Podcast
Episode 22 | PropertyLens Reveals A Condo Full of Questions
Listen or watch on YouTube
In This Episode
Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman
Properties: 1034 Braemoor Dr., Downers Grove, IL 60515
Episode Summary
Welcome back to PropertyLens! 🎙️ This week, Bob Frady and John Siegman are joined by insurance industry leader Bryan Falchuk (President & CEO of PLRB) to review a sleek condo in Downers Grove, IL and dig into what buyers really need to know beneath the surface.
Key Takeaways
📊 In this episode:
✅ What you should ask before buying in a condo association
✅ How water quality and hard water can destroy appliances (and warranties)
✅ Why hail damage and roof replacement can be a hidden financial trap
💡 Whether you're new to real estate or a seasoned buyer, this episode shows how a PropertyLens report can uncover risks no listing photo ever will.
🔍 What do we see
✔️ Deep dive into a real PropertyLens report with expert commentary
✔️ Red flags around unpermitted HVAC and water heater upgrades
✔️ PFAS and radon risks revealed, plus water hardness concerns
✔️ Extensive hail damage history and missing roof replacement records
✔️ Smart insurance and HOA questions every condo buyer should ask
Resources
🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com
🔹 Questions Contact us: support@propertylens.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bob Frady:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and Girls, ships at sea. It is time, your favorite time of the week for Property of the Week with PropertyLens. For those of you who don't know, I am Bob Frady, Co-founder and CEO of PropertyLens. With me, as always.
[00:00:25] John Siegman:
John Siegman, President and Co-founder of PropertyLens.
[00:00:29] Bob Frady:
John, today we have a guest, one of the most esteemed minds in the insurance industry. And he didn't even pay me to say that I came up with that on my own.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to introduce Mr. Bryan Falchuk. He is the President and CEO of the PLRB. Bryan, why don't you give us a little download on who you are, what you do, and what PLRB is all about.
[00:00:52] Bryan Falchuk:
So I'm Bryan Falchuk, as he said. I'm a 25 year PNC veteran. Worked at different carriers and mainline specialty lines kind of stuff.
I was a chief claims officer in my last role. Went to InsureTech for a bit and started writing some books and putting out a podcast and other stuff all into the future of insurance brand. And then. PLRB came along and said, we need a new CEO. Would you like to come on board? Didn't quite happen that way, but I said yes.
And that's where I've been for almost three years now, and it's kinda a claims focused solution, but it's a nonprofit trade org that US PNC carriers are members of. We've got about 70% of the US market is members of our organization and we support them and delivery of coverage. So you think of that as kind of being at the cold face of claims and the life of claims adjusters and trying to help them in doing their job and getting educated and being there for people in need.
[00:01:44] Bob Frady:
So answer something for me, Bryan, if you could. Is claims truly like the middle child of the insurance industry or everybody kind of flies over it? Is it like the Nebraska of the insurance industry?
[00:01:58] Bryan Falchuk:
If you ask people in claims. It's the product and it's all that matters. I think if you ask people everywhere else. If I get the joke one more time from an underwriter or finance person about we make all the money and then you guys spend it faster than we can make it. well, the faster than you can make it part is not our fault just FYI that's in the underwriting.
But hey, I don't think it gets the respect that the. Like the frontline business development side that folks bring in the premium get, but in the reality, like it is the kind of embodiment of the product. So don't fly over land and come and visit.
[00:02:36] Bob Frady:
Nebraska is beautiful. It's interesting because if you have a bad claims experience, you hate that insurance company.
Whereas if you have a bad, onboarding experience, you kind of dislike them. But the level is so much higher if you have a bad claims experience that it's awful to live through that as a people will complain like crazy.
[00:02:59] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah. Well, and keep in mind like they've gone through what could be the worst thing they've ever faced in their life and even a good claims experience, they're still going through the worst thing they've ever faced in their life.
So, and the best of days, like you've taken care of them, but it was still a horrible thing that happened to 'em. And in the worst of days, nothing was good about it or they never had a claim and then they're just bitter that, they paid all this money for nothing.
