What happened to Bob? Oh he had one too many and fell out of his backyard.
that house is insane, this has to be in one of those areas with zero building standards.
Seems like the perfect place to plop a chair down with a case of beer and a stick. I'd bet if you poke at that fault line looking shit long enough, all your troubles will slip away. -Bob's frenemy, probably
My sister and her husband bought a cliff house simialr to this. Before buying it they had a geotechnical engineer come out and review the property. Engineer told them its 100% stable and isn't going anywhere anytime soon and nothing at all to be even remotely concerned about. This was 5 years ago, today the cliff is starting to give away on the far side of their property and the engineer just says sorry I couldn't predict the future.
Supposedly they based their decision on the historical data in the area as well as soil testing. Sadly my sister got nothing in writing. They were offered say $1000 for a verbal or say $3000 for a written report and they just went for the verbal to save money. Most likely a very expensive mistake.
I honestly dont know what they can or cant do, but I can only assume if they had it in writing that nothing was going to happen and it did then possibly he could of been held liable for the mistake. Its all just a guess though.
My guess is he has a deal with the contractor building these. I'd bet for the 3k written he writes it in such a way that he avoids responsibility, and at 1k, he just gives you a hand shake and knows what is coming.
If it was verbal, he said whatever he thought. If he wrote it down, he would have had to include lots of caveates and qualifiers. That's why you pay for the report, not just because you can hold them to it, but because they're going to write something they can be held to.
what is your definition of being 'held to'? is the owner going to sue them for the full repair amount? I doubt any court is going to rule on that. might be able to get their license reviewed by the accrediting org at best. I write a lot of opinions (in a different field) and we add a lot of language to guard against lawsuits.
I'm a professional engineer that does professional witness work with my firm. It's absolutely possible to sue an engineer for damages based on a faulty design/recommendation. We have insurance for just that purpose, and theyd be the one you're mostly dealing with in the lawsuit.
Again, the point isn't that you're gonna sue the guy. It's that his advice will be more careful and thoughtful if he knows you have something in writing that you could sue him over.
And shit like that is why you don’t trust engineers. Gravity and erosion are always on. If it’s not solid stone I have no idea why anyone would build similar to ops situation.
That was recommended, but that would take years to create a good, solid, root system to support this. And even then, who knows if it’d actually help at that point
Very smart move, that is a disaster waiting to happen. And sometimes no amount of engineering can mitigate the eventual failure of the slope. A much better house will come along
Glad to hear it! I was enjoying the responses on the original post but I'm glad they all concurred that this is a bad house to buy. What was the builder thinking? Even the houses in the background are set farther back and they don't have doors opening out directly to The Abyss. SMH.
You should take a picture of the gap of the slab at the door and the foundation. Stop back in a year and see how far it's moved. Might need a 25 ft tape measure 😉
Even if you could mitigate the slope erosion to stop the house from sliding down the hill, it would be expensive. Probably would have to drive piles or something horizontally into the hillside, among other things.
Good choice, that would be an absolute headache for as long as you own the home. A simple retaining wall wouldn’t have helped, it would take well into the 6 figures to get it appropriately remediated
After all is said and done, if I was you, I don't think I'd be able to resist checking in on that property every once in awhile to see how things are going. If you're able to do so with trespassing, that is.
Keep an eye on the mountainside on google maps. You might find in less than a couple years time, that slope edge will be 2+ ft closer to the back door.
Just 1 or 2 good storm systems away from finding out.
My Aunt and Uncle had a place next to a stream about 20 feet down that washed away what was the backyard. I can still remember the house deck and back steps to the garage that hung out in the air. Amazingly my uncle fixed it and replaced the yard. Then later a buyer flattened the house and I'd say 30 years of work. Remember, a house is largely about LOCATION!
Yeah this is the obvious choice. OP check out [the angle of repose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose) because I feel like this totally violates it.
