Welcome to another episode of PropertyLens! 🎙️ This week, Bob Frady and John Siegman unveil a brand-new feature: the Expected Expense Report, a game-changing tool that projects a property's two-year repair costs, giving homebuyers clearer insight into what they're really signing up for.
Key Takeaways
📊 See the breakdown for a real home in San Antonio, TX and find out: ✅ Why this $250K home could cost $25K more in the first two years ✅ What insurance won't cover if the roof is 30 years old ✅ How PropertyLens helps buyers ask smarter questions before they make an offer
Bob Frady (00:01.918)
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, ships at sea, you are here for this week's episode of Property of the Week from Property Lens. As always, for those of who don't know us, I'm Bob Frady, co-founder and CEO of Property Lens, and with me...
John - PropertyLens (00:20.906)
is John Sigmund, co-founder and president of Property Blends.
Bob Frady (00:25.631)
So John, there are some days when I am happier to be alive than others. Today is one of those days. Today is one of those days. And the reason is because we are.
John - PropertyLens (00:30.676)
No. Yay!
Bob Frady (00:39.881)
putting something new out there in the property lens world. Now we develop stuff all the time, but this one I like especially, I think it's cool. So to give you some background, if any of you have bought a property lens report, you'll see there's a section called the roof lens. And that roof lens estimates the age of the roof. It estimates the replacement costs. It estimates the life, cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of logic, lots of work went into that.
But then we talked to the team and said, well, why can't we do this for most of the systems? And then we thought, well, we could. So we did. And we're here to announce that we will be launching next week, PropertyLens two year expected expense report for any house in the USA.
giving myself a round of applause. The work that all of our team has put in is just wonderful. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a look at a property and we're gonna show you what we're talking about. So let's do this. Let's share a screen.
John - PropertyLens (01:40.962)
Listen.
Bob Frady (01:54.548)
Here's Property Lens. For those of you who haven't run a report, you don't know what this looks like, but if you've run a report, this is the portal. You order a report and then your report pops in down here. So we're gonna take a look at this address, 3842 Tavern Oaks in San Antonio, Texas. It is on the market right now for $250,000, 2300 square foot house in San Antonio. Just picked it because the...
John - PropertyLens (02:21.289)
else.
Bob Frady (02:22.324)
If someone asks me about San Antonio, I have no idea where it is.
John - PropertyLens (02:27.393)
You have no idea where San Antonio is?
Bob Frady (02:29.512)
Well, Sid and Tonyo, know where that is, but this house, I have no idea where that is.
John - PropertyLens (02:32.553)
Okay, just making sure. Well, it's in San Antonio.
Bob Frady (02:37.222)
So let's see what we got here.
Bob Frady (02:43.124)
Let's do one thing. Why I think I messed up my screen. So now I got to fix it. There we go. Okay. So this is what a property ledger reports looks like. It looks a little different. Uh, it's three bedrooms, two baths built in 1995, which is 30 years ago. I remember 1995. Holy cow. Man. Uh, 23 square feet.
John - PropertyLens (02:50.893)
And we're back.
Bob Frady (03:10.206)
quarter, two tenths of an acre and it looks like it's had some damage before. So here's what we show you at the top. Property Lens Insight. First is the buyer lens, which includes things like projected two year repairs. So for this property, we expect over the next two years that not only are gonna pay $250,000 for the property, but you're have to spend about 25 grand in extra repairs. Where's that gonna come from?
John - PropertyLens (03:36.033)
That's an extra 10%.
Bob Frady (03:40.113)
Well, your plumbing, your driveway, your roof are the three big things that you're gonna have. Your HVAC system as well. You might have some termites, might need a water heater. But those are the things that you really wanna take a look at when you come into this property. In Texas, you need to pull permits for a lot of these things and there's no permits on here and there's no description saying how old this stuff is. So we have to assume the worst.
and it's past its useful lifespan. So you're gonna spend on these elements. And this is what we're telling you without reading the listing or anything like that. So the average replacement cost for all of these things is as much as $68,000. But we expect in the next couple of years, it'll be around $25,000 in expenses.
