Ever Opened Up a Wall to Find a Surprise?

Question

Question for the group: what’s the worst “hidden issue” you’ve uncovered once demo started?

On one of our flips, demo revealed that several basement support posts had been shimmed with scraps of wood instead of set on proper footings. The GC’s original bid didn’t account for structural repair, and the investor was staring down a costly change order.

Here’s what we did:

- Brought in a structural engineer the same week for quick specs.

- Negotiated the repair scope with the GC to keep pricing tight.

- Got approvals and work underway within 5 days, minimizing schedule slip.

What surprises have you run into once the walls came down?

Juan Cristales · Answer

Sandy Lane: This house will go down in infamy as the worst termite damage house I've ever done. Bought it cheap and thought I had a GRAND SLAM! But nah.... thinking I would have to do some framing work and actually having to do framing repairs to all "four" sides of the house... killed the deal. HARD! In some places, the base-plates were completely gone and the wall studs were just floating in the air!!!

In the end, instead of keeping it as a sweet rental, just sold it so I could get my money back.

Sultan Ali · Answer

Oh man, I’ve had my fair share of surprises. Worst one was opening up a kitchen wall and finding water damage that had rotted out the studs looked totally fine before demo. Had to reframe the whole section, which definitely ate into the budget. Always feels like every flip has at least one hidden “gotcha.”

Warren Ifergane · Answer

We’ve seen a few surprises come up on projects our borrowers were working on, but the most common ones tend to be old plumbing and electrical hiding behind the walls. Things look cosmetic at first, then once demo starts you find galvanized plumbing, outdated panels, or wiring that won’t pass inspection, and suddenly the scope expands.

Another one that pops up more than people expect is foundation or drainage issues that weren’t obvious during the initial walkthrough — especially in older homes or properties that sat vacant for a while.

The investors who seem to handle it best are the ones who build a little contingency into their budget and timeline from the start, because almost every project has at least one surprise once the walls open up.

That said, the faster teams usually do exactly what you described — get an engineer or specialist in quickly, adjust scope, and keep the project moving so the timeline doesn’t drift too much.

Andy Sabisch · Answer

As Peter said, the older the house the bigger the surprises.  We have opened walls and found wiring down with lamp cord, wiring that was simply twisted with no box or wire nuts or tape inside walls, joists that were cut almost all the way through by plumbers running piping (fairly common even today), wiring with nails through it along with burn marks (ever wonder why old homes catch fire?), plumbing that looks like a 3 year old did it (sloping away from the stack) . . . but newer homes are not always better.  We had a property that had a new gas hot water heater installed 6 months before we bought it . . . great right?  Well we thought so until we walked out to our truck and I happened to look up at the roof and note that there was no vent through the roof for the gas vent.  Looked up in the attic and the installer had simply run the vent into the attic - along with the CO that went up and back in.  Some you can see in advance but once you open walls, the sky is the limit as what might turn up.

Peter Mckernan · Answer

The older the house, the worse this will be.. I just did a rental that had to be basically redone top to bottom, and we had to do everything from remove a sub panel that we did not think we had to do to re-pipe a lot of the house due to the old piping and moving the kitchen around.

An older house does not mean that it is the worst thing to buy, it just means there might be a lot more needed to get to a solid ARV. Just make sure that you get full details on it all for the subs and contractors before your contingencies are up. Get the GC and the subs to crawl all over the house, condo, or townhome.

Juan Cristales · Answer

Been there bro... I got so tired of it. Switched over to new builds instead. More predictability... Less "gotchas."

Theresa Harris · Answer

timely, but not what you're expecting.  I was watching a youtube video of someone doing renos and they were about to seal up their crawl space.  They joked about going to the store to buy a skeleton to put in it.

Ever Opened Up a Wall to Find a Surprise?

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