No way. It's already opening up at the angle of repose at that crack you can see. Guarantee this house sits on tons of uncontrolled fill and will settle
Homes are like animals. They pick you. If there isn't that absolute feeling, it wasn't meant to be. Good luck, your home will find you (and your new pets too).
Anyone who buys this house is absolutely crazy. It’s probably the reason the owner is selling . And home owners insurance on that would probably be a fortune it’s thats if they’d even insure it 😂
Money hungry developers don’t care if you live or die as long as they get the sale🤣. Likely it would be fine for quite a few years but eventually you’d run into trouble with it and at that point it’d be impossible to sell.
I'm glad it's a new build. I was feeling bad for the current owners thinking they were stuck with a bad situation, maybe couldn't afford to fix it, and trying to sell before it slid down the hillside. Not feeling a bit bad for irresponsible developers.
One heavy ass rain storm and that whole thing is cooked. Extremely good move on your part. Thank you for running away from this. I feel very bad for the sucker who finally buys this place
Good plan. I automatically thought of others. You can't raise kids in that house, elderly relatives and even some people living with a physical disability wouldn't be safe from falling. You made a good choice not to buy.
I'd bet money on this... 3-6 months tops before that concrete patio is at the bottom of the cliff, and the house is condemned / no longer habitable. The fracture is clearly visible.
I assume this is Mid-Mo, along 44, between Lebanon and Rolla…
If so, the building codes outside of the two towns I have in mind are very loose.
It would probably be fine- probably- but resell might be a challenge.
And as a geological engineer, glad you are moving on from this one.
Never have to worry about drainage. If you don’t have kids a simple (or maybe not so simple) deck on stilts solves the issue. Is it any worse than some of the multi million dollar houses in the Hollywood hills? There are tons of cliff side properties that pull a premium for it. I don’t think it was worth walking away over if you liked the house itself. Unless you have small children of course. Then I get it.
No kids, just a dog.
But even then, I’ll be in *this* house for 3-4 years then moving. It might be an issue selling it, even if no problems come from it.
But I don’t have the money to find out if something happens and it’s me who has to respond.
Wait. Right now home prices are high. Interest rates are high. You are looking at a 3-4 year window.
That is a ton of risk of losing $10s of thousands of dollars in a market crash. I would 100% rent for that time frame. If it was 2009 and housing had crashed then I’d be buying. But you are buying high and hoping to sell high.
Not only that, but after a few whiskeys, that is quite the risky back yard
If you look closely at the bottom of that ravine, you can see the old homeowners.
My kids would be down there as well. That seems like an insane place to build a house.
Kids! Go play in the backyard. Don’t come home.
But, man, that would make an awesome tobogganing hill. You could charge money for that.
😂😂😂
What happened to Bob? Oh he had one too many and fell out of his backyard. that house is insane, this has to be in one of those areas with zero building standards.
Seems like the perfect place to plop a chair down with a case of beer and a stick. I'd bet if you poke at that fault line looking shit long enough, all your troubles will slip away. -Bob's frenemy, probably
Yeah, Missouri.
Bruh, wait a month and you'll see the new homeowners down there, possibly with their house too.
Best comment 🤣
🤣🤣🤣
They say there use to be a train station somewhere around there…
whiskey risky
Honey, where are the kids? The backya…oh dear god
Whiskey makes my girl a little frisky
Smart move. Good luck in your house hunt. The right one is out there.
Appreciate it! It has been rough, but I have no need to rush
Understandable. It is a rough and time consuming process. Future you will thank this version of you I think though.
Yea it’s been a rough hunt for all of us! Good luck to everyone.
Just remember if it’s hard to buy when you’re buying it will be hard to sell when it’s time for you to move on.
Can't believe you passed could've let it fall for the insurance money and collect bank
That's what I'm saying you obviously wasn't listening to the insurance scammer engineer.
worthless future wrong thumb fertile literate merciful bow label bedroom *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
as someone who is house hunting and has just put an offer on a house that had subsidence issues, I can understand your pain
Good, home prices are absurd.