So it's sort of. It's lose lose, isn't it? It's a tough spot to be in.
[00:03:27] Bob Frady:
We live by two rules in the insurance industry. Number one, the best claim is the one you never have because claims, no matter what it is, are miserable. Something bad happened. And the second thing that we believe in is that loss control begins at home.
So if you know what the dangers are around a property, chances are you're gonna be a little bit more aware of trying to fix for that. When you buy a house, that's not a philosophy that everybody shares, but it's one that drives us. So, Bryan was nice enough to send us an address in advance that we ran through PropertyLens.
Normally what you do is go to PropertyLens.com, type it in address, send us a little money, and you'll get a report. For today, we're gonna skip that part and we will go right to, so this is our portal. Now I run a lot of reports, so I'll have a lot of reports in here. You might only have one if you get one report, but this is where you can see the property Bryan sent does 1034 Braemoor Drive in Downers Grove, Illinois.
It is three bedrooms, two baths, a condo, 2,700 square feet. we ran it today, so we'll go and take a look at the report.
[00:04:36] Bryan Falchuk:
And Bob, I might just say I. Being a Boston native, why am I choosing property out outside of Chicago, but that's PLRB's offices or in Downers Grove. And so I said, Hey, if I ever were to move closer to the office, where would I live?
And every now and then I'll take a look at Zillow or wherever, and I. That's what led me to this property.
[00:04:55] Bob Frady:
My wife is from Chicagoland. I say nothing but good things about Chicagoland. So this property was built in 1987. It's on a bigger lot 'cause it's condo development and it looks like there was some prior damage at this property.
We'll dig in, we'll see a little bit more now. This property, we will get to the value of it in a bit. The first thing that we take a look at is. What should you expect to spend in the next couple of years on expenses? Condos are a little trickier, because of roofs are usually paid by the association or property or damages.
So here we have driveway and asphalt. we don't know how old this is, but we expect that the asphalt lasts for about 15 to 25 years. Since this property is 38 years old, we figure the asphalt is past its life expectancy. So the first thing we would do is to say, Hey, have you had any problems with the asphalt?
Look for any cracks, anything like that in the roof. You have to ask, is this paid for by the condo association or are you responsible for your own roof in a condo association? Electrical about 3000. Because the systems are old termites, it's a little bit of a termite issue in this area, pipes are getting up towards their expected life expectancy, 38 years, versus a 40 year life expectancy.
The sewer line. The sewer line would generally last, but if you have a lot of trees around, then you wanna look for root intrusion into those sewer pipes, which nobody ever takes a look at, as part of a standard inspection foundation. Looks good. Plumbing fixtures were replaced in 2025, as well as HVAC systems in the water heater.
So there's been some work done, which is great. Then the next is our key findings. John, why don't you walk through this for us?
[00:06:39] John Siegman:
So in looking at the roof condition, it's unknown, and that's probably because it's probably been updated, but that permit was probably pulled for the entire complex versus that specific unit.
So you'd wanna take a look at the condition which we provide, and take a look at it that way. It's a red flag, it's not a major red flag, but it's something you'd wanna look for.
Side of that are all of the questions that you, as the buyer should be asking the seller. And then when it comes inspection time, you want your inspector to go take a few different pieces of looks, things that they may not normally do.
To get the answers to these questions.
[00:07:21] Bob Frady:
Our goal is not to say buy this or don't buy this property. Our goal is to say, here's the questions you should ask to make yourself feel comfortable, because usually what happens, you go to a place, you look around and you fall in love, and it's then what?
That's a terrible time to make multi-hundred thousand dollars decisions is when you're first in love with something. So this gives you the opportunity during the walkthrough to say, Hey, here's the questions you should be taking a look at.
[00:07:47] Bryan Falchuk:
Well, I was just gonna say, when when we bought our home, we, this was the second home that we had an inspection done on.
