In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, host Walter Bowser sits down with Jeff Wedig, Owner of Triton Foundation Repair, to discuss foundation maintenance and bust common repair myths. They cover critical preventative measures like gutter installation, the impact of Oklahoma’s unique soil conditions, and how to identify early warning signs of foundation trouble. Jeff also shares advice on what homeowners should ask when purchasing a home with previous foundation repairs.
Understanding Your Home’s Foundation With Jeff Wedig
Jeff Wedig is the Owner of Triton Foundation Repair, a full-service foundation repair company based just outside of Oklahoma City. With over 20 years of experience in the construction industry, Jeff’s team offers 19 different foundation repair solutions while emphasizing prevention and maintenance to his clients. His innovative approach includes teaching classes and working directly with customers to help them avoid future foundation issues.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [01:15] Jeff Wedig shares his 20 years of experience in foundation repair
- [05:42] Why Jeff got into the foundation repair industry
- [08:38] Can retaining walls become a homeowner’s nightmare — and why?
- [15:45] Early signs of foundation trouble every homeowner should recognize
- [20:21] Common myths about foundation issues, repairs, and costs
- [23:13] How Triton Foundation Repair’s non-sales approach sets them apart in the industry
- [28:28] Why a home with foundation repairs could still be a great buy
- [39:22] Jeff explains why gutters are vital in preventing foundation issues
- [47:29] The difference between concrete piles and steel piles
- [52:26] Jeff’s advice to people dealing with foundation issues
In this episode…
Cracks in walls, sinking floors, or sticking doors can strike fear into the hearts of homeowners, signaling potential foundation issues. But how serious are these signs, and what should you do when they appear? Are costly repairs always necessary, or are there preventative steps that can help?
According to Jeff Wedig, a seasoned foundation repair expert, not every crack or uneven door requires immediate attention. He highlights that many foundation issues stem from simple, preventable problems like poor drainage or inadequate or nonexistent gutters, which can easily be addressed to protect a home’s structural integrity. Jeff believes educating homeowners about these maintenance steps is key to avoiding high repair costs. His philosophy focuses on removing the “fear factor” from foundation repair, making proactive care accessible and easy to understand.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Walter Bowser on LinkedIn
- Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Jeff Wedig on LinkedIn
- Triton Foundation Repair
Quotable Moments
- “When people need you, they need you. And when they don’t, they shouldn’t fear you.”
- “The biggest myth of foundation repair is that this costs 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000.”
- “If you can put a nickel in the crack in the brick, it’s worth having it evaluated.”
- “It sounds kind of dumb, but look at your house.”
- “Gutters are considered a property improvement. They’re adding to foundation repair’s maintenance.”
Action Steps
- Engage in continuous learning: Regularly attend workshops or online courses about emerging technologies to stay updated. This helps you overcome the challenge of technology obsolescence and ensures you remain competitive.
- Embrace hands-on experience: Actively participate in tech projects or use new software tools to gain practical experience. Hands-on involvement addresses the fear or hesitation of technology by creating familiarity and confidence.
- Utilize community resources: Join online forums or local tech groups to share knowledge and learn from peers. This collaborative learning approach helps address specific technological challenges and find solutions together.
- Prioritize cybersecurity education: Take courses or attend seminars specifically on cybersecurity to protect personal and organizational data. With increasing digital threats, understanding cybersecurity helps in mitigating risks.
- Adopt a problem-solving mindset: Approach technological issues with a mindset focused on finding solutions rather than getting overwhelmed. This mindset encourages innovation and adaptability to technological changes.
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 00:04
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Walter Bowser 00:20
Hey guys, Walter Bowser, here I am, the host of today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast, where I connect with top business owners and real estate professionals. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter, we are a full service property management company, helping our clients by renovating, operating and selling real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth by removing the headache of property management. Listen, Jeff, we’ve helped over a thousand investors manage their properties from turning non-performing portfolios into performing ones renovations or just finding investment that we can help fit their needs. That’s why no matter what rental you have, single family home, a bunch of properties in your portfolio were the management for you. Jeff, I’m super excited to have you on. This is Jeff with Triton Foundation. Tell me a little bit about yourself, Jeff.
Jeff Wedig 01:15
Absolutely. So, Walter, thank you for having me on. Super excited about it. We’re always happy to help. Try and spread some awareness and a little bit of information. In regards to kind of who we are and what we do. So I’ve been a I’ve been in construction for, for most of my life. I’ve been focused on foundation repair for about the last 20 years. I currently own and operate Triton Foundation Repair Base just outside of Oklahoma City in New Castle. And we are a basically a full service foundation repair company. So we have a list of about 19 different services that we offer. And one of the things that we focus on that’s different than most other foundation repair companies is we really try and focus on helping people understand how they can prevent from having foundation issues, and we spend a lot of time teaching classes and then also meeting with customers and properties. And we spend a lot of that time teaching people the importance of things like gutters and drainage. So we really take a lot of pride in trying to be educational about this entire process instead of being, you know, we’re we’re definitely not sales focused. We’re we’re really about education. It kind of is what it is. And when people need you, they need you. And when they don’t, they shouldn’t fear you. And that’s just how we’ve how we’ve chosen to run our business all these years. And and it works out really well for us. And we’re, we’re always happy to, to participate in things like this whenever we can.
Walter Bowser 02:38
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I, I lived that yesterday. I think you came out and did a foundation inspection for us yesterday on our property and, and, you know, ended up saying, hey, it really doesn’t need anything from me, which is, you know, something that you don’t see often. Typically I feel like you’re getting a sales pitch or whatnot on. And so I do appreciate that about you guys at Triton. I guess you said you’ve been doing it for the last 20 years. I guess tell me, like, what motivates you to get into foundation and and I guess, like, how did you get started?
Jeff Wedig 03:10
Yeah, yeah. So I actually had a corporate job just out of college. I used to be a shirt and tie guy. And I parted ways with that company in my early 20s and just kind of went back to my mid 20s. And I went back to the construction industry, which is what I was, you know, pretty well familiar with all the way from a kid. You know, into adulthood. And at the time I was, I was I owned and operated basically a remodeling company. So I did a lot of handyman services and remodels and kitchens, bathrooms, sheetrock, tiara stuff. I I’ve, I’ve done business with realtors for, you know, 30 years. And I as I got farther into the the construction owning my own business, I learned very quickly that as I approached my 30s, I wasn’t nearly as interested in physically doing the work. I wasn’t capable of running a company and doing the work. And honestly, I just kind of, I feel like I just kind of burned out on doing that same, kind of that same kind of punch list stuff so often. And I was really interested in learning. I wanted to stay in the foundation, I wanted to stay in the construction industry, but I wanted to learn something that was unique and different. I’m not a fan of heights, right? So obviously, you know, chimney repair and roofing was out, and I actually just decided to kind of start looking around for a job. And I found a job working as a crew chief for a foundation repair company here in Oklahoma City, and just immediately fell in love with it. It was one of the most difficult, one of the most the the labor intensive jobs I had ever been around. But as a supervisor, I didn’t necessarily have to participate in the in the labor, but I just immediately enjoyed it and it was something completely different. There’s only a handful of people out there that can tell you that they can lift a, you know, the corner of a house out of the ground. And that is what introduced me to foundation repair. And then from there, it just escalated. And I actually opened and have been operating Triton now for just a little over nine years. So yeah.