Bob Frady (04:30.941)
which I think is pretty dang cool.
So then we get into our key. So then here we get into our data. So the roof is in good condition, is past its expected lifespan. So here's what you want to do. It looks like it's 30 years old. This average lifespan in Texas is 26 years for this type of roof and it costs between 11 and $15,000 to replace it. So here's what you want to ask when you walk in. What's been done to preserve the roof?
John - PropertyLens (04:36.545)
Pretty important to know.
Bob Frady (05:06.587)
Any water leaks through the roof. Any missing shingles, gutter guards, proper drains. And then when you talk to the inspector, check downspouts for signs of damage in the water going away from the foundation. Look for shingles, look for gutter damage. Not every inspector likes to get on the roof of a house. This house needs to be gutted on the roof.
All right, John, what we got next?
John - PropertyLens (05:33.454)
Toxic exposure. That's always lovely. In this case, what we looking at here? We've got PFAs, polyfluoroacrylides, the forever chemical. They're present in a lot of places. So if you, especially if this has well water, it'd be something to definitely check for. So get a water quality test done. And, you know, that's what your inspector is for.
Bob Frady (05:38.418)
Ta-da!
John - PropertyLens (06:03.117)
to make sure that these things get looked at. So get this out to your inspector and say, hey, check this out. And if they don't do it, they'll know somebody who does.
Bob Frady (06:06.16)
not part of the standard inspection.
Bob Frady (06:14.033)
Correct. And what do we got next?
John - PropertyLens (06:16.717)
Well, it is Texas and they get hail, tornadoes, convective storms, all the things associated with that. so, you know, yep, thunder from the skies. And you get a lot of things that are going to, you know, affect the roof, affect the siding, potentially cause flooding, all of those things. So you definitely would want to have all that stuff checked out.
Bob Frady (06:26.643)
Fun from the skies.
Bob Frady (06:46.638)
Again, here's the questions. You know, you're in a high risk area. So you want to know are those hails, are there hail resistant shingles on the roof? Is there a warrant? Well, there's no warranty on the roof because at this point the roof's cooked. So, or at least it looks like it is. You should ask about it. Maybe there's something that wasn't disclosed. Are you looking for wind resistant roof, impact resistant glass, storm shutters, all the fun stuff. And then we see.
On the not so bad side, it's a 30 year old house. Not all the systems are updated. So it looks like the furnace might've been updated about 17 years ago, which is pretty much the end of its lifespan. And the water heater, we don't know how old that is. And there are, but it looks like there's solar panels on the roof as well. So again, basic questions.
John - PropertyLens(07:36.945)
you
Bob Frady (07:44.21)
What do we have here? Looks like building permits. Look at that. We'll see more details about this later. But all of this is the summary. Now you can print these questions out to bring them with you when you go to the open house. You can hand them to your agent and say, ask the selling agent to answer these questions before we make an offer on the house.
John - PropertyLens (07:46.509)
Three permits.
Bob Frady (08:07.365)
Now here's something interesting. The replacement cost of this house is greater than the sale price of this house.
John - PropertyLens (08:16.939)
Not too surprising, about 70 % of households in the US have that condition where it would cost more to make it than it does to buy.
Bob Frady (08:18.469)
What is that?
Bob Frady (08:26.758)
What does that mean for the insurance standpoint,
John - PropertyLens(08:29.613)
means that if you're insuring it for what you bought it for and something really really bad happens and you have to build it all over again you're going to be about $160,000 short which is never a good thing.
Bob Frady (08:43.78)
Yep, never a good thing. So you want to talk to your insurance agent and say, what's the replacement cost is higher than the value of the house. do I do? Expect the premium to be around $2,400, but there's a big range in here. So you want to make sure you get a quote before you buy.
okay here's
Lots of information about the property itself. let's see. It's a contemporary front wood frame houses, average construction, most listing detail. Here's the kicker.
