Just today, we were checking out a home in Bellaire, where a homeowner was completed flooded with 2 feet of water during Hurricane Harvey. This was the second time the home flooded. The first was during the memorial flood, and they'd remediated and repaired everything within the home. But then Harvey came through and caused such devastation that they'd had enough and decided to leave the home.
They took their children and went to a friend's house a mile away that had 3 extra rooms to spare and have been there since.
This was nearly 8 months ago.
Since then, the home had been sitting without any remediation. and all the stuff was still inside. At this point, when we viewed the home, one of the walls (which is brick) was concave and pushing off the foundation, making the bottom bricks fall off the wall entirely! This was due to the moisture that had been trapped in the house, thus soaking up and crawling up the wood and sheet rock. This home is totally trashed, barely worth its lot value.
Had they remediated immediately and then sold later, they would have probably walked away with an additional $30,000, but the home is now worth nothing since it will have to be torn down at this point. All the wood needs to be replaced, and regardless of when the roof was redone, you can't save the roof when everything under it comes out.
This was an extremely unfortunate event for this family, and they are under a tight timeline and desperately looking for someone to buy the house. But they won't be able to get nearly what they should have. This is why you should not let water sit in a property after its flooded.
Learn more about home buying in Houston and how we evaluate homes that have been damaged on our homepage (https://houstonhomebuyer.wixsite.com/webuyhouseshouston).