Walter Bowser 05:04
That’s that’s awesome. You said something. You know, most people can’t do that. And it really you know, buying a home is typically most people’s, you know, biggest purchase. Right. Like it’s it’s their savings or whatever. And I feel like there’s relatively little to no, you know, kind of education on foundations and kind of like, you know, what it looks like. And it’s really kind of like a scary thought because the foundation is, you know, exactly what you think, the foundation of your home. I guess, can you kind of go into like the different, you know, foundations because there’s some that are on a slab, some that are on a crawl space, you know, kind of like what you’ve seen and kind of explain the differences.
Jeff Wedig 05:42
Yeah, absolutely. So that was that was honestly a big part of what intrigued me when I first got into foundation repair. Even as early on, like I said, I came out of a suit and tie position. I had management roles. I was an executive. And when I when I kind of got back into the construction and I found foundation, I recognized very quickly that people were terrified, like people were scared to death of foundation repair. And what I realized very quickly is that the foundation repair companies were using that to their advantage. They were it was a scare tactic, sales, heavy pressure, type of environment. And that was immediately what I recognized. The opportunity to be was to eliminate some of that and just be honest and be fair about it. And that was really all I did differently than most other foundation repair companies. So that’s part of the reason that we’re so heavily focused on education, maintenance, preventive things, drainage, gutters, things like that. But yeah, so the in Oklahoma specifically, the most common types of foundations here are going to be typical slab homes, which there are 2 or 3 versions of those that most people don’t realize. And then there’s also the traditional, you know, crawl space houses, which are super common, especially in the more historic parts of Oklahoma or Oklahoma in general. We don’t have as many basements here as other parts of the country. So I lived in Ohio as a kid. I lived in Michigan. I lived in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. A lot of different parts of the country have basements in Oklahoma is not a real big basement community. Thank goodness. Because basements are terrible in Oklahoma. They’re just terrible. They’re not. It’s just not a good fit. The clay soil that we have here. Go ahead. I was going to say is that the this the type of soil that we have in Oklahoma is so different than most other parts of the country. It’s it’s much more elastic and expansive than other soils in other in other parts of the country. So when I teach C classes, I always ask the people in the class if anybody has lived out of state, and they’ll say, yeah, I lived in North Carolina, or I lived in Georgia, or I lived in Ohio. And I ask them, what do you know what they have there that we don’t have here? And they’re kind of looking at me funny. And the answer is dirt, because we don’t have dirt in Oklahoma. We have clay here. It’s a completely different ball game, the way that it drains water, the way that it expands and contracts with moisture content, the way that it responds to the droughts that we have here in the super wet seasons is really, really hard on basements. So I really encourage people, if I personally was going to go back on the market to buy a home to live in, I would never buy a house that has a basement, and I would never buy a house that has a retaining wall on the property. Those are probably the two biggest things in my profession that I would avoid.
Walter Bowser 08:34
Okay, can you explain the retaining wall real quick? I know that’s probably a different tangent, but just what makes you.
Jeff Wedig 08:38
Yeah for sure. So retaining walls or retaining walls are kind of a unique animal. Prior to the last 10 or 12 years. They really weren’t like part of the permitting process. They weren’t really part of like the engineering process of building a property. So it was very common 20 years ago for builders and developers to just come in and do the basic dirt work, stack up a bunch of railroad ties and build a house on it. And as those retaining walls deteriorate, they are structurally relevant because that’s what’s holding up the pad that is holding up the house. So as the retaining wall fails, the pad starts to deteriorate and the house starts to come down. And because they weren’t part of like code or anything like that, they weren’t built to really any particular standard. Now when you go to replace a retaining wall, specifically in places like Oklahoma City or Edmond, you do now have to meet these certain criteria and these engineered specifications. So they’re incredibly expensive to replace because you do have to go through the permitting process, the engineering, all inspections, all that kind of stuff. And people look at it and they’re like, oh, I mean, it’s a retaining it’s a railroad tie retaining wall. Like, how expensive could it possibly be? You can’t go back with that with that railroad. You have to go back with poured concrete, with a engineered foundation and rebar and the whole nine yards. So I personally would avoid it, just like the plague. And and basements kind of fall into that same category. You know, you have to realize that most homes in Oklahoma that were built with a basement typically are we’re going to see those in, like, the historic part of Oklahoma City. Like you don’t typically see a basement. You know, in the suburbs. So when those basements were built, they were built by the good old boys under very little supervision, with no permits, with no really requirements, no engineers on hand, any of that kind of stuff. And then they built the whole house on top of this basement. So as the basement fails, now that they’re 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years old, as that basement starts to fail, it really creates a lot of structural issues with the rest of the house. And because there’s not a lot of basements, there’s not a lot of people that work on basements. And we all know that when you’re the only guy in the industry, you can charge whatever you want. You know what I mean? So they can get super, super expensive, super fast.
Walter Bowser 11:04
Yeah, that’s that’s a really good point. I didn’t even, you know, think about that. But when you are in Oklahoma, you don’t see basements unless you’re exactly right, you know, older. Now talk to me I guess a little bit about the the crawl spaces. You guys fixed the crawl space of ours on, on northwest 12th Street. I think last year at some point you did it really quick and it was not as, as, not as expensive as I thought, especially when we got that, I guess. Tell me, like, what are the most items you see in a crawl space and how they differentiate from a from a like normal slab foundation.