Great potential. Potential means I need fixin'.
John - PropertyLens (09:26.093)
That's like saying it's got a good personality.
Bob Frady (09:29.229)
So-
Bob Frady (09:34.437)
This is how it's good boats can dance.
John - PropertyLens (09:38.056)
Yeah.
Bob Frady (09:39.281)
This house is sold as is, so you know you're gonna be putting money into it. So you may walk into this and say, that's good enough, I just need to know. Now what you're gonna need to replace, that's what we help to tell you. It's been on the market 10 days, so it's brand new. Here's a different ownership, last sold in 2013. Or, yes, it was sold in 2013, so it's been a while since it's been on. Yep, property taxes have gone up in this area quite a bit.
John - PropertyLens (10:03.673)
years.
Bob Frady (10:08.144)
It seems from in 2015, it was 5,200 in 2023, eight years later, it was 8,100, which is a difference of roughly $3,000, which is roughly $250 a month or $227 a month. I guess if you want to do the math. So taxes are going up in this area, except you want to be cognizant of. So you get the pictures of the inside and I would ask for the massage chair, but that's just me. I like massage chairs.
I would ask for it. looks like a nice one. It's got the screen and everything.
John - PropertyLens (10:39.799)
Seems like a reasonable request. It's a lovely house.
Bob Frady (10:42.275)
Yep, and it's a nice looking house. Yeah, it's not bad. You're just gonna have to put some work into it. Okay, what damaging events do we have here?
John - PropertyLens (10:53.035)
Hail, hail, hail, hail, hail, wind, wind, wind, hail.
Bob Frady (10:57.464)
Wind and hail. So one of the things you have to be careful of in Texas is that after seven years, the roof reverts to the actual cash value of the roof. And by the time the roof is 30 years old, the cash value of the roof is zero. So if you have a claim, your insurance company will probably not cover it because your roof doesn't have any value to it. Now if you get damage on the inside, maybe, but this is something that you want to ask about when you're at this location.
John - PropertyLens (11:11.658)
Zero.
Bob Frady (11:26.508)
And it's, you know, it's not huge hail, but there's, there's hail and lots of wind. It's Texas. If you want to see the roof at different times, you can take a look at the roof and there's the solar panels on there. So you do have some solar panels, which is nice. You want to ask, is that owned or is it leased? Cause it makes a difference when you buy a property with leased panels, you have to make sure that that deed is cleared.
John - PropertyLens (11:39.488)
Yep.
Bob Frady (11:56.496)
off of the transaction or that you pick up the bill. Okay, here's what we see. The roof was, this house was built in 1995, which is 30, 30 years. Can you believe 30 years? I'm just okay. All right.
So it's past its useful lifespan. It's a shingle roof. Yeah, listen, you might get 30 years out of it. You might get 32 years out of it, but you're have trouble getting this insured if it truly is 30 years old. About 15 grand to replace it.
Condition's not bad, it's not horrible, it's not good, not bad, not great, it's not bad. It's got medium exposure. Low tree overhang, which is good, high risk of tornado damage, and hail and wind, which is bad.
Bob Frady (12:50.382)
What do we know about the structure there, John?
John - PropertyLens (12:52.801)
Well, you know, the structure itself, contemporary style, brick, framing, wood, standard stuff, nothing overly exciting. The soil composition, I love when it says young soils. Most of the soils on earth are between 4.5 and 6 billion years old. But what that really means is that, you know, it's working its weight alone. So it's still in the process.
You know, it's decent and it doesn't look like there's anything with the soils that's going to cause foundation cracks or any of that other type of thing, frost heave, any of that nonsense.