I felt kind of ignorant, what should I be asking the inspector about specifically? he's gonna flag what he is gonna flag, but he's also seeing things that may not. Rise to the issue of what a home inspector would call out, but getting his expert view on these issues, that would've been really helpful.
So having that guide, it's like asking a car expert or a mechanic to come with you to look at the used car lot, knowing where you should be pointing your efforts.
[00:08:18] Bob Frady:
Exactly. Here's my personal favorite right here. The house I own in Minnesota had an ice stand issue. One of the reasons is because there weren't any gutter guards on the gutters and a low cost fix.
They weren't present being Minnesota Ice all backed up and had a claim for an ice dam mitigated through the use of a gutter guard. So you wanna make sure you're paying attention to the little things like the gutters when you're talking about the roof.
[00:08:47] John Siegman:
Yeah.
[00:08:48] Bob Frady:
All right John, I'm gonna do that next.
[00:08:51] John Siegman:
You got some toxic exposure.
This is can be mold, can be PFAS It can be a number of different things around, something that you'd want to know 'cause you'd be moving into an area you don't know, and something that you'd definitely wanna get checked. And they don't typically do this, but they either have the ability or they know someone who does to test and drink a water.
[00:09:17] Bob Frady:
PFAS. I call 'em PFAS, but that's not correct. It's PFAS.
[00:09:22] John Siegman:
No, I'd be wrong.
[00:09:23] Bryan Falchuk:
That's the news calls 'em PFAS.
[00:09:25] Bob Frady:
Yeah, news. News calls 'em PFAS. 'cause it sounds cool. This is the forever chemical. So there is a presence of forever chemicals around this house. So you wanna make sure you take a look at getting tested to make sure it's not in this house.
[00:09:38] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah, I wouldn't have expected to see that on a report. That's really helpful.
[00:09:42] Bob Frady:
We pull in all kinds of crazy data because,
[00:09:44] Bryan Falchuk:
yeah, I know. It's valuable.
[00:09:45] Bob Frady:
We look at it like we've bought houses before. I would wanna know this.
[00:09:50] John Siegman:
Oh, wind and hail and tornadoes. Oh my, Hey, guess where the Wizard of Oz was written? Right down the street basically.
So not too surprising, the Midwest has Midwest weather. Some places in the Midwest expose more than others. And so, these are things that you would definitely want to look at. given the high incidence of tornadoes, be great if there was a basement, hail event is gonna deal with the roof. And then damaging winds deal with siding.
So all three things. You definitely want to ask about from the current seller, have the inspector look for.
[00:10:29] Bob Frady:
It's a 38-year-old property with some, but not at all. The systems updated. There are some soil issues potentially at this location. this soil characteristic is for runoff. And it has moderate water hardness, which can shorten lifespan of your water heater, which was just replaced.
And so this is something you wanna keep an eye out for. To tell you a not funny story, we have moderate water hardness in a house that used to own in California, and the guy who was doing a water testing demonstration said. You know, the hardness of the water invalidates your warranty on your tankless water heater system.
Two weeks later, water everywhere from the tankless water heater system because of all the buildup in the system.
[00:11:15] Bryan Falchuk:
Wow. Can you like preventatively clean that sort of thing out of the system? Or?
[00:11:19] Bob Frady:
You can. You get a water softening system. And put it in front of the water main or right before it enters into the rest of the property.
Ours is in our garage and it eliminated the issues and all up and down our street. Especially if you have PVC piping. Or flexible piping, they can get pinhole leaks in them in our entire street had pinhole leaks. So we luckily haven't had it because we put the watering system in early. So you do have some issues here, has some fireplaces.
It's relatively minor, but it does increase the risk. and we haven't seen any damaging events. Now we build a database of about almost 4 million records now, which is, it was destroyed in a tornado or a hurricane, or it was caught on fire or was involved in a wildfire. None of those here, which is great.
Now we also have the ability to print these. If you don't wanna bring the whole report with you, if you don't wanna bring all 45 pages, you can just print the questions out and bring those with you to the open house and say, answer these questions for me. And get an idea of what's going on actually inside of the house.