Jeff Wedig 11:34
So when it comes to a crawl space, there’s definitely positives and negatives. One of the One of the more obvious advantages of a crawl space is that you have access to things like your heat and air ducts and your plumbing, right? Whereas in a slab, those may those things may be underneath the house and you wouldn’t have access to them. So that might be considered a positive. The downside of them is that those things are now exposed. And they you have to deal with animals and you have to deal with deterioration, and you have to deal with water in the crawl space and all those kinds of things. So it’s really just a matter of preference. Personally, I don’t care for crawl space houses. I don’t like the odor. I don’t like the cold floors in the wintertime. But when it comes to a foundation repair company and how we relate to crawl space houses, it’s a little bit it’s a little bit more specific than what most people think when when you need repairs in a crawl space house from us, that usually means that you need something lifted, right? Like that means that we’re just picking up something heavy. And essentially that’s what we do for a living is pick up heavy stuff. So when what we oftentimes see is we see support systems and we see old beams and things like that that have deteriorated or they have warped. More often than not, they were built again by the good old boys back in, you know, the day. And it was a, you know, the uncle and a nephew on a Saturday that did it. They didn’t they didn’t really build those support systems inside of the crawl space, inside of the crawl space to hold the house up. They built those to hold the piece of material in place so that they could build the house.
Walter Bowser 13:06
Interesting.
Jeff Wedig 13:07
So that’s why a lot of times you see, like a cinder block and three bricks and a piece of wood and a roofing shingle, like they were just hodgepodge stuff together to really just hold that beam in place so that they could build the rest of the house. A lot of those supports underneath that house are not necessarily were not necessarily intended to be structural components. So when we go in, more often than not what we’re doing is we’re replacing some type of inadequate structural component with something that’s intentional, and then we’re using those to physically lift the floor back as close to original as possible. And it’s a relatively quick process. It’s brutal. I mean, anytime you’re doing something on your belly with your face in the dirt and eight inches of crawl space, like it’s a really, really hard job to do. But it doesn’t get any better by slowing it down. Sure. Yeah. I mean, like, once you’re under there, man, you might as well just. You might as well just get after it. Because the faster you get done, the faster you get out.
Walter Bowser 14:09
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Wedig 14:10
So we see a lot of those kind of situations. Not as much now obviously, as we did back then with real estate, you know, progressing the way that it has. And a lot of those houses have kind of been bought up and flipped and remodeled and all that kind of stuff. But more often than not, one of the things that people don’t realize about foundation repair, when you start to have issues, it can be relatively inexpensive to fix. But because people are afraid of the foundation repair industry as a whole, they put their blinders on. They ignore it. They don’t touch it, they don’t deal with it. And then when life happens and you need to sell that property, it has deteriorated for the last 15 years. So instead of needing four for pad piers, crawlspace or five steel piers, now all of a sudden you need 19 pad piers in the crawlspace and you need 12 steel piers on the house. And then the price tag is really what kind of throws people off, when in all actuality, have they dealt with it when it started? That would have eliminated that failure and that would have been the end of it. Not to mention everything was cheaper 15 years ago than it is now anyway. You know what I mean? So yeah, big opportunity for saving by getting to that stuff sooner, instead of just kind of putting your blinders on and letting it deteriorate.
Walter Bowser 15:22
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that brings me to another point that I wanted to ask you about is, you know, you said if you see it early on or if you, you know, kind of noticed notice those foundation, you know, changes or whatnot. Tell me, what are early signs of foundation? You know, I could walk around the house and see cracks in the in the brick or, you know, but what are you looking for when you’re looking at for these, you know, early foundation issues.
Jeff Wedig 15:45
So there’s a it’s first off it’s important. It’s important to understand that foundation repair is not a it’s not a science. It’s an art. Okay. And I tell people when I teach classes that if you were to take one single property, let’s say the house that you and I looked at together yesterday, if you brought in five different foundation repair companies, all five guys are going to have a different idea because they all five have different motives and they all have five. They all five have different like pay structures and incentive programs. So you’re not going to get the same information from every person. If you were to bring in five structural engineers to the house that you and I looked at yesterday, you would still get five different sets of opinions. Interesting. So it’s important to understand that who you’re talking to, who you’re dealing with, and what their motives are, are as important to the project and the property as the work itself. And we I always feel like we kind of need to get that up front, because there’s going to be a lot. There’s always a lot of disagreement. But again, if you see three different engineer reports, they they don’t agree either. Right. Yeah. So when it comes to what repairs are, are needed, when they’re needed and why, everybody might have a little different sense of opinion. Right. So I have one engineer that we have a really good relationship with. And he tells people that if you can put a nickel in the crack in the brick, it’s worth having evaluated. Okay. Okay. So that thickness, if the crack in the brick is that the thickness of a nickel, it’s worth having it checked. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s broken or that it’s wrong, but it’s worth having it checked. Where people go wrong is they don’t know who to call. And if they call a pure salesman. The pure salesman is going to scare them into buying peers because there’s a crack in their house. And what easier target is there than a scared person with a crack in their house, right?
Walter Bowser 17:36
100%.
Jeff Wedig 17:37
The reality is, is that not everything that has a crack needs to be pure. And and also not everything that we peer is cracked. Like, that’s just not the way it works. So long story short, to answer your question, what we’re looking for is we’re looking for multiple things in a in the same area that just shouldn’t be there. Okay. So if we find a crack in the brick, that’s one. If we if we find a displaced or dislodged frieze board in that same area, that would be two. Gotcha. If we go inside and we find a crack in the sheetrock or a closet door that won’t open, that’s three indicators of movement. Because none of those three things should exist, all in a confined area. That’s enough, in our opinion, to justify lifting and or stabilizing that spot. So what you’re looking for is things that are there that shouldn’t be cracked flooring, tiles, doors that don’t work properly, gaps between the window frame and the brick, gaps between the brick and the door frame dislodged frieze boards. Gaps in baseboards is a big one. People don’t realize how important baseboards are on the inside of their house. If you have an exterior wall baseboard that lines up to an interior wall baseboard, and those two are not touching anymore, that’s usually because the outside wall has rolled away, right? There’s probably 15 or 20 things that you could be looking for. That the trick and what we train our evaluators to do is to identify multiple of those things kind of in that same little area, and then you kind of work that area down until you quit finding things. And that kind of gives you an idea of what part of the house needs to be repaired. Because if you get down to 65 foot wall and that last bedroom doesn’t have any indicators on it, you shouldn’t pier that like you should pier the area of influence or the area that has an issue. But you shouldn’t just be peering past that just for grins. So anyway, I think that answers your question.
Walter Bowser 19:47
Yeah, no, 100%. I get a little windy. No, no, I, I appreciate that. It’s it’s a lot of education. So another thing that you keep saying that just pops off to me is, is, you know, the kind of the scare tactic of it. And I feel like that’s really real. You know, we’ve I’ve done a ton of transactions and a lot of them have always seemed with the foundation issue seemed to bust. Right. Like the, the, the home go through or whatnot. Because the foundation issue. Can you kind of talk to me about like I guess like if you have some common myths that people bring up often or, you know, something that.