Bob Frady (13:37.999)
Let me check something out here. Yeah, see that backyard? That's a backyard that needs supplementation because as the soil types say right here,
may need supplemental soils and amendments for landscaping. It's a tough growing area.
John - PropertyLens (13:58.55)
Yeah, dig it out and put it in a pool.
Bob Frady (14:01.687)
So from, there you go. Structural and championry is pretty good at this house. You know, you have some moderate damage of termites, which is normal for tech, for that part of Texas. Get soft water, get good soil drainage runoff, not near a mine, which is good. And your soil is not going to heave because it doesn't freeze. So generally pretty good.
John - PropertyLens (14:10.445)
Yes?
Bob Frady (14:29.024)
Okay, permits. Firstly, we tell you is our permits required? And yes, they are. For new home construction, room additions, garage conversions, structural alterations, electrical and plumbing work, HVAC, and major renovations. Decks over, accessories, structures over 200 square feet, fences over six feet tall, and decks over 30 inches above grade. So, and you gotta check with the historic
Preservation Office if it's in a historic district. So if you want to click, if you want to learn more, you can click here. So what do we see is the last permits there, John?
John - PropertyLens (15:09.439)
Well, you know, we've got the solar permits, Titan Solar Power, that tells us who did the work. So in case we buy this place, we'll know if there's any solar issues who we should give up ringy dingy to. Then we've got our on time Elmer plumbing. Looks like they did a couple things, two ton condenser. So they put in a new air conditioning unit. That's what that indicates. So back in.
2008, 17 years. If you got 17 years out of an air conditioner in Texas, you probably did okay. So that's probably time up for that. Garage permit issued. It looked like the garage was built into the house. So I wonder what went on there. It'd be a good thing to ask about. Building addition.
post structure siding was added to the residence. So somebody put on aluminum siding, it sounds like. So they did a little bit of work back also in 2005. So those two permits beyond the current owner. So you might not have any way of finding out what happened. But if you called up the person who pulled the permit, they might still be able to tell you.
Bob Frady (16:32.235)
And then, yeah, exactly. Here's the thing. Like when you buy a house, someone has done work on it. You generally have no idea who did the work. The current owners aren't exactly like, here's who did the work. You have to go look it up, dig it through. It's all right here, right in front of me.
Bob Frady (16:48.735)
On the good news side, little flood risk. Now, somebody complained to me the other day and it said that every house was in a flood zone. It's like, yeah, that's the Noah's Ark theory of flood. And, and that's solid theory for some people. We think of a flood zone as a FEMA designated flood zone, 100 to 500 years. So thanks. That's hopefully that clarifies things. You're not in a.
John - PropertyLens (17:01.107)
Yep.
John - PropertyLens (17:13.483)
Well, and we also take into account coastal flooding and riverine flooding outside of those flood zones. And this is just a property that, you know, short of another 40 day rain is going to stay relatively dry.
Bob Frady (17:17.716)
Exactly.
Bob Frady (17:29.025)
Yep, we're not expecting losses and we haven't had a lot of losses because here's the zone. Nothing there. And you're 1200 feet away from the nearest flood zone.
John - PropertyLens (17:37.759)
Nothing there.
Bob Frady (17:45.04)
There's no lomas and lomers, which you would have if it was a flood zone. Okay, our climate risks. Hail, tornado.
A little bit of a little bit of lightning, a little bit of sinkhole. It's interesting about San Antonio, heavy amounts of limestone. If you've ever tried to dig a pool in San Antonio, you know what I'm talking about. It's limestone. And limestone creates sinkholes. You're not going to have a lot of cold waves, hurricanes, landslide, winter weather, avalanche earthquake, ice storm, tsunami, volcano, not a lot of wildfire, although Texas does have a lot of wildfire risk.
John - PropertyLens (18:01.622)
Yep.
John - PropertyLens (18:20.397)
Thank you.
Bob Frady (18:26.348)
Not a little bit of risk.
Bob Frady (18:30.794)
What we got for crime, John?
