Jacksonville is an area that I'm looking at and I was wondering if a local can help me out with this question.
Background: I live in Toronto, Canada and the city here back in the day filled up a part of lake and allowed developers to build homes. As a result of that, whenever someone needs to buy a home from this area, they'll need to find a good home inspector that can figure out if there is a stream of water flowing underneath the basement or not. Another example is in San Antonio - due to the climate and the soil that the city has, foundation issues are common for a house. These two observations are something that a local person would know.
So my question to the group is: when purchasing a property in this city, is there something similar in Jacksonville, where they might be some type of issue that is common in jacksonville due to geography, soil, or the way that the city was designed.
Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2018 · 74 posts · 60 votes
6y
The one thing I can think of is wood rot. Given the amount of rain that we get in the summer time, and with the humidity, wood rot is a matter of time. For long term rental properties, I prefer block or brick houses to minimize the maintenance needed with on wood or siding repair.
Investor · Jacksonville Beach, FL | NYC | Tamarindo Costa Rica · Member since 2014 · 182 posts · 130 votes
6y
The soil in Florida is very sandy, so you need to make sure septic systems (if applicable) are in good shape and look for issues with the structure or foundation that might indicate shifting/sinkholes. One of the properties I bought in Jax ending up having a septic drainfield issue probably due to something heavy (like a car) compressing it over time - we found that during inspection and the seller was able to address it before closing.