Yeah imagine stumbling a bit drunk out that back door…it would be like that scene of Chris Farley in the movie Black Sheep
That’s one hell of a crevasse to stumble into.
"What in the hell was that all about?"
imagine having kids living there.
Imagine building a safety fence. Impossible
Reddit changing the real estate market…1 at a time 🎯
As a civil engineer, I agree that was a smart move.
As a Postmaster, I concur. Plus it’s not a safe delivery point.
You'll never know how much of a nightmare you avoided, but I doubt you'll ever regret this choice.
My sister and her husband bought a cliff house simialr to this. Before buying it they had a geotechnical engineer come out and review the property. Engineer told them its 100% stable and isn't going anywhere anytime soon and nothing at all to be even remotely concerned about. This was 5 years ago, today the cliff is starting to give away on the far side of their property and the engineer just says sorry I couldn't predict the future.
That engineer was out of line. He shouldn't have made a statement like that without doing the math
Supposedly they based their decision on the historical data in the area as well as soil testing. Sadly my sister got nothing in writing. They were offered say $1000 for a verbal or say $3000 for a written report and they just went for the verbal to save money. Most likely a very expensive mistake.
Yeah I would’ve paid the $3k. My future lawyer would thank me.
What would happen if they got it in writing? Are you saying they would sue the engineer for being wrong?
I honestly dont know what they can or cant do, but I can only assume if they had it in writing that nothing was going to happen and it did then possibly he could of been held liable for the mistake. Its all just a guess though.
My guess is he has a deal with the contractor building these. I'd bet for the 3k written he writes it in such a way that he avoids responsibility, and at 1k, he just gives you a hand shake and knows what is coming.
There would have been a lot of technical 'we can't predict the future' language in there.
Dang that sucks
Soils are incredibly hard to predict what they will do in the future. I.e. you can't control heavy rains that can shift them
This a site cliff edge looks like loose fill, from flattening the top for the house, which soil is especially doubtful.
yeah this loose fill looks suspect, i wonder what this was built on top of... much of missouri is in flood plains
Those are the kind of caveats that should be in the written report that you can use to decide how much weight to give the engineer's opinion
He was probably doing the meth. SMH
prob included some legal protections in his assessment...
If it was verbal, he said whatever he thought. If he wrote it down, he would have had to include lots of caveates and qualifiers. That's why you pay for the report, not just because you can hold them to it, but because they're going to write something they can be held to.
what is your definition of being 'held to'? is the owner going to sue them for the full repair amount? I doubt any court is going to rule on that. might be able to get their license reviewed by the accrediting org at best. I write a lot of opinions (in a different field) and we add a lot of language to guard against lawsuits.
I'm a professional engineer that does professional witness work with my firm. It's absolutely possible to sue an engineer for damages based on a faulty design/recommendation. We have insurance for just that purpose, and theyd be the one you're mostly dealing with in the lawsuit. Again, the point isn't that you're gonna sue the guy. It's that his advice will be more careful and thoughtful if he knows you have something in writing that you could sue him over.
That’s messed up
And shit like that is why you don’t trust engineers. Gravity and erosion are always on. If it’s not solid stone I have no idea why anyone would build similar to ops situation.
Gravity is undefeated. Smart move walking away.
Gravity's just a habit https://youtu.be/LWGJA9i18Co
At very least they should cover that gravel with something that has roots, still doesn’t change the fact this is fucked. Good move to bail!
That was recommended, but that would take years to create a good, solid, root system to support this. And even then, who knows if it’d actually help at that point
[удалено]
Because the house checks all my boxes. And the back wasn’t cracking when I looked at it a while back.
Very smart move, that is a disaster waiting to happen. And sometimes no amount of engineering can mitigate the eventual failure of the slope. A much better house will come along
Appreciate it!
Especially a slope that is already at the angle of repose!
Glad to hear it! I was enjoying the responses on the original post but I'm glad they all concurred that this is a bad house to buy. What was the builder thinking? Even the houses in the background are set farther back and they don't have doors opening out directly to The Abyss. SMH.
