Treat Yourself: Fix Your Basement Before You Move

It’s common for us to get a call, or have someone approach us at a trade show, because they are trying to sell their house but an inspection revealed problems with their basement or crawl space. Or they’re in the early stages of thinking about selling, but they know they should really take care of it first because it’s always been a nuisance.

And this is a legit reason to have below-grade problems fixed. They’re unattractive and can lose you money on a sale or turn off prospective buyers altogether.

But why wait?

We just published a photo gallery and case study from a customer in Cadillac who had first called us five years ago to take care of the crawl space, but had ultimately capitulated and not had the repairs done. Then he called us again a few months ago because the water and mold problems in the crawl space were holding up the sale of his home.

For five years, and probably longer depending on how long it was between noticing the problem and calling us the first time, he lived above a gross, damp, moldy space. Space he could’ve used for endless boxes of Christmas decorations and who knows what else filled the guest room closets and hidden corners of the house.

Why do we only think of repairs and improvements when we’re getting ready to leave our houses behind, and not when we’re actively living in them? Why don’t we want the extra storage space provided by a clean, dry crawl space, or the possible extra living space a basement could provide? Why do we live with cold floors and one person having to do the laundry because the other one is creeped out by the damp spots and spiders in the basement (not speaking from experience, not at all).

An average basement (according to the very scientific method of Googling “average basement size”) is about 1000 square feet. If that’s below a 1000 square foot home, waterproofing and finishing your basement could double the amount of living space. That could be a rec room or a theater or a bedroom for your ornery teenager so you don’t lose your mind the next time they roll their eyes at you and slam their bedroom door.

But instead it’s a damp spider cave of nightmares.

I hate to break it to you, but if you have water problems in your crawl space or basement, you are, at some point, going to spend money fixing them. Either you’re going to want to sell the house, or they will begin affecting the structure of your house and be a non-negotiable repair.

So why not do it when you can enjoy the results?