Selling a Sinkhole Home in Florida
Sinkholes are prevalent in certain parts of Florida, particularly within Greater Tampa Bay area. Certain neighborhoods in Pasco, Pinellas, and Hillsborough are so dotted with sinkhole claims that we have dedicated a place on our website to address the alternatives that homeowners have. On GetMoreOffers.com, homeowners can find the right resources to properly deal with a sinkhole claim or selling a sinkhole home after a claim has been received from your insurance company.
GetMoreOffers.com has sold many repaired sinkhole homes in and around Greater Tampa Bay area in areas such as Spring Hill - especially in the Timber Pines Golfing community, Plant City, Wesley Chapel, and even in Gainesville. We work with an investor that buys these sinkhole properties for cash and then uses a pinning method for repair. Once engineered, by a licensed professional engineer specializing in sinkhole homes, our investor's licensed sinkhole repair construction company pulls a permit with the appropriate building department.
Grouting vs. Pinning
The most common method used when repairing a sinkhole is grouting. Is this the best method? Not necessarily. When repairing a sinkhole property using the grouting method, pressurized concrete is pumped into the ground through the many holes drilled around the house so that the home is covered below the surface and all around the base of the foundation, stabilizing the foundation to keep the home from having issues with loose soil and further sinking. Can you still have problems after using the grouting method? Sometimes this method is successful and 5 years down the road your dream home can and might be perfectly situated above ground with no more worries of sinkholes. But this isn’t always the case. Even the best engineers have no way of knowing exactly what happens to the concrete once it is in the ground. Many grouting “fixes” have been known to spread to the neighbor’s yard, down the block, disappears, or just sinks into the water tables below. Grouting also does not offer a warranty to secure your hopes of your house not sinking in the future. As a homeowner, you need to make the choice between being absolutely secure in your sinkhole repair method or going with the most used and least expensive method that gives you no warranty.
Underpinning or Pinning is another method commonly used by homeowners and much preferred by most engineers. There are many different ways you can pin a house, the most common being the use of steel rods attached to the foundation of the home and anchoring the rods deep into the soil. Pinning allows your home to work like a skyscraper by balancing the weight of the house through the steel rods and the dirt beneath the foundation. By sinking heavy steel pilings deep into the ground, skyscrapers are built on these pilings. Pinning can be overkill if the home rests on solid soil and the method is more costly than using the grouting concrete method, so many insurance companies will attempt to encourage you to go with the less expensive of the two methods. Pinning is most often warranted, as in the case with our investor, with a lifetime guarantee. The grouting method can’t give you that kind of satisfaction, knowing that you are safe for the entire life of your house. Pinning can sometimes even repair cracks in your home just through the stronger foundation and resettling process.
Our investor only uses the pinning method. After the home has been stabilized using this pinning method, our investor remodels the home and we sell it to a new owner through our website GetMoreOffers.com. The repaired homes come with a lifetime warranty against further settling.
With the new proposed sinkhole insurance costs are expected to increase 4000%, finding a repaired home that has been pinned, not grouted, may be a smart way to buy a home. The reason I hold this opinion is because the pinning method is similar to homes built in V-9-13 high wind and flood prone areas. In these expensive waterfront homes, concrete pilings are driven 18-50' below the foundation until these piles hit hard bottom. In essence, homes built in V (velocity) zones are engineered the same as a repaired pinned sinkhole home.
The average cost to repair a sinkhole home in the Greater Tampa Bay area using the pinning method is between $25,000-50,000. The pinning method is explained further in this Engineering and Stabilization Report on one our GetMoreOffers.com listed homes. Sinkhole repaired homes come with a Life Time Warranty as well.
To arrange a meeting with our investor, please call Keith Gordon at 727-942-2929.
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