John - PropertyLens (18:32.703)
Well, you know, it's not bad. Everybody freaks out. I know we don't want to bring C's home on our report card, but the U.S. is relatively safe. And so C being average, that means you're relatively safe. Better for aggravated assault, no burglary. Maybe because all those houses have alarm systems. Who knows? But, you know, overall, it's a safe neighborhood. You're good there. Scroll down a little bit.
We got three registered sex offenders within a half mile. That can be of some concern. It's good to know where they're at, what they did, and how far they are away.
Bob Frady (19:16.416)
This is something that your realtor will never volunteer. The selling agent won't talk about it. The buying agent won't talk about it a lot of times because they can't, but we can. And you can certainly ask them about it. Have they had any issues with any of the neighbors being weird is what it really could well beyond the normal weird of like, you know.
whatever San Antonio where it is. So yeah, there's some sex offenders around there.
Bob Frady (19:46.603)
How about quality of life factors in this neighborhood?
John - PropertyLens (19:49.708)
Well, natural disaster resilience looks at how well your community can respond to an event. you know, lots of communities just aren't geared for it. San Antonio happens to be one of those communities. Airport noise. Not that San Antonio's airport is the busiest airport, but you are probably out by it. And so you're going to get some noise from the planes if you happen to be
in the flight path that day. If you happen to be in the flight path every day and that's bothersome to you, it might not be your house. Road noise and rail noise? None. This isn't a neighborhood that you can walk to things and it's also not a neighborhood where you can take a bus to go somewhere.
Bob Frady (20:37.675)
Here's the points of interest within five miles, which are things like schools and childcare centers, EV charging stations. There's one at the Walmart, which is a mile and a half away. You get your solar panels, get your electric car, and then just use Walmart as a backup. There's a Twin Oaks airport, not far from here, about two and a half miles away, which may be the cause of some of the noise. And San Antonio International is about 3.1 miles away. So there's a couple of airports right around you.
John - PropertyLens (21:07.617)
That's the cause of the noise, SAT.
Bob Frady (21:11.088)
Okay, so then we got health, we've got toxic exposure, health and structural hazards. We've got PFAS drinking water, like we've said before. Get a little bit of mold in this area, so you'll want to check for that, see if there's any formation of mold in the property. And radon is not a high risk in this area.
Now there are some contaminated sites around here. Well, you know, potentially contaminated sites. You got your underground storage tanks about here and, the nearest clandestine lab was on thousand Oaks Avenue in, in San Antonio, which is about, there's the airport right there. Now you can see there's the airport. So yeah, you're going to get some airport.
John - PropertyLens (21:54.059)
Yeah.
Bob Frady (21:58.505)
And then fire protection and response, law enforcement, medical, good. Pretty good. Health and safety services. So where's the nearest doctor's office, uh, are always good things. Whereas the nearest police station was nearest fire station. You're very well covered with fire stations in this area, which is great in case you need an EMT call or some doctor bit, something happens to your house. Um, and then electricity costs are estimated to be about.
John - PropertyLens (22:03.829)
All good.
Bob Frady (22:25.706)
$200 a month most of which can be eaten up with solar CPS energy is the The energy provider in this area You don't have to worry about solar because it's already been considered because it's on the house Carbon footprint for utility for those of you are concerned about those sort of things and then insurability So here's it gets interesting. There's a wide range of insurance prices on this house
You know, it's from 2,400 to 4,800. And we look at who's filed rates in areas of what they would charge. So that's a pretty big spread. You want to make sure that you get a good quote on that because that's, you know, almost 150 bucks a month extra. When you're buying a total of $150,000 house, it gets extra pretty fast. So replacement cost is 414, 180 per square foot. As we've...
talked about on previous episodes, replaceable costs are going up. And between labor shortages and product shortages, it's not gonna get better before it gets worse. It's gonna keep getting worse. Hale is the big risk here, a little bit of sinkhole. And then there's all the different factors. Yeah, sinkhole is excluded from your policy. We don't see any points around here, but this sort of ground can form sinkholes.
