a few hun­dred dollars?

Is your sump pump on its last legs? Imag­ine being days away from clos­ing on your home and your sump pump fails dur­ing a storm! A soak­ing wet car­pet, or worse yet, a foot of water on the base­ment floor, are gen­er­al­ly deal-break­ers. A new pri­ma­ry sump pump or bat­tery back-up sump sys­tem may save the day.

Are your down­spout exten­sions an eye­sore? Take a look at your home from the street. Those exten­sions you got for your down­spouts at the big box store don’t look so good lay­ing all over the flowerbeds and the lawn, do they? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea to get the water away from your foun­da­tion to help pre­vent seep­age, but under­ground down­spout exten­sions will add a lot to curb appeal when your home is on the mar­ket and make it eas­i­er to keep your lawn and land­scap­ing tidy.

Are your Win­dow Wells in Good Shape? Speak­ing of curb appeal, con­sid­er the impact well-main­tained win­dow wells can have on the val­ue of a prop­er­ty. Any­thing on the out­side of your home that looks worn, bro­ken or messy will detract from the val­ue of your prop­er­ty; ugly win­dow wells are right out there for buy­ers to see. A miss­ing win­dow well cov­er can be quick­ly and inex­pen­sive­ly replaced, a rusty lin­er that is pulling away from the house is a pret­ty quick fix and a replace­ment for a failed drain can be eas­i­ly installed.

Is Your Crawl Space a Scary Place? A dark, damp, drea­ry crawl space strikes fear in the hearts of the bravest buy­ers. If your crawl space has a dirt or grav­el floor, installing a crawl space encap­su­la­tion sys­tem will turn it into a bright, dry, usable space. Sev­er­al real estate agents have told me that sell­ers who installed a lin­er sys­tem before list­ing the home for sale were able to increase their ask­ing price by more than the cost of the work. And, the home sold more quick­ly than expected!

I wish I had a crys­tal ball to tell you when the hous­ing mar­ket will get friend­lier to sell­ers, but the last one I saw was being used by the Wicked Witch to keep track of Dorothy and Toto. I can pred­i­cate with cer­tain­ty, though that a few sim­ple repairs and improve­ments can add val­ue and help expe­dite the sale of your home.

Ask your Real­tor if a walk-through by a base­ment water­proof­ing com­pa­ny will help sell your home. We’ve done lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of these at U.S. Water­proof­ing and our advice is free!

Tags: u.s. waterproofing, basement waterproofing chicago, basement waterproofing northwest indiana

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