Another crazy day in the real estate business – just when you think you have a well-scheduled calendar, a leak at a vacant REO (that we’re about to put on the market) causes a red alert back at HQ. The asset manager expects an answer, so we deploy all resources:
Our favorite flood guy is Roni at 911 Restoration, because his quotes are reasonable, compared to most – here’s his same-day report:
From my visual inspection, I found that the supply line to the toilet burst and flooded the entire house, the carpets are saturated with water, the kitchen cabinets and both vanities are damaged, the drywall is wet about one foot high and the enclosed patio is flooded as well. – Extracting the water from all the floors (carpet, tile). – Dispose the carpet pad. – Remove the base boards all around the house. – Remove toe kick from cabinets. – Removing all the damaged drywall, insulation and dispose it (about 2feet high). – Setting up air blowers to evaporate the moister. – Operating Dehumidifier to dry the moister. – Applying antimicrobial on walls and floors. – Haul all the debris.
The price for the dry out job: $4,980.00 the process will take between 3-4 days. The work would start as soon as 911 RESTORATION would get a signed work authorization.
Hopefully we won’t lose much momentum. My BPO was $399,900, freeway included.
That’s a really sad statement on our society. Accidental my ash.
Imagine my surprise to see that first picture when I came over to bubbleinfo, JtR.
Hmmm, I must say something profound–as I might be the first post. (Never had that opportunity before). Um, *Chuckle* You sound grumpy (and splish/splashy) Jim. The glamorous life of a Realtor, eh? And funny, you called that mess in the master bath:”debris”. I would have chosen a different word…
Here’s my suggestion: Jim, maybe you should have gone to the beach, watch the sunset (green flash?) and have the Beatles serenade you with “Hey Jude”. Yep, that should make you feel better! Or you could choose to get up very early tomorrow morning, and the Fab Four could sing “Here Comes the Sun”.
And now that I’ve had some fun, it’s OK if you want to ban me from every posting first again…
*Phew!* JK came to my rescue and beat me by 60 seconds. *Grin* I really do hope you have a better day in Real Estate Land tomorrow, Jim. Here’s hoping for an ice cream truck in your next video…
I can totally see that happening by accident. It’s not common, but it happens. I suppose you see everything once in Jim’s line of work.
My experience is leaks usually start out slowly, especially in that connector, which has been around for ages. Very suspect.
A close-up picture of the broken attachment might help in determining if it was an accident or intentional. If the line was deliberately cut, there’s probably not much you can do, but at least you can let people know these renters can’t be trusted.
Doesn’t California have a bad tenants registry?
Actually we had a similar issue at a 4-plex a few years ago. The toilet did spring a leak (naturally while the tenant was away) and it caused $8000 in damage.
The thing that bothered me was the insurance check took a LONG time to get to us. We actually had to go to the office of the underwriter and apply pressure to get it many months later.
The story we were told was that since Katrina had just happened, the insurance company didn’t have the liquidity to pay us quickly. Sounds fishy but plausible.
At the end of the day, these things happen. Parts fail and cause problems.
Hey Jim…your blog is full of s**t!!!
Someone had to say it. 😀
-Erica
IMHO, it could certainly be an accident. One of our old neighbors had this happen to them when they were on vacation. 🙁
Sorry, Jim. That totally sucks.
Looks legit to me
A question, given that the unit was vacant why was the water not turned off? When one is gone for more that a day one should turn off the water to the house at the shutoff, so as to prevent this sort of thing. If trying to sell the place being able to show the buyer where all the shutoffs is would not hurt anyway.
I was thinking the same thing Lyle. I would think there would be a procedure for recently vacated homes such as turning off gas, water, electricity?
This happened to one of our neighbors (~15 yr old house). The one piece solid corrugated copper toilet supply line / valve cracked and flooded their house from one of the upstairs bathrooms.
We went around our house and replaced all the toilet and sink supply valves and lines with braided stainless steel hoses to try and avoid the same fate.
Lyle, good tip! I’ll have to do that myself.
Looks like the five grand only covers removing the damaged stuff, not replacing the drywall, cabinets, carpet, and who knows what else. But when an old, boring, generic tract home by the freeway is worth four hundred thousand dollars (after a price crash even), I guess that’s no big deal.
I had never thought of doing that Lyle…think I will start with my next vacation…
A friend of mine is in the business of water damage repair and he says never, ever leave your home for more than 1 day w/o turning off the entire water main.
He sees stuff like this daily!
Turn off the water main? What about sprinkling the lawn?
Jim,
Two concerns here.
1. A water restoration firm that can’t spell “moisture.”
2. Who’s going to pay? Does the bank have a policy? If so, it must me a large blanket type policy and the deductible may exceed the value of this loss.
(I’d estimate the “cosmetic” repairs will run between $10,000 – $15,000.)
The bank has insurance. I’m with Jeeman, we want to keep the grass green, though with the rain lately it could have been turned off.
Second bid came in today, $13,300 for the exact same work.
A question further: does the code require that the house and irrigation system split early in the pipe chase, i.e. the rest of the house is downstream from the split? That way you have a manifold with 2 valves one for irrigation and one for the rest of the house. It would seem to make sense even if not required, and give the needed protection until with the next drought CA finally gets its act together and bans all outdoor irrigation.