[Livewire713]

Never thought of this until I talked to a friend of mine tonight. He purchased his house back in 2006 and as with most people that bought their home in that time period is underwater on his home loan. Recently his roof has started to leak and he had someone come over for a estimate to repair and he was told it needs to be torn off and replaced. $12,000 is the estimate and he maybe has two grand saved up. He hasn't called about a loan because for one thing he doesnt think they can afford it and I told him he might not be able to get a loan. As most of you know a leaking roof can become a very serious and damaging problem. He's going to get some blue tarps for now but isn't this another ticking time bomb for a lot of people that are underwater? If your furnace goes out or like my friend you need a new roof and you can't get a loan then what?

[jmnemonic]

Yikes, that's a situation I had not even considered. Seems like the options suck: 1) try for the loan and pray; or 2) borrow the money from friends/relatives; or 3) sell something to raise money; or 4) do the work himself and use the $2k for materials; or 5) stop making his mortgage payments and be ready to walk away (but enjoy the rent-free life for 6-18 months until they kick him out). The tarp thing probably won't be all that effective but I guess that's what you do if everything else fails.

[vtsnowedin]

Welcome to the world of home ownership.
The roof only leaks in one or two spots . Right? Get your a$$ up there and fix those spots and tell the shyster contractors to take a hike. Are you still working at the same job you had when you bought the house? If so what's the problem? If it was worth $2000 a month when you bought it why isn't it still worth $2000 a month to YOU now. So you can't flip it or refinance it to take a cruise. Deal.

[dinopello]

He needs to have a few more people look at that roof. There should be a less than ideal solution for less than 12K.

[Expatriot]

1. Patch the leak.
2. Do it himself. Just put the shingles right over the old ones, even if they're 2 deep already.
3. Who the F wants to pay rent on a house in which he'll never have any equity - DUMP IT. If that means filing Chap 7\13, then do it and get on with life.
4. Time to break the mold. Old mold - roof leaks - buy a new roof, go work to pay for it. New mold - fix it, patch it, dump it.

[Blacksmith]

A bucket or two of tar is probably the least expensive fix. Or you can put a tin roof on, which you can do yourself.

[Livewire713]

He needs to have a few more people look at that roof. There should be a less than ideal solution for less than 12K.

I told him to call around and to be upfront about his situation and that a complete tear off is out of the question. This is a older two story house with a very steep pitch and several valleys, not a simple roof at all. My friend is not a flipper or someone that would take a loan out on the house for a vacation. This is his first home as he is only 30 with a wife and two little ones. I would help him but there is no way in hell Im getting on that roof, to steep for me. I personally would have never bought a house with a roof I didnt feel comfortable with doing my own repairs. Another problem he has is were in Illinois and we have snow in the forecast. Im not sure how bad the damage is since I havent been up in the attic yet. My point of posting this is because there has to be other people in this same situation or soon will be. House repairs are part of home ownership but most people don't have several thousand dollars lying around to finance the repairs themselves. Most people would take out a home improvement loan but for many that won't be a option anymore. Just another problem facing underwater homeowners.

[Unconventional Ideas]

This is just the tip of the iceberg. This will be a commonplace situation for a huge chunk of the population in a couple of years.

[vtsnowedin]

This is just the tip of the iceberg. This will be a commonplace situation for a huge chunk of the population in a couple of years.

And there will be a separation between those that will suck it up and fix it themselves and those that will let the house fall down around them because they couldn't finance someone else doing the repairs. Those that will, will have a house to call their own, those that won't will become homeless zombies to use the popular term. Few houses have a roof that is even full pitch which is one foot of rise for one foot of run, get some ladders and some roof ladder hooks, jacks etc, and get up there and fix it.l

[Pops]

Yea, fixing the roof ain't fun but it's gonna need doing and pretty quick. If the guy is totally inept he should call around and get some bids to fix the leaks. Otherwise, have someone shoot a stream of water out of the hose up there so you can locate the main problems from inside the attic - don't forget that water can travel a long way on the underside of steep rafters and sheathing so track it good. Most problems are on low slopes or transitions like penetrations or meeting a wall so check there first.


