What We Always Put in Writing
The figure, with its lines visible. Finished value, cost of the work, carrying cost and margin. A number without those is not something you can check.
What we found on the public records. The year the foundation was poured, the permit history, the assessor's record. You get that whether or not you sell to us, because it costs us nothing and it is the information the whole decision turns on.
Our assumptions. Particularly where we have assumed something unfavourable because nobody has looked yet. If we have discounted for an unassessed foundation, that is a stated line you can hold us to when a report comes back clean.
Why Does That Matter More Here?
What We Will Not Put in Writing, Because We Should Not Be Saying It
Whether your foundation has pyrrhotite. We are not engineers, we do not carry the training that CFSIC-qualified inspectors undergo annually, and an informal reassurance from a buyer is worth nothing and could be worse than nothing to you.
Whether you have a disclosure obligation on a specific fact. That depends on what you know and how you came to know it, and it is a question for a Connecticut lawyer.
Whether you should test before selling. We have a view and we have an interest, and those two things sitting together make our view worth discounting. We will tell you what testing costs and what the classes mean, and the decision is yours.
What We Say Out Loud and Mean
That the engineer coming to look at fire damage should look at the foundation on the same visit. That is the single most efficient thing available to a Hartford-area owner and it is not advice about your legal position, it is a scheduling suggestion.
And that a report in hand generally improves what you are offered, by us and by anybody else, because it converts a discount into a fact.
What We Will Not Ask You to Do
Withhold anything from another buyer. Sign anything that characterises what you knew. Delay a report until after we have agreed a price. Or tell us informally something you have not told the record, because that puts us in possession of knowledge in a transaction where knowledge has consequences.
Has That Ever Cost You a Deal?
Where We Are Genuinely Useful
Where the fire damage is severe and the foundation question is unresolved, which is a combination that a conventional sale handles badly. Ordinary buyers cannot finance it, cannot assess it and will not wait for it.
We buy with our own funds, we can price an unresolved foundation as a stated risk rather than needing certainty, and we are not going to withdraw at the point a report comes back.
Where We Are Not
Where the house is repairable, the foundation is outside the affected window and the finished value carries the work. That describes a great deal of the western towns and much of the city's own stock, and our written figure says so.
The Ordinary Disclosures
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Nothing is charged to you at any stage, including if you decline. We are not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors, not engineers and not lawyers, and in this state the last two matter more than usual.
We buy fire-damaged residential property across Hartford and the surrounding towns, in any condition, including properties with confirmed foundation problems. Beyond this region we would be the wrong buyer.
Where to Start
Find out when the foundation was poured. Then read the two reports on our page about how the process actually runs, and the sorting question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.