The Sinking House in South Minneapolis
I was out with one of my rehab customers in South Minneapolis a couple weeks ago. We were touring foreclosure properties for him to buy, rehab and rent out. We were in a very nice area is Southwest Minneapolis (4xxx block, west of Chicago).
We pulled up to this cute story and half house on a quiet street. It was getting dark and as always in foreclosures, there were no light bulbs in this property. We enter the house and as my customer walks into the dining room, he falls. It turns out the dining room is sunken about 6-8 inches like you would see in a 1980’s property (but this one is built in 1930). Strange.
We walk around looking at everything. I open a closet door and notice that the closet is also sunken. Now we are really scratching our heads. The rest of the trim and doors are original so we are unsure what is going on until we go into the basement.
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| Notice the massive cracks in the floor | The center of this is 12″ lower than the original floor. |
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| This wall was originally on the floor. | It sunk so far that it broke the pipes! |
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| Nice crack. Think that’s a problem? |
According to my customer, it turns out this house (and the entire block) was built on an old garbage dump from the turn of the century. Most of the houses in this area has similar problems. The sunken dining room and closets are actually where the previous owner put in a new subfloor to level out the extremely out of level floor brought on by the sinking house. In the basement, the floors are 6-12″ out of level in places, which has made the 1st floor out of level by 6-12″ in places.
Shame. It was a nice house, but get the wrecking ball because this is not going to get any better!
This is more of a stupid property CONDITION than a REPAIR. All the same, informative and detailed.