So we estimate the insurance premium to be about $3,600 a year on this property with a replacement cost of approximately $863,000. The characteristics that might increase the cost for your insurance. Now this is a range based upon the filed rates in an area. We try to pick the most common number, so your mileage may differ.
But that gives you an idea of how much it's gonna cost because I don't know about you, but my insurance premium has gone up 50% in three years. So it's, insurance companies are raising rates at very quick levels in some parts of the country, and you need to be cognizant of that before you jump in.
[00:13:07] Bryan Falchuk:
That's about 50% more than I'm paying right now for a slightly smaller house. So that's interesting to me. I didn't realize what rates might be in that area or some of the specifics about the home, obviously driving that too. Without the surprise.
[00:13:21] Bob Frady:
It's crazy. And replacement costs keep going up too.
If you are buying a house and you're insuring for the market value, you have to make sure that it's not more expensive to replace it than it is to buy it. And we see that with a lot of older homes especially.
[00:13:37] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah. Where, and that's getting worse right now. Significantly.
[00:13:41] Bob Frady:
Yeah. Well, you know that. So then we get into the real estate data, and this is all hyperlinked down the side in case you wanna jump to specific sections.
it's 2,700 square feet, three beds, 2.1 baths, two and a half baths, parking spaces. It's contingent. So somebody is in the process of buying it right now. There's no basement, there's no attic. So this is all the real estate data that you would normally see on a real estate listing site does have two parking spaces with it.
It's on public sewer. Solar's not available for this location. here's the construction type. It's above average upgraded construction quality, and it's in Downers Grove. Partial number, latitude, longitude, all that good stuff. Here's the most recent listing details. It was listed on May 8th at $589,000.
[00:14:31] Bryan Falchuk:
Well, to your point of replacement costs, so it was 800 some odd. And here we have listing. Yep. It's, it's under contract now, so $589,000.
[00:14:38] John Siegman:
You can't replace it for what you bought it for.
[00:14:40] Bob Frady:
If this gets destroyed in a, in an event, you're gonna be on the hook for having to replace something. Your insurance isn't gonna cover it, so you want to make sure you talk to your insurance agency about getting replacement value and paying the premium for the replacement value on the house.
Here's all the data about the house. We actually use this to mine for knowledge, so we'll look at permits if they're there. We'll look at, real estate or aerial imagery if it's there or when it's there, and then we'll look at this description to say. Like for example, it says, right here, new HVAC, hot water heater, washer dryer, hardwood floors and more.
So they've done some work to it and we reflect that in the ages. Here's the ownership listed in 2017. Looks like guy got the guy bought it and then got married, changed the deed, and then someone may have passed away, and then it was listed in 2025. Here's the property tax history. like everything, property taxes are getting more expensive over time.
This is about a 30% increase in a seven year time horizon. So if you're gonna stay in this property, you could probably count your taxes going up by about 30% over the next seven years. Just not insignificant, but it's pretty, I mean, it's nice.
[00:16:01] Bryan Falchuk:
It's a really nice house. Yeah. Yeah. This is nice. It fits well for the listing too.
[00:16:05] Bob Frady:
You picked a good one.
[00:16:07] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah.
[00:16:08] Bob Frady:
Okay. So here's the damaging events. Let's see, May 15th. Yeah. And there's a 30% probability that the roof was totaled. Now I'm assuming that the roof isn't totaled. 'cause it's still, listed.
[00:16:25] Bryan Falchuk:
Still under contract. Yeah.
[00:16:25] Bob Frady:
Still under contract. But I would make sure that you have a roof inspection upon this house because this is not just, this is not the first event. One in 2025, 2024, 2023, and this is the kind of thing that people forget all the time. Like you don't have to disclose their hail events. You do have to disclose damage if someone asks you about it 2019, hail 2016. 2015. 2012.
[00:16:50] Bryan Falchuk:
Well, when you see that much activity, your expected maintenance costs and repair costs, if the roof hasn't been done, you should factor in a more resilient roof.
