AAA Home Drainage to mb. Mark Barry, respected Portland MAI appraiser, asks: What does AAA Home Drainage do? Who are we? Questions answered.
e-mail to … Mark Barry, world respected Portland, Oregon MAI Appraiser. He is one of the very best in the business, without a doubt. His opinions are relied on by lenders and individuals alike.
February 24, 2010. Portland, Oregon
Author, appraiser, real estate professional, gifted speaker, and Portland property historian, Mark Barry. Howdy Mark: Thanks for returning my call so promptly, and even while on jury duty. What a guy.
I appreciate you offering a digital copy of your Barry Apartment Report, for my discrete use.
Please send it to aaahomedrainage@gmail.com
My website is accessed by entering hand excavated french drains, hand excavated dry wells, home drainage, Portland french drains, groundwater removal, and other keys words, on any browser.
I teach home drainage as a service, and out of necessity as well.
It is great institutional advertising and good will for my company AAA Home Drainage.
I am a licensed, bonded and insured home drainage contractor in Oregon, since 1999. CCB#138340. I was a residential and commercial-investment real estate broker in Oregon, from 1978-2000. My specialty was land development, as well as residential real estate and IRC 1031 tax deferred exchanges.
My web site subject matter covers groundwater problems, water in crawl space or basement, home drainage solutions, hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems, the difference between a ditch done with a machine, and a true engineered french drain, as well as other pertinent groundwater home drainage related information.
I teach groundwater removal strategies, bad advice on home drainage, how to spot home drainage scams, and how the lenders control late disclosure of home drainage problems thru late disclosure to principals of home inspection reports, in order to control the closing time line of closing, and lock down home buyers so they can’t back out because of the drainage problem.
This often forces Oregon home buyers to take the property in escrow “as is” with drainage problems intact and pre-existing, and not necessarily, but perhaps, a few bucks from the sellers to the buyers, in the way of too little, too late compensation, for something that will not even be fixed by the new buyers.
The money is just pocketed by the home buyers often, and the cycle continues, as the home still suffers from groundwater problems.
The lenders have not cared much about what the buyers wound up with, in the form of continued home drainage problems, in the past, as they would mandate a dry rot repair, but not mandate stopping the groundwater entry that causes the dry rot.
The same stuck home buyers, with groundwater problems, become the next generation of non-disclosing home sellers, pissed off that they got stung, as many homeowners become convinced it really is not their problem anymore.
This often leaves Oregon home buyers with few choices, only days before closing of escrow.
Multi-family buyers are much more seasoned, and do their due diligence within reasonable time frames, or they tell the sellers to take a hike.
When a home drainage problem most often is found in a home, due to the late disclosure of the actual home drainage and structural conditions, it is too late for home buyers to back out without significant changes, both monetarily and emotionally.
Lenders feel they are locking the buyers in harder by doing this decades old ploy. And they are right, they are locking those buyers down hard. Most often, in opposition to the buyers given rights in the repairs clause in the earnest money agreement.
I discuss, from my perspective, how many home inspectors, work with many sump pump installers, to control public opinion on home drainage.
They spin stories constantly about underground rivers and springs under the homeowners home, as they also talk about why dry wells really don’t perk.
They attempt to, and succeed at driving sump pump installation business to their buddies who install sump pumps. This is completed through misinformation and lies, without so much as an intelligent discussion about the source of the groundwater, and it being rain on the ground surface, and within the top 18″ of the soil around the foundation, in almost all cases, during hard rains, as well as how to prevent groundwater saturation and hydrostatic pressure against the homes foundation. Prevention, not solution.
I concentrate on teaching how to stop the groundwater entry below grade into crawl spaces and basements. Not just sump pump it for life, until the electricity goes off.
I teach home drainage, and related subjects to a world wide reader group, most of whom naturally are the Portland audience.
I teach home buyers that they have additional rights, if they plan their home purchase better, how to hire a patient buyers agent, and how to discover home drainage problems early in the looking process, before loan application, or even writing earnest money agreements, if at all possible.
