Episode 1 | PropertyLens Reveals Flood Risk Before Buying a House
Listen or watch on YouTube
In This Episode
Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman
Property: 4518 Browndale Ave, Edina, MN 55424
Topics: flood roof storms
Episode Summary
Thinking about buying a home? Don’t let hidden property risks derail your investment! In this episode, Bob and John dive deep into the critical insights homeowners and buyers need to know before signing on the dotted line.
Discover how PropertyLens uncovers potential red flags,like roof damage, flood risks, and past storm history, that may not be obvious at first glance. With the right data, you can make smarter, safer real estate decisions and avoid unexpected costs.
Key Takeaways
✅ Check the roof & flood risk
✅ Hidden issues can cost thousands
✅ PropertyLens helps you make informed decisions
Resources
🔹 Zillow
🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com
🔹Questions? support@propertylens.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bob: Hey everybody, I'm Bob Frady. With me is John Siegman. We are the co-founders of PropertyLens. PropertyLens is a company that gathers tons and tons of data to help you understand exactly what you're getting into before you make an offer on a property. Here's what we're going to do in this little podcast.
[00:00:30] First of all, click subscribe. If you're on the YouTuber here and you want to see this on a regular basis, just click the subscribe button. We're going to run a property. We're going to pick an address, we're going to run the address, we're going to see what's there. We're going to tell you exactly what we see and then tell you what the top three things are that we see about a particular property.
[00:00:49] John, how you doing today? I'm great, and you? I am fantastic. I'm ready to look at properties. So, as our inaugural episode, we are going to look at a property that we know very well. Uh, we are going to look at 4518 Browndale Avenue in Edina, Minnesota. And the reason is because two fold. Number one, it's the sample property that's on our website at propertylens.com.
[00:01:15] And number two, it's my house. And if you're going to show a report, you got to eat your own dog food. You agree, John? Absolutely. Hopefully it's tasty. Okay. So normally what you would do is you would go to propertylens.com and you would type in an address, any address in the continent of the United States.
[00:01:36] And then you'll get a chance to go in and buy a report. It's 99 for one, 69 for two and 63, uh, each one. And then, uh, 60 if you want to buy five, 60 for each. So you'd go through that whole process. We're going to skip that part because it's not that interesting to watch. We're going to get right to the report.
[00:01:59] So if we go to the report, then we can see what exactly you get in a property lens report. So first thing that we see, four potential wind events for this property between June of 2020 and August of 2024. It's not that many, you know, and we define a wind event as winds in excess of 65 miles an hour. Uh, so it does get a little windy here, but not terrible as opposed to some places.
[00:02:29] And the most recent one was August 26th of this year. And so when you look at this, you want to think, Hey, anything happen to the property? It's been in some events. Has there been any sign of damage from the wind events? If there was any damage, was it repaired? Any signs of cracked glass or damaged siding or missing roof shingles that you might otherwise not take a look for since you don't really know what that property's been subjected to.
[00:02:54] Now, this particular property was not damaged in that event, that last event. But in fact, the tree across the creek fell right into the creek. So lots of trees get uprooted in this neighborhood, nothing happened to this particular house, which is good. Second thing that we look for here is this property has a risk of ice dams.
[00:03:15] John: John, can you describe an ice dam for the, for the folks at home? Sure. An ice dam is when your gutters fill up with ice because it got warm and then it got cold and then it got warm and then it got cold. And when your gutters don't drain anymore, the water has to go somewhere, and so it goes backwards underneath your, uh, shingles, and it causes a little rainstorm inside your house.
[00:03:42] In the winter,
[00:03:43] Bob: which is the most miserable time to have a rainstorm in your house, because it's cold, it is a miserable claim, and yet it happens a lot. So, that wasn't disclosed. On when I bought this house. So I asked the seller, I said, have you ever had an ice dam? And they're like, yeah, that's why we replaced the roof.