Jeff Wedig 20:21
Oh, that’s a fantastic question. That’s a fantastic question. So let me start. Let me preface it by saying a couple of things. When I first started in the foundation repair business, again, because of the background that I had in kind of a corporate environment, I’m pretty keen on walking into a room and identifying kind of who’s who and what their job is, you know what I mean? Like, you just kind of get a feel for their, their, their aura. Sure. I recognize very quickly that there was a few things about the salesmen at this company that really stood out to me. For one, they hardly ever wore logo shirts, which I found very unusual. They also drove their own vehicles, which I found highly unusual. They also used their own personal cell phones, which I found to be extremely interesting. They also didn’t have set office hours and I thought, well, that seems really weird. Well, when you’re a foundation repair company and you’re hiring salesmen, you pay them commission only so you don’t supply them with any of the things that they need. All you supply them with are leads, and that’s what they call them. As leads, you supply them with leads, and their job is to go out and pump, and they only eat what they kill. Okay, so I found that super, super interesting from the very beginning. And those guys, because they’re not they’re not necessarily connected to the company culture. And there’s not necessarily a sense of, you know, camaraderie or loyalty with realtors and things like that. They don’t care if they bust your deal. Sure. As far as they’re concerned, every 30 peer bid they toss out, eventually one of them is going to buy it, and they’re just waiting on that one to buy it. And they could care less if they bust your deal in the process. So instead of coming to your evaluation on a house that’s in transaction and telling you, hey, man, this, this, this House needs four peers, which is a perfectly normal, average job. Sure, there wasn’t a whole lot of incentive for them to do that. It was to them it made more sense based on their pay structure, for them to come at you for $25,000 worth of work, and then hope that it worked out right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one of the biggest. That was one of the biggest adjustments and changes that we made right out of the gate is that we don’t hire salesmen. If you talk to my evaluators as you meet them, you’ll see that one of them used to work as a crew chief for a utility company. Another one is a was a professional welder. I’ve got one that was a that was a warehouse manager for a big box store. Like, I don’t hire salesmen because that’s not what I want, and that’s not who I want to be around. And that’s not who I want around my customers. So having a having some sort of understanding of how people’s what people’s incentives are definitely comes into play because the, the biggest myth of foundation repair of them all is that this cost 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000.
Walter Bowser 23:12
Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 23:13
Triton Foundation Repair is one of the largest foundation repair companies in the state of Oklahoma. I can probably count on one hand how many residential projects. Now, I’m not talking about apartment complexes. I’m not talking about multi-families. I’m not talking about commercial industrial. I’m talking about regular old single family households. We work on probably 3000 houses a year. Sure, we’ve probably done five of those that were bigger than $50,000.
Walter Bowser 23:43
Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 23:45
But so the odds that you happen to live in a house that needs $50,000 worth of foundation repair is way more likely due to the salesman than it is to your house. So it’s important that people understand the statistically the likelihood if somebody shows up and they tell you, hey man, you need 50 grand worth of work on your house, you should know that because your house should be a wreck. You know what I mean? That shouldn’t be a oh, by the way, that should be a your house is a wreck, right? Yeah. So the biggest myth, like I said, is that is that it’s common for 30, 40, 50, $60,000 proposals. It’s incredibly uncommon in the real world that that happened. I get probably 15 to 20 structural engineer reports, not our evaluations, but third party structural engineer reports. I get 15 to 20 of those through my office a week. Okay. I bet you we don’t see ten of those a year that have $50,000 worth of work on them. Like, that’s how uncommon it really is. Wow.
Walter Bowser 24:47
Wow. That’s that’s insane.
Jeff Wedig 24:49
It’s crazy. So the average residential foundation repair project is I would it used. I used to tell people it was $3,500, but then Covid hit the prices and blah, blah, blah. If you spent. I bet if you took every job that we work on and you figured it out by the average, I bet it’s $5,000. Wow. Wow. Like, most of them are just not that big a deal. It’s very home maintenance level. 90% of the time we get it done in one day. It’s not usually this big, massive event. And you have to remember that the foundation repair companies have established this deep rooted sense of fear. So when they show up to your house, you’re already expecting it to be ridiculous. So when they tell you 40 grand, you’re not shocked. But the reality is, is that they’ve been setting you up for years to have that type of fear. A quick story and then I’ll I’ll give you your mic back. I did an evaluation on Thursday of last week. I showed up and met the seller, which I don’t usually meet the sellers. I usually meet the buyers. I met the seller. The buyer’s realtor was also there. I do a full evaluation of this house $900,000 home, beautiful home in Edmond. Super nice people. And I’m like, hey man, look. And he’s he shows me the inspection report. He’s like, hey man, here’s the inspection report from when I bought it four years ago. That crack was there. This gap was here. Like. And I’m like, I get it. Like I get it. The problem is, is that it needs to be fixed and it’s going to take five peers to peer that corner. Here’s why this happened. Here’s how you can prevent it on your next house. And the guy was upset. The guy was mad. And I told him, I said, listen, all I did was come over here and give you my opinion. If you don’t like my opinion, you’re welcome to call a structural engineer, I said, but I would be willing to bet you the cost of this job that the structural engineer is going to tell you five peers the same way I’m telling you five peers, because that’s how we do this. And he said, speaking of the price, how much is it? And I said, it’s $3,200. And he said, what? And I said, it’s $3,200. And he said, total. And I said total, total tax, labor material, warranty, everything $3,200. I said, how much do you think I was going to tell you? And he said, Jeff, I thought you were going to tell me it was $32,000. He said, I thought you were going to add a zero to that. He said, if all we’re talking about is $3,200, I don’t care. Put the peers in and let’s move on. Right. That’s how it should be. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But for whatever reason, that individual was under the impression in his own mind that this was going to be a massive undertaking. And it’s just not. It’s just not.
Walter Bowser 27:25
100%. I think I hear that all the time. And honestly, you guys do have really great prices. I think if you do go to a different, you know, foundation company, it may have that extra zero on there. And that’s probably why he was some of them.
Jeff Wedig 27:36
There’s some of them that do.
Walter Bowser 27:38
I guess now flip it from, from the I guess, you know, cost of it myth wise. But let’s say like the uncertainty myth, I feel like that’s a huge myth out there. It’s like, hey, I’m going to buy this house. It has foundation issues. It’s going to have issues from here on out. Right? Which is probably the same. If you go and buy another house, it’s going to have it could have the same possibility of having foundation issues. Right. It doesn’t really, really, you know, probably dictate that. But tell me, because I feel like if a buyer is going to look at that property and it has foundation issues. Immediately, once that comes up, the buyer starts, you know, putting one foot out and saying like, hey, I’m uneasy about this 100%. Tell me kind of what your, I guess thought is on that of buying a home with, with foundations already issues already prevalent or you know, if they’re fixed correctly or I guess.