'cause clearly there's a lot of hail activity and whether it's insured or not, you're gonna be paying for it one way or the other through increased premium or can't get coverage, it's gonna fall to you one way or the other.
[00:17:09] Bob Frady:
That's the thing that killed me about this place when they replaced the roof here.
If they didn't put Class four shingles on the roof, I'm like, Minnesota has a terrible problem with insurance because of hail yet. They don't. Yeah. Yeah. It's more expense and that's the time to do it. Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:25] Bryan Falchuk:
Pay the difference. Don't pay for the whole thing twice. Yeah.
[00:17:27] Bob Frady:
Yep. Not everybody can afford to pay for a class four roof
we appreciate that. But if you can, you should, because in this area, hail comes on a regular basis. So if you wanna go back in time, let's go back to 2020. Yeah. It's the same roof, so you can, that's always fun to show.,
[00:17:48] John Siegman:
Well. Might not be just the same color.
[00:17:52] Bryan Falchuk:
The right hand side. It's the older?
There is staining in both. Yeah, so I think it's probably the same.
[00:17:59] Bob Frady:
When we jump down, we look at the condition, so here's what we can tell. There isn't any indication that this roof has been upgraded or replaced. So we assume that it's an original roof, always the possibility that it was replaced and that the permit was at a different location, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But the red flag here is to ask. Make sure you say, when is that replaced? Because it, if you replace the roof on a condo, does it come with an assessment that you might end up paying later? The average roof span for this type of architectural shingle in Illinois is 26 years, and it's about $23,000 to replace that roof.
So it's not insignificant, it's medium risk roof. we've got exposure from tornado and hail. We don't have the total spec on this address because the address is part of a much larger condo.
Here's the soil type. Here's the construction type, potential threats to the area. Soil runoff, water hardness, termite infestation, soil erosion, and the frost. it gets cold there. So the ground can heave as well. but you wanna just check and make, again, just ask the questions if you had any issues with this in the past.
Luckily no mind subsidence, which is...
[00:19:17] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah, that's good.
[00:19:20] Bob Frady:
So we don't have any permits on this property. we do show that permits are generally required, Sometimes like for does not require a permit, but we don't see any permits and we have permits for Downers Grove. So you wanna check and say, did any of the work that was done to improve the property require a permit?
And if so, did you pull one? Luckily there's no flood risk or very limited flood risk, as some people would say. Every location is a flood zone. It's just a matter of degrees. Okay? We deal with the FEMA a hundred year and 500 year. We also look at the potential for coastal, which is zero really for Chicago or rivering flooding, which is much more dangerous.
And here's a copy of the map. There's nothing nearby. 1100 feet away is the nearest one, so there's no LOMAs or LOMRs if there is flood. hail, tornado, wind, we've talked about a little bit of landslides is probably hilly around here and a little bit of winter weather risk. not much in the way of lightning or avalanche, which is great.
And not much of the way of wildfire or volcano. There's four active volcanoes in the US and there are, they are at risk, but this is not high. Not in Illinois. Not in Illinois crime. John, let's talk about crime.
[00:20:43] John Siegman:
Let's talk about crime. So coming from the FBI statistics, aggravated assault is a little high in that area, but everything else is, pretty much pitch perfect.
So not a major. Issue. The aggravated assault can be coming from a bar or something that's nearby. It's not like your neighbors are going to fisticuffs or anything like that.
[00:21:05] Bob Frady:
It always cracks me up how it's aggravated assault. Like you could have non aggravated assaults.
[00:21:11] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah. No one was angry. They just were assaulted.
[00:21:14] John Siegman:
Yeah. No one was angry. They were just swinging fists.
[00:21:16] Bob Frady:
Just walked up. Yeah.
[00:21:17] John Siegman:
Just exercise. Anyway, and then attached to the crime assessment, got one registered sex offender within a half mile. That's pretty clean and good to know, especially if you have young children, things along those lines. And then things that get into the livability of the area.