[00:04:02] And so I went upstairs into the attic and saw that the insulation wasn't very good, so I knew I was going to have to fix that and B that they didn't have very good gutter guards. They had gutters, but no guards. And I knew I was going to have to replace those as well. Still wanted to get the house, but at least knew going in that I was going to have to fix that problem if I wanted to buy this house.
[00:04:24] Um. So then when you, but some other things that you want to take a look for is, are there screens on the gutters, but also any unusual staining on the tops of walls where there's a gutter, but then you got clogged by leaves and you'll see the drips on the inside of the house. So yeah, that was not disclosed and it was not caught by the inspector, but it was something that we knew about because we asked the seller beforehand.
[00:04:50] Now, John, why would you want to ask
[00:04:52] John: the seller these questions? Well, disclosure rules vary greatly state to state. However, the one overriding rule that is consistent across all 50 states is that if you ask the seller or the seller's agent a question, they must truthfully answer it to the best of their ability.
[00:05:11] Bob: Yes, and sometimes that answer is, I don't know. In which case, you really want to know what's happened to a property because almost every disclosure says, Hey, to the best of the seller's knowledge. They can just say that they don't know. So, there's a couple of other things I want to look at without looking at everything in this report, because there's a lot of information.
[00:05:31] So, this area does have a high risk of flooding and a high risk of hail. Minnesota has a problem getting insurance, or affordable insurance, because of all the hail that we've had in the last few years. So, it looks like we've had some damaging hail events, but nothing that's damaged the property. But you want to ask.
[00:05:51] You want to ask things like, is there an active warranty on this roof? Because what's really interesting is a lot of times a roof, when you replace it, will have a warranty. But when there's a hail event, people run right to the insurance company. When you want to check out the warranty to see if it's already, see if maybe it's covered.
[00:06:09] And then you ask, want to ask if there's any hail resistant shingles on the roof. And that's one question that we didn't ask when we bought the house. So when we put the new roof on, we didn't put, uh, hail resistant shingles because we just didn't know. So that was one thing. And the second is that we are right next to a creek and we're above that creek.
[00:06:31] The property is subjected to flooding. So we asked the owner, you know, have you ever had a flood here? And the answer was yes, in 2013 they had a flood. So now I know we got to build a little retaining wall, uh, to help hold that back. All of this stuff wasn't disclosed. And it's not because anybody was trying to do anything bad, it's just that you don't think about that stuff.
[00:06:53] It's like, oh yeah. You know, when you get prompted, a lot of times you think of stuff. And then finally, I wanna take a look at the radon exposure because again, it wasn't disclosed. I said, Hey, this property looks like it has to Radon issues. Can you run a test? It came back elevated and I said, you gotta put in a remediation system before we'll buy the house.
[00:07:12] And they did. It's saving us a couple thousand dollars and time and putting all that stuff in. So all of these are questions that you should be asking people to help you decide. For example, the property was built before 1978 and might have had something like lead paint or asbestos or nob and tube wiring or some insulation that wasn't so hot.
[00:07:34] And all of those were true. So when we renovated this property, which we did, which isn't shown here because the property is not for sale, we had all these issues. You know, we had novitude wiring, we had lead paint, we had asbestos, we had poor insulation. Again, all things you want to know. Before you buy a house.
[00:07:52] And then we also show some construction permits. So it looks like the property's been renovated. Uh, were they pulled properly? Have they been closed? Are they still in progress? Uh, what needs to be done to close the permits? Any outstanding inspections needed for the work to be done? And we finally closed these permits just a week ago.
[00:08:10] So they're not quite updated yet in the city system. Uh, but we do know that they're there. So lots and lots of information. Second piece of information is what we call our inspector lens. Where this is something you can print out and give to your inspector and say, Hey, take a quick look, take an extra look at these particular things.
[00:08:28] Because we don't know whether the property is in danger from that. For example, frozen pipes. Big concern in Minnesota. And really what you want to look at is do the pipes face the external walls? And if they do, how well insulated are they? You know, that's the kind of things that you want to prod your inspector to make sure you get the information that you need.