Jeff Wedig 28:28
Another another really, really good question. And I, I appreciate that you spent some time on this because a lot of people have me on these things and they just ask like normal questions. This is these are really good questions. So again, let me let me preface it with this. Triton as a company one one Foundation repair company in Oklahoma City. We will evaluate 8000 plus homes this calendar year, I believe. So Triton will will evaluate over 8000 properties in a single business year. Okay. 30% of the houses that we look at don’t need anything. They just don’t. They’re fine. Maybe we tell them, put butter on it. Maybe we tell them, do some work around your house. Maybe improve the drainage. The. The reality is, is that we work on, again, thousands of houses a year. Most people don’t realize this, but if you took there’s not a there’s not a database somewhere that categorizes and catalogs all this information because it all just belongs to that one individual property. The fact of the matter is, is that if you took every residential property inside of Oklahoma City’s city limits, I would dare to say that probably 65% of them have had pure work done at some point.
Walter Bowser 29:48
Well, I believe that I was super, super common, right?
Jeff Wedig 29:50
Super common. We see houses every single day when we’re there to evaluate it. And we’re there with the we’re there. We’re there with the buyer. We’re there with the buyer’s realtor. The buyer’s dad is keeping an eye on what we’re doing. You know what I mean? And we’re like, hey, man, that’s a breakout right there. Like, there’s a pier right there, and they’re like, what? And I’m like, yeah, that’s a pier. That’s what that patch is in the concrete there. Like, I had no idea. The seller is like, I had no idea that patch was there when I bought the house. And I’m like, this house has been here before. People just don’t know it. It’s so common. So when you talk about when you talk about a house that has six, eight, $10,000 worth of foundation repair, perfectly normal, not a huge deal. It kind of is what it is. The the challenge is when you get into a house, when you go to a house and they say, well, this house has 40 piers under it. I’m not going to buy a house that has 40 piers under it. Like I’m not going to do that. And the reason why is because it’s one of two things. Either one, the work was done horrifically or the the general construction of the property was done horrifically, which is not a good indicator that it’s a really good house. Yeah. And you can’t control either of those things anyway, so you’re really rolling the dice. Unless they’re giving the house away, like you’re really rolling the dice. The other thing is, is that most houses in Oklahoma that have 40 peers under them, they only needed ten.
Walter Bowser 31:14
Okay, so.
Jeff Wedig 31:15
The poor guy.
Walter Bowser 31:16
Can you over.
Jeff Wedig 31:17
Sold the other 30 because he needed to put his kid in private school. Right. And when you peer things that shouldn’t be peered or you move things that shouldn’t be moved, you can be causing problems. Gotcha. Okay. So there’s not a right answer. Some some situations dictate 15 peers and some situations dictate three. Some houses are perfectly fine with 12 peers and 800 square foot house from 1974, and a crawl space that has 18 peers around it. Man, that’s a problem. You know what I mean? Yeah. So every situation is a little bit different. And I tell you that to tell you this, Knowing who you’re talking to and again, what their motives are in regards to that conversation. Everything boils down to that. It all boils down to that because any, any used car sales, ex-professional turned pure salesman can make a situation seem like something that it’s not if that’s in their best interest. But that’s not always the truth. You know what I mean? Like. And it is what it is. So anyway, that’s kind of my take.
Walter Bowser 32:28
So so you don’t you wouldn’t say it’s like, hey, if you’re buying this, this property and the foundation was fixed correctly, let’s say they put four periods in there that needed four piers, you wouldn’t have reservations of saying like, hey, it’s a it’s still a good home, go for it service. You know why?
Jeff Wedig 32:42
It wouldn’t bother me a bit. It wouldn’t bother me a bit. I now, as a buyer of a home that has had foundation repair on it, I know what questions to ask. So let’s talk about that for just a split second.
Walter Bowser 32:54
Yeah. Please do. Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 32:55
For one, I want a copy of the diagram that shows exactly what work was done and exactly where that work was done, and any reputable foundation or repair company should have that on file. Okay. When I call to ask for that information, that conversation and that interaction is going to give me a really good idea of what kind of company I’m dealing with. If I call them and I say, hey, man, I’m interested in buying this house at XYZ. I understand that you all did the paperwork. I need a copy of that paperwork. If it’s in my inbox by the end of that day, I have a pretty decent understanding of the kind of company that that is. Sure. But if I have to fight tooth and nail for two weeks to get them to email me a piece of paper, what’s going to happen when I want them to come to a warranty adjustment on this pier work that they promised the seller when they sold it? Okay. So I want the diagram up front. I want a copy of the paperwork. I want a copy of their warranty. Because what a lot of people don’t realize when it comes to property transactions is that most foundation repair companies warranties belong to the owner of the property. So if I do this, if I do work for Mr. and Mrs. Smith on XYZ property, and they turn around and they sell it to Walter Bowser three months later, their contract might say that you only have 30 days for you to step in and assume my warranty. Got it. Which means you, as the buyer, might need to send me a certified letter. You could. You might need to make a personal appearance to the office. You might need to send an email. You might need to verify the purchase of the property. You might need to pay a transfer fee of $800. Okay. That documentation is also going to say if you don’t put gutters. If there’s not gutters on the house, we’re going to void your warranty completely. If you have drainage problem in your yard, we’re going to void your warranty completely. So I’m going to track down all of that information. Because having the piers is one thing, and knowing that a house has four piers on it is one thing. But I also want to determine the validity of the warranty itself and what kind of company I’m going to be dealing with when it comes to that warranty. Or is the company out of business?
Walter Bowser 35:05
Or is the company out of business? Yeah. It’s good right?
Jeff Wedig 35:07
So there’s been I’ve kind of lost track over the years and the last like 6 or 7 years. There’s probably been eight foundation repair companies in central Oklahoma that have completely shut down and gone out of business. Well, the warranty that they apply to those peers when they do that work on your house. It’s a lifetime warranty. But whose life.
Walter Bowser 35:28
Exactly the LLC like company? Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 35:30
Who needs to be breathing for this thing to work? So if they if somebody, you know, unfortunately passes away or if they get divorced or whatever the case may be, if their business closes down, that warranty is gone. Well, even me in the position I’m in there are there are 1 or 2 companies that have gone out of business that if I was going to buy a house and I knew it had some a handful of peers on it. If I knew it was their peers, I probably wouldn’t worry a whole lot about it. But if it’s that other guy’s peers, I got big problem with that, because I knew how he did business and I knew how he operated. I therefore I don’t trust the work that they did. Right. So, you know, there’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of moving parts. I, I really encourage people like property management companies and real estate agents to really learn the appropriate questions to ask when it comes to that part of the process, because it’s not as simple as closing on the house and now you own the warranty. That’s not how this works. They have loopholes in their documentation that will void the warranty if you don’t meet your obligations. And I can’t tell you how many times that we come across people and they’re like, so-and-so cleared the house, but I don’t want to deal with them because I bought the house and four months later I had a problem and they told me they voided the warranty. So I’m not having them come back out. It’s like, well, it’s not their responsibility to tell you what the warranty, you know, stipulations are. So you just you have to know what questions to ask.
