Sell a Fire Damaged House in the Wider Region

A List of Towns Is Not a Boundary

Approximately 41 Connecticut towns are potentially affected. That figure gets treated as a perimeter, with owners inside it assuming the worst and owners outside it assuming they are safe.

Neither reading is right, because the underlying variable is not municipal. It is where a particular batch of concrete was mixed and delivered, which depends on which supplier a builder used on a given day. The framework is on our page covering the foundation and the disclosure.

So Could a House Outside the Usual Towns Be Affected?

The Year Is the Better Filter

Concrete poured before roughly 1983 or after roughly 2015 sits outside the window regardless of town. That single fact resolves a large majority of properties, in the affected towns and beyond them.

The town building department and the assessor hold the year, and it is worth checking rather than inferring from the age of the house, because a foundation can be considerably newer than the structure above it where there has been a rebuild, a lift or an addition.

What About a House Rebuilt After an Earlier Fire?

We publish no foundation assessments, town determinations or values for individual properties across the region. CFSIC, the Department of Housing and each town hold the relevant information.

Values Vary More Than the Rules Do

Finished values across New Britain, Bristol, Middletown and Meriden range widely, and that decides whether repairing or selling is the better answer far more than any foundation question does.

Get the figure from recent sales on the specific street rather than a regional impression, because the spread between and within these towns is larger than people expect.

Older Housing Repairs Well

Much of the stock across these towns predates modern framing, and dimensional timber of that era chars on the surface rather than failing at connections. Members can frequently be assessed, cleaned back and retained.

Older housing is also, usefully, housing whose original foundation predates the affected window. The two facts tend to travel together.

Distance Widens the Offers

Away from the Hartford core, contractors price travel and buyers price uncertainty about access. That spreads the offers on the same property, because those who have visited price accurately and those who have not guess.

The Wider Region in Context

Where the problem is concentrated, see our page about east of the river. Where the quarry itself sits, see our page for Tolland County.

The Numbers That Travel With the Question

The affected window runs from roughly 1983 to 2015 and roughly 41 towns are potentially affected, though the full scope remains unknown. A house from the 1920s can still sit on concrete from the 1990s.

CFSIC, created by Public Act 17-2 section 336 and operating since January 2019, may pay up to $175,000, and buyers completing after 1 February 2019 need an engineer's report issued before closing.

Regional Questions