[00:08:51] And then finally, we have, uh, the insurance lens, you know, which are some things that might, uh, impact your insurability for the property. Because I don't know about you, John, but our premium has gone up 70 percent in the last two years. Not exactly sure why, but it has. And it's probably because of hail and damaging winds.
[00:09:13] Those are both high risk areas. It's an older home, uh, they cost more, um, the property has a fireplace and it has a replacement cost. And that's the other thing is replacement costs are going through the sky because people aren't, people are putting money into their houses. So rather than move, they just say, Oh, I'm going to fix up the place that I have, which takes up a lot of the labor and drives the prices up, which is great if you're a builder, not so hot if you're getting insurance.
[00:09:40] And we found that for, uh, properties in Minnesota, the premium should be between 12, 000 for this house. So, it's, which is exactly correct. Uh, we're getting it for a little bit less because they don't know that that's the replacement cost. But we're working on that part. And then we give lots and lots of data.
[00:10:01] So the MLS, um, we show here. And what we want to get to is some of the more interesting stuff. Here's the ownership data. How has it changed over time? What's it been priced for? What was it sold for? Here's the tax data. 2019's missing in this one, but we know that the property taxes last year were 28, 685.
[00:10:24] Here's all the pictures that we see for this property. It doesn't look like this anymore. We've done a lot of work to renovate it. Here's something that you can't get from your local county. What's the condition of the roof based upon aerial imagery? And what we show is that this roof is in pretty good condition.
[00:10:40] We're working on some new factors that will show you exactly how old the roof is. And this roof is five years old, uh, because it was replaced in 2019. And then damaging events. So here's the different damaging events that have happened. We had a hail storm back in July. The probability that the roof was total was small, was about 15 percent.
[00:11:00] And the average hail size was about one and a quarter inches. At in 2020, this was the big event in Minnesota that caused over 2 billion worth of damage and is a 50 percent probability. But in neither case was the roof destroyed because of it. And then what's kind of cool is you can go back and see how the roof has changed over time.
[00:11:19] So if we go back to 2021, we can see that a there's a big tree in the way. That's no longer there. And b, there's more house than there was before. So you can play with this and see different views of the tree, excuse me, of the, of the data when we get, so one of the things that's really aggravating when you buy a house is you don't know who did the work.
[00:11:44] So what we do is we pull permits from a couple of different sources and we do a lot of work to, to clean them up, to say not only who, what was the permit for, uh, remodel plumbing for the kitchen, but who did the work? So when you're the new buyer, you can go in and say, who did the work? So I can call them up and say, Hey, I need my heated driveway, uh, take a service.
[00:12:08] So let's call a little Igloo heating and air conditioning because they did the work, which is something that again, hard to get otherwise. We don't have any inspection data. Uh, Xcel Energy tells us that the average electricity cost will be about 150 a month. Uh, we don't have solar here if you're considering it.
[00:12:30] We tell you that it's gonna cost you about 23, 000. It's gonna pay you back in about 14 years. Here's the carbon footprint of your energy provider. And then the different risk assessments. So John, flood data. What can you tell us about flooding for a property?
[00:12:50] John: Well, it happens in more places than most people expect.
[00:12:55] So while you look at this map, the red areas are the FEMA 100 year zone, the orange areas are the 500 year zone. Um, unfortunately, water doesn't know where the lines are drawn, and so it doesn't pay a lot of attention. So bad things happen if you know you're near or in a flood zone, you should definitely have flood insurance.
[00:13:21] Bob: Yeah, this one is 29 feet. 29 feet is not very far. I could throw a ball 29 feet. Um, and reach the flood zone. In fact, I could probably throw a pencil 29 feet. Could I? Yeah, I could throw a pencil 29 feet. And there's the flood zone right there. And there, you can go to places to find this information out, but it's all in one spot to show you exactly what you're looking, what you're looking at.