In general I'm up in the air on this whole housing situation right now. One the one hand, like someone mentioned, value only means something if you are buying or selling. And who the heck am I to say prices won't come roaring back like a Macondo blowout!
On the other hand, there is 15 months of inventory on the market not counting another half dozen months worth of "shadow" inventory just waiting to drop, so I doubt we can even be sure of something like a bottom anytime soon.

And unemployment is barely moving, it doesn't look like that bunch of old farts over 50 are ever going to find a job again and UI benefits are going to be cut back - probably along with lots of other similarly wasteful spending, in favor of tax breaks for rich folks. If despite all of that we do get rolling, we are going to get whacked right back down by high oil prices again...

That house may have seen it's peak price I'm thinking - the light at the end of the tunnel just might be a No Vacancy sign.

If it were me, I'd try to sell out and find a place I could afford to maintain (it could happen). Short of that I'd cut my losses, buy a beatter car, liquidate everything I owned, start pocketing the payment/taxes/insurance and wait for the sheriff to come move me out. With a year's worth of payments and whatever else I could scrape together I'd find a little place I could buy outright and I'd learn how to make it better a few bucks at a time.

The guy played by the rules and every professional along the way who took his money should have known he was buying into a sucker deal, I don't think he should be left holding the bag.


As usual, peakoil.com doesn't advocate defaulting on your debts, the opinion expressed to give the crooks the finger are mine.
.

[pup55]

Get your a$$ up there and fix those spots and tell the shyster contractors to take a hike

I kinda like this one.
An alternate: There are plenty of out-of-work roofers floating around that you might be able to put an ad in Craigslist and find one....he and you can probably work together on the finer points until you get it roofed.

Roofing is not usually that complicated, and 12K does seem to be a bit extreme....

[jdmartin]

If you can get in the attic, you should be able to reasonably follow the water trail. Leaks will leave stains on wood, if it's not outright wet. As Pops already said, look at transitions and shallow pitches first. If you know where in the house the leak is, look parallel or upstream from that point. If the roof is too steep that you/him don't feel comfortable with ladders/roof jacks, you can rent scaffolding, set it up just underneath the roof section you're working on - then, if you fall, you land on the scaffolding. Alternatively, tie off the worker on the roof with some rope, then secure the rope to a sturdy tree or have someone below holding on.

Unless the roof sheathing is rotten (which should be evident from inside the attic), you can probably just replace a few damaged shingles.

Anyway, the point of your post, someone else already answered - those that cannot/will not repair damages themselves will soon be living in a dilapidated shack.

[Cog]

$12,000 is too much for a new roof unless the contractor found some problems that your friend hasn't told you about. If the underlying roof rafters and plywood are rotten or warped, that would definitely jack up the price. He should get some other bids and in the meantime get out the tar bucket and get busy. Or hire some out of work carpenter/roofer(there are plenty of these) to get up there and do the best he can to patch it.

Barring some big wind event this leaky roof problem didn't just start. There may well have been an underlying problem when he bought the house in 2006. Can't fix that now but a good inspection prior to buying can uncover a lot of things you wouldn't think about.

[vtsnowedin]

$12,000 is too much for a new roof unless the contractor found some problems that your friend hasn't told you about. If the underlying roof rafters and plywood are rotten or warped, that would definitely jack up the price. He should get some other bids and in the meantime get out the tar bucket and get busy. Or hire some out of work carpenter/roofer(there are plenty of these) to get up there and do the best he can to patch it.

Barring some big wind event this leaky roof problem didn't just start. There may well have been an underlying problem when he bought the house in 2006. Can't fix that now but a good inspection prior to buying can uncover a lot of things you wouldn't think about.

The underlying problem may well be that the contractor needs a new transmission for his pickup or something of that nature. Until you have taken three or more sealed bids preferable from insured contractors that don't like each other you ,the layman ,will have little clue about what the work is really worth.

[dbruning]

"but a good inspection prior to buying can uncover a lot of things you wouldn't think about."

Just do your best to get a good inspector, we got lucky when we bought our place....the guy missed a ton of things we also didn't think to check...
and over the last 4 years they have all been fixed... but it could have been a nightmare.

[Pops]

Until you have taken three or more sealed bids preferable from insured contractors that don't like each other you ,the layman ,will have little clue about what the work is really worth.