Walter Bowser 36:53
Yeah. That’s a that’s a really good point. I guess now I’m going to flip it on you. What’s your policy at Trident. Is it they have to write a certified letter or is it. Oh I guess I should have mentioned that.
Jeff Wedig 37:02
So yeah, I write salesmanship. So the way our I’m kind of an idiot, like, if I’m being honest. Right? And I’m also not a paperwork fan. So when I started writing, my warranty belongs to the property address. It doesn’t belong to anybody. So I don’t care who owns the house. The warranty lives where the work was done. Sure. I don’t think the name on the mail should matter, right? Like if I’m doing a quality job and I’m willing to put my my reputation and my brand on the line with a lifetime warranty, why do I care who lives at that house? Like it makes no difference. The warranty that we offer belongs to the property. There is no transfer. You don’t have to turn in any paperwork. There’s no letters, no emails, no certifieds. No, no transfer fee. There’s no fee. because I don’t care about that kind of stuff. I don’t want to make $200 off of every customer, because they had to transfer the fee during one of the most like, emotionally and financially difficult times in their lives, right? Which is the part which is the the buying process. Yeah. So yeah, we we don’t mess with any of that stuff. Now, we do have some similarities when it comes to other foundation repair companies. If, if we pick an area of your home and we tell you and document like the reason this failed is because you have miserable drainage or you don’t have gutters or you have, you know, your downspouts or whatever. If we tell you those things and you don’t, you don’t fix those things. Theoretically, we have the opportunity to void your warranty.
Walter Bowser 38:31
And 100%, that makes sense.
Jeff Wedig 38:33
But that’s not how we make a living. We don’t make a living off of off of, you know, killing people’s warranties. We tend to go back and go, look, man, like I told you, you need to put gutters on the house, put the gutters on the house. I’m going to make one adjustment for free, and then we’ll call it even. And they’re like, okay, you know what?
Walter Bowser 38:47
I love that.
Jeff Wedig 38:48
That’s that’s not a huge deal.
Walter Bowser 38:50
Yeah, no, you keep saying it and I and I want to touch on it just because I can’t tell you how many people from out of state investors that come in and they buy these houses, especially new built houses that don’t come with gutters, right. And I’m like, hey, you’ve got to put gutters on this. And then, you know, it’s like, what, like 1800 bucks, $2,000 somewhere in there. Usually it’s not expensive at all. But I mean, it’s such a battle sometimes. And I feel like if they just hear it from you, like, hey, gutters are important, let me just ask you, how important are gutters?
Jeff Wedig 39:22
They’re vital. They’re absolutely vital. And I mentioned earlier that I’ve lived all over the country. And, and most of the places that I’ve ever lived, including just visiting. I was in Indiana visiting my brother last winter, and I was in Indiana for four days. And because I’m a foundation nerd, you know what I mean? Like, what do I what do I look at when I go to a new city? You know what I mean? Yeah. I did not see one single residential property. In four days of being in Indianapolis that did not have full rap gutter systems, right? We were in in Orange Beach, Alabama for my daughter’s cheer competition last summer. Same thing five days down there. Didn’t see a single house that didn’t have gutters everywhere. But for some reason you come to Oklahoma and about 1 in 8 houses actually has a gutter system. And I’m like, why is the mentality so different in Oklahoma than it is in almost every other part of the country when it comes to gutters? But then people in Oklahoma are like, why is foundation repair so expensive? And it’s like, well, I mean, the gutter guys not, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, exactly. Dude, hang out with that guy for a day. Let him $2,500. You, you know, 2500 bucks, you can get a lot of gutter on your house. 100% gutters are considered, in my opinion, I guess. I guess real estate professionals may not necessarily agree, but in my opinion, gutters are considered a property improvement.
Walter Bowser 40:42
Oh, yes.
Jeff Wedig 40:43
They’re adding two. Well, foundation repairs, not foundation repairs. Maintenance. There’s no value add by putting piers underneath the house. So if you gutter it on the front end and it means that you either don’t need piers or you don’t need as many piers in the long term, you’re way money ahead. But I’ve been I mean, I’ve done TV commercials, social media, paid sponsored ads. I mean, you name it, we scream it from the mountaintops, brother. And there’s no more gutters on these houses now than there was 20 years ago when I started screaming, dude. So it kind of is what it is, you know what I mean? People just won’t do it.
Walter Bowser 41:18
They just won’t do it. I can never, for whatever reason, I guess my sales pitch is never good enough to to investors. I’m like, hey you, you’ve got to put gutters on this. And they just don’t do it. Yeah, won’t do it.
Jeff Wedig 41:28
They won’t do it. It’s time to do it. Their dads tell them to do it. The appraiser tells them to do it. We tell them to do it and then they don’t. You tell them to do it and then they don’t do it. And it’s like, okay, man, you need nine piers on your house?
Walter Bowser 41:41
Exactly right. Especially with some of these newer built homes. I mean, it’s amazing, man. It’s it’s really amazing. There’s one builder in particular in Oklahoma City. I’m sure you know I won’t name it, but like, you have about five years with this builder. And if you don’t have gutters on that, then you have way less than that. And then you’re going to need foundation work on it. And so it’s it’s almost insane. Sometimes I’m like, hey, it’s really, really, really worth it. I can, you know, show you multiple properties that we’ve done this on, like everything like that. So yeah, I guess real quick just to kind of like wrap stuff up because I know I’m taking a lot of your time. What if there is any which there might not be any, but it seems like another one of these myths, maybe around foundations is like, what impact does it have on the home if there’s been foundation like financial like, does it improve? Like you said, it doesn’t improve the value. It’s it’s maintenance on the home. Yeah. There’s no value to reduce the value if you do something like that?
Jeff Wedig 42:41
No, I that that question would probably be better suited for an appraiser because I can’t speak to their. But in my experience, I have literally never one time ever had a customer come back to me and say, hey man, I can’t get this price for my house because it’s got pears under it. Like, does it now? Does it lessen? Does it lessen your buyer’s pool? Probably, yeah. Does it make the realtor’s job a little bit more difficult because they have to navigate the fact that it has had pure work. Probably. But it doesn’t change the actual value of the house. The the foundation failed. You fixed it. It should be covered under warranty. And that should pretty much be the end of it. Now, if your buyer pool consists of investors from California, that’s a completely different conversation than if your buyer pool is a family that grew up in Norman. Right. Like 100%. You’re going to lose that California guy on pure work almost every single time. Every single time. The lady that grew up in, in, in Ada or Enid or Norman, like, whatever they don’t, you know what I mean? They don’t care. So does it change the dynamic a little bit? Yes. Does it change the value? No it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. Even even houses. I told you earlier that we find a lot of peer work installing peers. We find peers that people didn’t know even existed.