[00:13:45] We've got data on weather. We've got data on environmental pollutions. Ironically, there's a leaking underground storage tank down the street from here. Uh, somebody's oil tank is leaking, and the leaching field is like a thousand feet on those things. But there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
[00:14:00] Because, you know, just take a look for it, I suppose. And then, we'll tell you, are there any, the nearest meth lab, uh, 1. 2 miles away. Uh, which is, wow, that's a little bit closer than I thought it was. Uh, this is insurability, here's some factors that might require additional coverage. Um, which is hail, uh, and flood.
[00:14:24] Which is a separate policy. If you want to get a quote for insurance, we give you the option, go get a quote, and then there's no claims that have been reported, good crime in this area, relatively low crime, lots and lots of data about the property, and then finally, a property timeline. So we tell you exactly what happened at different times, and here's where we see all the permits happening, which is around, Uh, August, July of 23, which is when we started all the work on this property.
[00:14:52] So, that is a very voluminous look at a property, and I realize I am on a monologue, so I'm going to stop talking right now and ask you a question, Johnson. Alright, if you're looking at buying this house, and you don't know that this guy's selling it, what are the top three things that you look for? Uh, based upon the information in this property.
[00:15:18] John: Well, the first thing I would look for is the roof condition report. Because there's hail, there's wind, there's, you have weather there. It gets cold, you get ice dams, you get all that stuff. So I think that would probably be number one on my list, is the roof condition report. Two would be looking at, you know, there's a creek that runs by Minnehaha.
[00:15:42] And it's a beautiful creek, but it's a little close. So knowing where the flood zones are and knowing that, uh, flood insurance is probably something that you should get because it'll be relatively inexpensive because the property itself is not in a flood zone, but it's something that you should have.
[00:16:06] Then the third thing that I would look at given the age of the property is the sewer line. So when I had the inspection done, I would have the sewer line scoped because Replacing a sewer line, uh, that is an ugly job, and you don't want to be the one doing it if you don't have to. You know what's funny is that the
[00:16:29] Bob: sewer line actually froze here a couple of years ago.
[00:16:33] It's like, oh, we were away for a little while and we came back and it's like, we gotta get in and chip that thing open, it was awful. Um, but it is in good condition. So, for me, the three things I would consider, um, important. In this number one is, like you said, the roof condition, you know, because there's such perils in this area.
[00:16:56] You want to know when was the roof last replaced? You want to know, is it damaged? You know, before you send the inspector up there walking around, you know, what should they be looking out for? Number two, I want to look for signs of wintertime damage, whether it's ice dams or whether it's, um, frozen pipes.
[00:17:14] Anything that looks like it might become repetitive, I want to capture early. And then the third thing is the flood. Um, you know, how much do we have to do to this property to protect it from flood damage? Those are the three that I would think are the most important for this house. And I bought it anyway.
[00:17:32] I knew all this stuff going in because I could dig it up. I bought it anyway. We're not saying that the Property Lens will prevent you from buying a house, but it will make you an informed buyer. Help you understand exactly what it is you're getting into. So, yeah, I bought it and, uh, And that's it. That's the Property Lens for 4518 Browndale Avenue in Edina, Minnesota.
[00:17:58] John, you got any parting thoughts?
[00:18:00] John: Nope, just that everybody should get a Property Lens report before they buy a house.
[00:18:05] Bob: If you are thinking about buying a property, go get a PropertyLens report first. It is the best 99 that you can spend. If you are buying a property as is, then you really need this report, because it'll tell you what you're going to need to fix after you buy the property.
[00:18:25] John: Especially if
[00:18:26] Bob: you're acting as your own
[00:18:27] John: buyer's
[00:18:28] Bob: agent. Yeah, or better yet, ask your agent for it. PropertyLens.com, enter an address. And listen, it won't solve all your problems, but at least it will make you more aware of what's going on at a property. So for Property of the Week at PropertyLens, I'm Bob Frady.
[00:18:48] I'm John Siegman. See you next time.