Yep, take the middle bid if

- The highest one is way high he is either trying to get to you or he has too much work to pay attention to you - or he made a dumb mistake.

- The lowest one is way low he is planning to cut corners or he has a bad rep with people who know and can't get work - or he made a dumb mistake.

(When I built jewelry stores I hired them all!)

[davep]

12,000 too much for a roof?

When we bought our place (cash) it was a dump. I noticed a gap around one of the chimneys, where water had come in and the supporting beams were rotten.

I initially recemented around the chimney (with hydrofuge additives) and placed plastic in the roof to stop any water coming into the house. But eventually the roof had to get replaced. Here in Europe we don't do shingles, it's all proper terra cotta tiles. A lot of the supporting beams were replaced too. Between that and fixing the foundations (and re-doing the porch) we spent 30,000 euros. There were other estimates nearing 50,000 euros for the roof alone. Now we have zinc around the chimneys and a rainfree house plus a 10 year guarantee.

Had I not been working abroad, I would have tried to do this myself. But I guess I have to trade-off between earnings and costs. It would have cost me at least half that amount in wages to take time off and do it myself, with no 10 year guarantee.

There is no way I would have done this had I been in negative equity on the house.

[vtsnowedin]

12,000 too much for a roof?

When we bought our place (cash) it was a dump. I noticed a gap around one of the chimneys, where water had come in and the supporting beams were rotten.

I initially recemented around the chimney (with hydrofuge additives) and placed plastic in the roof to stop any water coming into the house. But eventually the roof had to get replaced. Here in Europe we don't do shingles, it's all proper terra cotta tiles. A lot of the supporting beams were replaced too. Between that and fixing the foundations (and re-doing the porch) we spent 30,000 euros. There were other estimates nearing 50,000 euros for the roof alone. Now we have zinc around the chimneys and a rainfree house plus a 10 year guarantee.

Had I not been working abroad, I would have tried to do this myself. But I guess I have to trade-off between earnings and costs. It would have cost me at least half that amount in wages to take time off and do it myself, with no 10 year guarantee.

There is no way I would have done this had I been in negative equity on the house.

That is the math of home ownership. If you have good money coming in you can't afford to take time off to do work that you are not experienced at.
This is what the small one pickup contractors live and breath for.
If your job pays pennies and your checkbook is very /VERY thin. then you can't afford to pay someone to do it for you. You have to do it yourself and hope you have some family or friends that can steer you away from the worst mistakes. The good news is that you can do it twice and even three times before you get it right and still be cheaper then the "Professional in the pick up".

[Ludi]

I don't know how people manage who can't learn how to build and fix things themselves, it's so expensive to hire people to do it. We do most of our construction and repairs ourselves, except for a few things we don't have the skill or equipment to do (large-scale excavating) or which are dangerous (installing gutters on second floor porch roof).

[Livewire713]

Finally made it back over to my friends house today and I was able to go up in the attic and look around. First a little info on the house, its a older house, around 100years old. It's 2 stories with 10foot ceilings and the attic is huge. At least 12 foot high in the center. Its going to take a 20 foot extension ladder to get on the roof and the pitch is very steep. First thing that I noticed in the attic is there is no wood sheeting. It looks to be 1x3 boards with about a 2inch gap between each board. You can actually see the tar paper between the gaps and who ever put the roof on didnt nail into all the boards as there were nails sticking out of the tar paper in some spots. There wasnt a floor in the attic just beams so it was a little tricky getting around the attic. It looks like they did a terrible job of flashing around the chimney as I could see light coming thru. It also looks like light was coming in from around the sewer vent pipe. I guess the first roofer that came out didnt want to walk on the roof due to no sheeting under the shingles as he was afraid of doing more damage if he stepped on a opening between the boards. So the $12,000 estimate is for a tear off and then sheeting the roof, tar paper, shingles and flashing around the chimney. I’m not really sure what to tell him. I know he can tar around the chimney but this would be just a temporary fix since we have pretty harsh winters here in Illinois. Maybe redoing the flashing would do the trick, at least for awhile but he would have to hire someone to do that. Maybe it had a slate roof at one time as some of the other houses in his neighborhood have slate roofs. Im no expert, Ive done a little bit of roofing but its been on simple two sided roofs.