This is accomplished with “buyers drainage due diligence”, through their own drainage based inspections, based on my check lists of items to observe, and what they mean to the health of the home.
I teach them not to fear, but inspect, accept, or reject, without worry about all the drum beating for urgency that goes on between realtors and sellers.
I advocate my readers ordering their own home inspection reports early, after the home is tied up for a day or two, at worst, after first clearing it with their prospective lender, to make sure they will accept the home inspection report, prior to ordering an appraisal.
Without this plan, home buyers are likely jumping head long into a home purchase, without even knowing the quality of the home.
Naturally, most realtors see this as a deal killer. Oh well. I teach home buyers that the home drainage and structural volatility is just too great to be conned by that kind of logic.
I’m sure many realtors are now screaming, “time is of the essence”, and “you will lose the home if you don’t write that earnest money agreement right now, without that garbage”, but never the less, the volatility for new homeowners is simply too great, from a structural and health perspective, not to see my opinion on this as compelling to the success of them owning a healthy drainage problem free home, so I advocate listening to those plaintiff cries only to a degree.
I am attempting to change the way these good old boy standards damages home buyers and sellers. Changing public opinion takes lots of money.
The trap of late home inspection groundwater problem disclosure, is always created by the lenders, with help from the home inspector.
This is done, in my opinion, for control purposes alone, all set to the tune of how busy those home inspectors really are, and why, every time, the home inspection report just happens to come out just the last week before closing of escrow.
I write about a home sellers obligation to disclose former home drainage problems to buyers, as per the disclosure laws already in place in Oregon, and how home sellers lie their butts off to home buyers. This is a massive problem right now in Portland.
I have published articles on lenders who locally, not named of course, are currently attempting to market homes and apartment buildings with massive drainage problems. The larger institutional owners, like lender REO departments and insurance companies are some of the worst non-disclosing slip sliding home sellers I have ever seen.
One lender last week was quoted as saying, to one of my real estate agent friends, that the Bank who owned his listing was not interested in even installing a dry well and two new rain drain discharges, as per code, on a 3 year old home in their REO department. They had it sold and in escrow.
The groundwater had from day one filled the crawl space with roof water, because of two dangling downspouts dumping roof water into a pit at the side of the foundation, carved by overflowing roof water for 3 years, on the lenders watch.
Yet a three year old failed sump pump was sitting in 12″ of crawl space mud and groundwater.
This is just a basic code violation that in this case, the lender will not even fix.
The lenders request to my realtor friend, even after my proposal to solve the problem was delivered to the Bank, was that they would like to see a new sump pump installed, and for the drainage contractor to tell the buyers it was going to be ok.
I passed naturally, after giving my speech.
I write about the huge numbers of non-disclosed home inspection conditions in the Portland area alone, and the obvious lender/home inspector traps that I have mentioned. I teach the logistics and materials to use for homeowner hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system installations.
I explain badly engineered home drainage systems, and why they always fail, from sump pumps to other bad ideas that lead to disaster.
I have free e-books published for readers on my site designed to educate how to prevent groundwater problems first, there-by not needing to solve groundwater problems.
I teach readers how to facilitate their home drainage solutions, and/or how to hire a professional home drainage contractor in their part of the world, who can help them.
I avoid sump pump installations, if at all possible, and advocate the collection of groundwater on the outside of the building first, with professionally installed french drains and properly installed rain drain discharges.
I am stopping groundwater problems before they start, with hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems, installed at the base of a compacted grade splash block of dirt and clay, compacted against the foundation stem wall, and covered with river rock to match the french drain, and prevent erosion.
This is the most important aspect, with respect to groundwater damage prevention.
Check out AAA Home Drainage on angieslist.com, to see what Portland thinks of my success with groundwater removal and french drains.
A splash block grade of dirt and clay is compacted and sloped to the french drain, away from the foundation. Raised perhaps 6-8 inches at the foundation, if the homes siding is not installed too low on the wall, or if low foundation vents do not exist, either of which could prevent the compacted soil grade increase at the foundation, without first installing a window well.
Thanks for your interest in AAA Home Drainage Mark. Sincerely, Darrel Lundeen