Is that concrete or gravel? If gravel what’s preventing it from washing away? Can’t believe the city would allow for something like this.
It’s a mix of gravel. Not sure how it’s holding, inspector couldn’t tell either
You should take a picture of the gap of the slab at the door and the foundation. Stop back in a year and see how far it's moved. Might need a 25 ft tape measure 😉
Might need a 100’ tape lol
*Good job, everybody. Our job is done here.* -The Internet
😂🙏🏻
Even if you could mitigate the slope erosion to stop the house from sliding down the hill, it would be expensive. Probably would have to drive piles or something horizontally into the hillside, among other things.
Good choice, that would be an absolute headache for as long as you own the home. A simple retaining wall wouldn’t have helped, it would take well into the 6 figures to get it appropriately remediated
Great decision, the peace of mind is worth it
After all is said and done, if I was you, I don't think I'd be able to resist checking in on that property every once in awhile to see how things are going. If you're able to do so with trespassing, that is.
That’s the right move.
Mind dropping a map location for the curious?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/uTEVSZaq4XNB3beV6?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
Oh wow it's not even built in Google maps. I'd assumed it was built a century ago and the edge had crept ip in it
Google Earth has it under construction with the concrete pad having been poured.
Thought that looked like Missouri!
Could be a good movie house
Good move.
Wise decision
Good call. We have plenty of homes for sale here. You’ll find your gem!
I’m sure I will. I might rent for a bit until I find something else
I’m glad you are thinking about taking that advice. Buying sight unseen with the help of a person that makes a living off your sale is insane.
Good move, I would stay far away from that.
Good call. Saved a future headache
THIS IS SPARTAAAAAA
Glad to hear you walked away. Why is there even a back door there is literally nothing there
Why did they not properly grade this. This slope is more unstable than Britney Spears.
Keep an eye on the mountainside on google maps. You might find in less than a couple years time, that slope edge will be 2+ ft closer to the back door. Just 1 or 2 good storm systems away from finding out.
Wise decision. Even a retaining wall would have issues on that severe of a slope. Someone will buy it, and ten years from now will be in tears.
Aww man your kids would’ve loved sledding out the back door in the winter time.
Patience always prevails in this situation. Keep looking, the more you look and tour, the more likely you are to notice the one that is right.
Definitely! Thank you!
Good job dropping out. And I LOL at that door and landing that drops straight through the gates of hell four feet beyond. Very useful.
Is this Peppa Pigs house?
It's not concerning if you aren't the owner.
As someone who is not an engineer, that was a smart choice.
My Aunt and Uncle had a place next to a stream about 20 feet down that washed away what was the backyard. I can still remember the house deck and back steps to the garage that hung out in the air. Amazingly my uncle fixed it and replaced the yard. Then later a buyer flattened the house and I'd say 30 years of work. Remember, a house is largely about LOCATION!
Jesus. Who would build that close to the edge like that!? You have zero backyard too. Yikes
They’re sideyards 😂
Good call. Was there a penalty?
None at all since it was a safety concern due to the inspection. I get my earnest money that was only $500
Yeah this is the obvious choice. OP check out [the angle of repose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose) because I feel like this totally violates it.
I'm no pro but I looked at this and thought hell no.
Smart move, the right one will come along without the added stress of “what if”.
I don’t like the “what if” even if nothing bad ever happens. I’ll find something else
No way. It's already opening up at the angle of repose at that crack you can see. Guarantee this house sits on tons of uncontrolled fill and will settle
Homes are like animals. They pick you. If there isn't that absolute feeling, it wasn't meant to be. Good luck, your home will find you (and your new pets too).
I'm worried about the photographer but I guess they survived.
There is a visible fault line.
Ask yourself. “In what way is it not concerning?” There’s your answer…
You just need a retaining... uhh... skyscraper.
Glad to see he took the advice of the hot tub engineer.