Walter Bowser 43:59
100%.
Jeff Wedig 44:00
There’s millions of them. There’s there’s there’s a lot of houses that have them. There’s millions of peers that have been installed that nobody knows about. Even even properties where the foundation repair company went out of business. The peers still exist.And to to a certain extent, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt until you can prove that there’s a problem. So the value of the house is the value of the house, based on what willing somebody is willing to give you for it. And buying a house that has a that has peers from a company that’s out of business, is that risky? Am I going to try and negotiate the price of the house down? Of course I am. You know what I mean? Like it’s an opportunity, so I’m not going to step over it and move on. But at the end of the day, if you buy that house and it has peers from a company that went out of business, you’re kind of right back to where you started anyway. Somebody’s going to have to spend 5 or 10 grand to get it fixed. Kind of is what it is. I just hope you bought it right. You know what I mean?
Walter Bowser 44:55
100%. That’s that’s a really good way to put it is, you know, if it needs to be fixed, it’s going to be fixed. And like you said, you don’t you don’t give a lifetime warranty for something that you don’t expect to work. Right. So like.
Jeff Wedig 45:06
I don’t.
Walter Bowser 45:07
I don’t yeah.
Jeff Wedig 45:08
Yeah. But I mean, there’s a lot of peer companies out there that were selling concrete pilings, for example, which are completely different than steel piers. They’ve been selling concrete pilings in Oklahoma City for 20 years. There’s been a lot of guys that have come in, offered concrete pilings at a at a bottom dollar cheapo discount rate, offered lifetime warranties, and then five years later, they close their business down and all of those peers fail. And all of those people have to start over. And we peer those houses all the time because people literally have to start over. Because the guy went out of business. So yeah, like theoretically, now when you talk about companies that are that are genuinely well known, that have a that have a history and a background in the state of Oklahoma, and when you think about those companies, like there’s three of them that come across your mind, right? Those three companies, they’ve been around forever because they do quality work and they use quality peer systems. Now, those three companies are not necessarily the same three companies that spend the most money on TV commercials. Sure. Yeah. They’re not necessarily the company that spends the most money on billboards. But those three companies have really been along for the ride for a really long time in Oklahoma. And I’m super proud to say that Triton is kind of the fourth of that group, because we’ve really kind of put some time and some effort and some experience under our belt. But I would tell you, I run TV commercials from time to time. I do a little bit of advertising and some marketing and some social media stuff, but when you see somebody that’s just inundating the market, that’s a lot of money they’re spending. That’s a lot of budget that they’re that they’re dedicating towards that. Those typically are not the companies that always do the best job, because they’re so focused on generating new leads that the back end tends to. And anyway, I probably shouldn’t go too far.
Walter Bowser 46:56
No, no, I agree with you because I think, you know, and that’s how I heard of of Triton when, when we first started using was was word of mouth. It wasn’t it wasn’t even a TV commercial or literally, literally anything like that. It was it was word of mouth. And when you hear something, word of mouth, it’s typically a good thing. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s really amazing that you have all this knowledge on it. And, and now I got to ask you one more question because you brought it up. Tell me real quick, just because I, I’ve never heard, I’ve never used nor heard of the concrete ones, tell me just the difference between that and the steel pile that I know about and that we’ve used before.
Jeff Wedig 47:29
Okay, Perfect. I can do that. So this is about the size of a monster can. This little Wi-Fi radio. Okay, this is an ink pen. So when we put in steel piles, they are there. They’re literally about that diameter. Okay. That’s how. That’s how big the diameter is of a steel pier. That’s relatively small. And it’s just pipe. So when we push it in the ground, these piers are literally intended to pierce the ground. They’re supposed to go through the ground because we’re trying to get the pier down in the ground far enough that it actually makes contact with some type of. Everybody calls it bedrock, but it’s not hardly ever bedrock, some kind of strata or load bearing soil or something underground that will hold the weight. Okay. So these are intended to actually pierce through the ground. Concrete pilings are the opposite. Concrete pilings are six inches in diameter. They’re there concrete cylinders that are 12in long, so they are literally five times that size. Got it. They are hydraulically pressed into the ground the same way a steel pier is, except instead of going to the bottom and hitting something, they’re more designed to create a massive pressure bubble in the ground as you force this big piece of material in the ground. Right. So when I teach my classes, I hold up a monster cam because I always have one on the C classes, and I hold up an ink pen and I tell them, okay, if we went out in the front yard, if we were to stand on this ink pen, most of us could push this into the ground, barring, you know, age imbalance. Most of us could kind of push this into the ground. Nobody is going to stand on this and push it into the ground. If I put a suburban on top of your head and you stood on this, you still would not get this to push on the ground.
Walter Bowser 49:19
It would flatten out, right?
Jeff Wedig 49:20
It would. It would flatten out. So when concrete cylinders are pushed in the ground, they create this massive pressure bubble and they also create what’s called skin friction, which is the force of the ground making contact with the sides.
Walter Bowser 49:34
Got it.
Jeff Wedig 49:34
And it will build up a large enough pressure bubble that you can theoretically lift a house with it. I mean, we’re talking tens of thousands of pounds. We’re talking a lot of weight. It it will build up enough pressure that you can lift a house with it. The difference between a steel pier that sits on some type of load bearing strata is when the house is sitting on top of it, there’s nowhere for it to go. Okay. A concrete piling that’s pushed in the ground with this massive pressure bubble. Over the next five years, when that pressure bubble dissipates back into the Earth and it goes away, this is just concrete garbage underneath your house.
Walter Bowser 50:11
That makes sense. Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 50:12
So the failure rate, and they don’t call them concrete pilings, but that’s what they’re called. They’re actually called concrete pilings. They call them concrete piers because it sounds better. But if they’re pushing concrete in the ground, it’s not the same thing as the steel pier. Engineers. Structural engineers will not let their homeowners or clients use concrete pilings. Engineers will only allow steel and sign off on steel piers. Well, if the structural engineer who has no skin in the game when it comes to the warranty, if he won’t sign off on a concrete piling. I don’t care what that salesman tells you. You know what I mean? Like come on.
Walter Bowser 50:48
Yeah. That’s so. Yeah.