John - PropertyLens (23:38.261)
And signal is not included in your policy.
Bob Frady (23:50.439)
If you want to get a quote, you click on this button, you get a quote, and then finally the property timeline. All sorts of information about when everything was done. Okay. So there we go. That's our new, new and improved property lens home history report. We're very excited about it. but yeah, this, this place definitely is going to need some fixing. So John.
John - PropertyLens (24:19.136)
Yes.
Bob Frady (24:20.047)
Let's say that you were going to buy 3842 Taven Oaks Ave, excuse me, street in San Antonio. What are the big three things you're looking for?
John - PropertyLens (24:36.161)
Number one, we're looking at the roof. It's unknown. It could be 30 years old. Could be original equipment. We gotta find out about the roof because if it's too old, it's be really hard to get insurance. That's number one. Number two, all of the systems in the house.
Bob Frady (24:55.528)
Mm-hmm.
John - PropertyLens (25:02.849)
There's not a lot of detail. The only detail we have is that, you know, somebody put on a two-ton compressor, which is a little undersized for a 2,500 square foot house, especially given the use in Texas, for AC 17 years ago, which means it's, it's HCVAC time. And you could be looking at, you know, 20K per set for furnace and AC.
So that's gonna be a concern, because a roof, I don't remember the roof cost on this house, but it wasn't cheap. So, right there, those are the two big things. And then I think the third thing that I would want to definitely take into account is just looking at the landscaping and things like that. You gotta put that in the back of your mind if you...
you know, really like having a healthy lush yard. So, you know, you're going to be digging it up, in some, lot of amendments. So there's work to be had here. And I would want to take a look at comps in the neighborhood because if I'm going to put all that into it, can I get all of that out of it? Those would be my big three. And you?
Bob Frady (26:27.516)
Okay.
If I were buying 3842 Tavern Oak Street in San Antonio, I know walking in that this is sold as it is. I know it's a fixer. The question is, is how much fixing do we have to do? I'd be super concerned because the replacement cost is greater than the sale cost of the house. And that's not, that's an insurance thing. But what it also means is replacing stuff is expensive. You know, getting
competitive bids to do work is expensive. So the first thing I would look at is what's the size of the reno and what's it gonna cost me? The second thing specifically is the roof. Is it really 30 years old? There's nothing to indicate that it's not. And if it is 30 years old, you gotta replace it or else you're gonna have trouble getting insurance. And then the third thing I would look at is insurance. I would get a quote on this property before
I made an offer just to see how much it would cost because it's a pretty wide range for that location. And given the hail events and the age of the roof, you kind of want to know that to help figure out what it's really going to cost for insurance for that location. So what's the size of the reno? What's the condition of the roof? And then what's the, I forgot the last one. I just said it.
I forgot it. There you go. Getting older. But overall, listen for 250, you can't really go wrong. It's a good starter house. Oh, the third is airport noise. You're close to the airport. so while it says it's low, if that's the kind of thing that annoys you, you got to really check it out. Do they have dual or triple pane windows? That's an expensive replacement if they don't. So try to go there at a couple of different times to see what the noise is really like and whether you can handle
John - PropertyLens (28:01.197)
Thank
Bob Frady (28:28.422)
Cause at three miles out, you're pretty much in, you know, closer to the landing zone than if you say 20 miles out. So yeah, there we go. Anything else, John?
John - PropertyLens (28:39.401)
No, I think that pretty much covers it.
Bob Frady (28:41.654)
All right, for this week's episode of Property of the Week with Property Lens, I'm Bob Frady.
John - PropertyLens (28:47.689)
I'm John Sigman.
Bob Frady (28:49.038)
Remember if you're shopping for a house before you buy Verify with property lens property lens.com See you next time
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