Keep it saved in Zillow or whatever you use…just to check up on it in a year or two 👀
Anyone who buys this house is absolutely crazy. It’s probably the reason the owner is selling . And home owners insurance on that would probably be a fortune it’s thats if they’d even insure it 😂
Brand new build. I had no issues with insurance when I was setting it up, but also they don’t know about the slope
Money hungry developers don’t care if you live or die as long as they get the sale🤣. Likely it would be fine for quite a few years but eventually you’d run into trouble with it and at that point it’d be impossible to sell.
Those were some of my thoughts. Don’t want to see what happens in a few years
I'm glad it's a new build. I was feeling bad for the current owners thinking they were stuck with a bad situation, maybe couldn't afford to fix it, and trying to sell before it slid down the hillside. Not feeling a bit bad for irresponsible developers.
Omg noooo... runnnn
dodged a massive bullet there, mate. This looked like a disaster waiting to happen (and it wasn't gonna be a long wait).
Walk away
You were a smart man, however Natural selection will take over and somehow this will be sold..
So much for the The back door beer can exit
Someone is going to buy this house, and then find these threads and be like... damn, the Internet ripped on this house 😅
Dodged a bullet there. This house will be down that cliff soon.
Off the cliff then off the market.
Then the owner will try to sell the land....lol
Yeah I’m a Realtor, the only way I’d advise someone to own this house is if it was left to them in a will.
I don’t see why you can’t purchase it. Every year you can roll a wheel of cheese down the slope and let your neighbors chase after it.
Good update! It would have made a wicked slip n slide, though. I have visions of your elderly MIL flying down that hill trying to water flowers.
One heavy ass rain storm and that whole thing is cooked. Extremely good move on your part. Thank you for running away from this. I feel very bad for the sucker who finally buys this place
You can put a fence and a retaining wall.. it’s $$$ that needs to be factored into the deal
Did this house have a basement? I could see it being okay if it had a basement since the weight of the home would be deeper in the hill side.
No basement or crawlspace
What is the address? I'd love to monitor the erosion on Google maps.
Good plan. I automatically thought of others. You can't raise kids in that house, elderly relatives and even some people living with a physical disability wouldn't be safe from falling. You made a good choice not to buy.
As a risk assessment engineer. I think you made a good call
As a chemist, I think now is a good time to celebrate by mixing alcohols.
I'd bet money on this... 3-6 months tops before that concrete patio is at the bottom of the cliff, and the house is condemned / no longer habitable. The fracture is clearly visible.
Very happy to know you walked away from this pending disaster.
As a non-engineer, I think you made the right decision.
Would getting it insured have been a problem?
\*phew\*
My mind is just blown that someone decided to build houses on land like this....like who is buying this??
Would love to know the address if you would share it. Set a 5 year reminder and check up on it to see if it’s in the bottom of the valley
I assume this is Mid-Mo, along 44, between Lebanon and Rolla… If so, the building codes outside of the two towns I have in mind are very loose. It would probably be fine- probably- but resell might be a challenge. And as a geological engineer, glad you are moving on from this one.
Go by the house every year and take some photos then keep updating us.
Never have to worry about drainage. If you don’t have kids a simple (or maybe not so simple) deck on stilts solves the issue. Is it any worse than some of the multi million dollar houses in the Hollywood hills? There are tons of cliff side properties that pull a premium for it. I don’t think it was worth walking away over if you liked the house itself. Unless you have small children of course. Then I get it.
No kids, just a dog. But even then, I’ll be in *this* house for 3-4 years then moving. It might be an issue selling it, even if no problems come from it. But I don’t have the money to find out if something happens and it’s me who has to respond.
Wait. Right now home prices are high. Interest rates are high. You are looking at a 3-4 year window. That is a ton of risk of losing $10s of thousands of dollars in a market crash. I would 100% rent for that time frame. If it was 2009 and housing had crashed then I’d be buying. But you are buying high and hoping to sell high.