Jeff Wedig 50:50
Steel pile. The only long term actual repair when it comes to Oklahoma concrete pilings might work in certain parts of the country, but they just don’t work in Oklahoma. A little while ago, I told you about the six foundation repair companies that went out of business in the last 6 or 7 years. Five of them were using concrete pilings. Like, that’s not a coincidence. So when those companies go out, all of those concrete pilings that they had installed during their lifespan, all of those warranties are completely invalid, and nobody will come in after the fact and work on a concrete piling that somebody else installed. So your only option if that company goes out of business is to start completely over. Well, now, obviously you would go with steel piers because you learned your lesson. So that’s not really a cheap way of going around it. You know what I mean? That’s a pretty expensive lesson.
Walter Bowser 51:38
Yeah, that is a super expensive lesson.
Jeff Wedig 51:41
You save a grand up front on five piers. You save a grand. And in five years later, you got to spend, you know, seven grand to have it all redone. You’re not really going anywhere. Not to mention the hassle of dealing with it twice. Nobody wants to hang out with us, much less twice.
Walter Bowser 51:55
There we go. Yeah. No, that’s. That’s hilarious. Well, I guess, you know, final question for you. And thank you so much for answering all this and really shedding some, some light into the foundation stuff. Just a piece of advice. Like, I know that you probably are a wealth of advice for for homeowners and people that are dealing with foundation issues. But if you could say, like the most common thing, you know, hey, this is this is, you know, the best piece of advice I can give you? What would you. What would you say would be it?
Jeff Wedig 52:26
It sounds. It sounds kind of dumb. But look at your house like, just stop what you’re doing and go outside and look at your house. I bet you, Walter, I bet you the next time you’re at the golf course and you’re hanging out with your buddies, ask them to describe to you the color of the brick that their house is made with. Just ask them to describe it to you. I bet half of them can’t do it. Okay. People don’t actually genuinely stop and look at their house. They walk by it, they drive up to it. They walk into it. They see the door. So people that actually go outside and actually physically, consciously stand there and just look at their house for a couple of minutes, they tend to be the people that find an issue here and there. They’re always the people that stay ahead of it. They’re the people that get two piers or three. The people that have we everybody has what we call a blind side of their house. One side of your house is where the trash cans are, which is where the gate is. That goes in your backyard. Right? The other side of your house is what we call the blind side. When was the last time you were on the blind side of your house? Right now. I couldn’t even tell you mine.
Walter Bowser 53:39
Yeah. Never, never.
Jeff Wedig 53:40
And when you are over there, you’re mowing or you’re weed eating. So you’re looking down. You’re not looking at the house. Right. So when all of the news channels started advertising or started, started blaring all this information about earthquakes and everybody was hair on fire about earthquakes, 99% of the damages, the earthquake damage that we found was on the blind side of people’s house where they never go look.
Walter Bowser 54:07
Yeah, it was already there.
Jeff Wedig 54:09
Because that damage had been over there for three years. They never just they just never stopped and looked at it. Sure. Yeah. So stop and look at it. That would be that would be probably be first and foremost secondary would be absolutely put gutters all the way around your house, put downspout extensions on every one of your downspouts to get the water as far away from your house as you possibly can. Go outside during a rain and figure out where’s the water coming from? Where is the water going to? Is it standing next to my foundation? Is it running down next to my house, or is it evacuating away so that you can do dirt work and drainage and things like that? And I mean probably, probably the last one to round up the four, even though you asked for one. Would probably be to just be conscious of what’s going on with your house. Don’t be afraid to touch stuff up, but try to document. Like when is the last time you painted the inside of your house? 2021? That’s a lot different answer than I don’t know. How long has this door not worked? work. I don’t know how long has that crack been in the brick? I don’t know. Right. Like you’re not giving the poor guy a whole lot to work with. So if you can answer those questions with a little bit of actual factual information, we don’t want you to lie to us, because that’s not helpful. But if you can answer questions with a with factual information, a lot of times that’s the difference between if we don’t know and we don’t have any information, especially if the House is under contract, we kind of have to pier it because we need to protect the buyer. Right? Yeah, yeah. But if you come to me and you’re like, no way, dude, look, I fixed this door in May of 23. I had the home inspection report in 2021 when I bought it. I put this flooring down in April of 17. Like, if you have factual information, it’s like, cool. That was there, that was there. This is fine. Don’t worry about that. Not a big deal. You can actually kind of work your way through that process, but people have a tendency to do the opposite, and they feel like the more information they’re going to give us, the more we’re going to like weaponize it. And the reality is, it’s completely opposite. Because if you don’t give me information to work on now, my main responsibility is to protect the buyer. And protecting the buyer equals peers.
Walter Bowser 56:22
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a that’s a really that’s so that’s.
Jeff Wedig 56:25
Probably a really that’s that’s a really big one.
Walter Bowser 56:27
Too. Yeah. I mean I feel like everything you said is just have like house common sense, like home ownership. Common sense. Right. Like like what?
Jeff Wedig 56:35
People don’t think about this stuff. You know what I mean? People don’t think about this. And they don’t they don’t they don’t, you know, people don’t watch Foundation or their podcast. You know what I mean? Like, people don’t, you know, and they just don’t they it’s not something that’s front of mind. And then when, when a, when somebody does need to sell their house, all this information comes rushing in. And by then it’s like it’s too late.
Walter Bowser 56:54
It’s like too little too late. I, I agree with that.
Jeff Wedig 56:57
Well those are those are my few.
Walter Bowser 56:59
No, I appreciate it. Those are all really good. I mean, it actually makes me think how when’s the last time I walked around my own house or I on my investment properties? Easy. I do it all the time. But like on my own house. On your own house? Yeah, right.
Jeff Wedig 57:11
I couldn’t. My, you know, my my son’s bedroom is at the opposite. I happen to be home this afternoon, but, I mean, my son’s bedroom is on the far end of the house over here. I couldn’t tell you the last time. I mean, I, I honestly couldn’t I couldn’t tell you the last time I stopped and looked at his window trim, you know, to just see where everything was.
Walter Bowser 57:26
Yeah, 100%. I mean, it’s a really good piece. Yeah. Well, we’ve been talking to Jeff, who is the the Founder and Owner of Triton Foundation. I really appreciate, like, everything that you’ve given us and that the hour of your time, I appreciate that. I’m going to put your, your website in the comments and your social media and all that stuff. So that way they know where to find you. I really appreciate it. And hopefully we’ll we’ll talk again soon.
Jeff Wedig 57:53
Absolutely. Sounds great. Walter, thanks for having me. And I appreciate your time. Yeah.
Walter Bowser 57:56
Thanks, Jeff. All right, buddy.
Outro 58:01
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