Why Masonry Separates Buyers
On a framed house, a fire damages the structure and the structure gets replaced. On an unreinforced masonry house, the fire removes the roof and floors that were bracing the walls, and what remains is a stability problem before it is a repair problem.
That brings in costs a framed-house buyer has never carried: an engineer before anything else, possible temporary shoring, specialist masonry trades, and the risk that a wall turns out to need taking down. The full position is on our page covering the brick and the exemption.
What Is the Question to Ask?
The Buyer Who Has Priced It
Their number carries an engineering allowance and a contingency for the wall, so it is lower than a buyer who has assumed a framed repair. It also holds, because the thing that would cause a revision is already in it.
They will usually suggest you get your own engineer, because a favourable report raises what they can pay as well as what anyone else can.
The Buyer Who Has Not
The commonest, and rarely dishonest. Cash buyers move between markets, and in most of the country a burned house is a framed house.
Their offer looks best today and is the one most likely to move once somebody qualified looks at the building. That revision arrives at the point you have stopped talking to anybody else.
The Buyer Who Says the Brick Is Fine
The one to be most careful with, because it sounds like good news and it is the one claim nobody should be making from the outside.
The test: ask what they are basing it on. An engineer's report is a basis. Experience of similar houses is not, because whether a specific wall is stable depends on that wall, its condition, its mortar and what is left tying it.
The Buyer Who Wants to Start Clearing
Proposals to get the debris out, take the chimney down or open things up before closing. On a masonry file that is work that changes the stability of a building somebody else still owns.
The rule worth holding: nothing structural happens to your building before it stops being your building, and nothing at all happens without an engineer having looked.
Contract Assigners
Some parties sign to buy and sell the contract on before closing. On a masonry property that leaves a stability question sitting unresolved for longer while the eventual purchaser assesses a building they were never part of inspecting.
The question that catches it: which entity will appear on the deed. A principal buyer gives you a name you can check.
The Checks Worth Making Yourself
A structural engineer. Before any buyer, because it decides what the building is and removes the uncertainty every offer is discounting for.
The build year. On the county record, free, and it is most of the answer to whether masonry rules apply.
The wall in section. Solid masonry or brick facing over a frame, visible at an opening.
Your exemption position. Nobody in this transaction has a reason to raise it, and it is worth real money.
Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Ask us what we have bought with brick in it and the answer should be specific.
We are frequently not the right answer. Where the brick turns out to be a facing over a sound frame, and the finished value in your neighbourhood carries the work, listing or repairing will beat us, and that is a common outcome in Sugar House, Yalecrest and much of the valley. Our written figure says so when the numbers point there. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.
Questions About Buyers
One Offer Is Far Above the Others.
Ask each what they assumed about the walls. That single assumption explains most large gaps on masonry stock here.
A Buyer Says No Engineer Is Needed.
On a masonry house that has lost its roof or floors, that is a claim nobody can support from outside the building.
Does a Buyer Need a Licence?
Not to buy as a principal and take title. Marketing property on behalf of others requires a Utah real estate licence, and the state lookup is free.