Downers Grove is pretty good about disaster resilience, and you're not in the flight path for O'Hare. You're not near the Chicago Northwestern, you're not near any major highways, so it's gonna be quiet there. Yeah. Excellent choice.
[00:21:51] Bryan Falchuk:
They do get noise wise. Cicadas,
[00:21:54] Bob Frady:
Cicada noise is one we haven't tracked yet.
[00:21:57] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah, the cicada brood was a lot. I I was there in the midst of it and yeah, I had no idea just how constant and loud it was.
[00:22:05] Bob Frady:
It is. When they fly in your hair. I used to live in DC and it's the cicadas. Come every 17 years, but I think there's 17 different cicada families and they all come once a year.
Just every 17 years. If you're gonna rely on public transportation, this is not necessarily the best neighborhood for that.
[00:22:30] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah, yeah. There's some bus service to Downes Grove, but from what I've seen it, the options aren't great.
[00:22:36] Bob Frady:
Here's the neighborhood points of interest. There's a lot of EV charging stations around there, which is nice.
Schools and childcare centers are close by toxic exposure, so there is some PFAS risk around here, or PFAS. We'll do it both, We'll do Caribbean, caribbean. We'll do it both ways. There is some risk of mold at this location, especially in condos because they are very closed construction. You wanna make sure that you ask about any mold, potential, mold issues at that location.
Same thing with radon. Radon is a naturally occurring gas. It's also very dangerous to humans. Second leading cause of lung cancer is from radon exposure, and you may want to have a radon test done at that location.
[00:23:24] John Siegman:
Even though it doesn't have a baseline.
[00:23:25] Bryan Falchuk:
We have a mitigation system in our house. New England's got lots of radon and I was curious if mold is at higher risk when you don't have a basement or is it lower risk or does it not track?
Is it worse to actually dig into the ground and then you're creating more exposure or that's a place to escape?
[00:23:43] John Siegman:
It really depends more on how humid it is. And how how cold it gets. Because if it doesn't get cold and it's humid, you're up there.
[00:23:53] Bob Frady:
The nearest underground storage, rest, even nursing home as an underground storage tank, it's about a third of a mile away and you can start to see where they are now.
There's not a lot you can necessarily do about underground storage tanks. Sometimes they leak. It leeches into the soil. Just get a water test is really just, is to see the issues there.
[00:24:11] Bryan Falchuk:
Sounds like there's a few reasons why you'd need it at this property anyway.
[00:24:15] Bob Frady:
Exactly, exactly. Just to make sure, and then if you really are uncomfortable, you put a water mitigation system in near a Superfund site is the Robert Thorn property, which is two and a half miles away.
This is becoming a required disclosure in some areas. And, we provide that as part of the report. Health and safety, fire protection. there's two hydrants nearby. There's a lot of hydrants within a thousand feet. there's three fire stations within five miles, so this is very well protected, which is great.
It lowers your insurance rate because there is such good protection in this area with Dallas Grove Station three being the closest. Same thing with medical response. If you have good fire response, you tend to have good medical response. Because the fire department handles a lot of the original medical.
And there's a lot of hospitals nearby, so you're not in a a hospital desert, good Samaritan, hospitals less than a mile away. Electrical costs for this are approximately $1,500 a year. ComEd is your service provider if you want to. Go there. You just click on this and bring it right to the ComEd site.
If you want solar, it's about a 15 year payback. Usually on a condo you can't have it, but if you were able to get an exception, it's a long payback period. The carbon footprint of your utility, and here's your insurability outlook. So here's the range of insurance. The estimated premium replacement cost is way over the asking cost.
So this is something where you're gonna wanna talk to someone first.
[00:25:46] Bryan Falchuk:
That was really valuable, seeing the drivers of that insurance rate. So if you're thinking about, we're gonna make some improvements, some enhancements, are there things that you can do that might get you a better rate? And the number one issue there.
[00:25:59] Bob Frady:
This is the estimated occurrence of hail.
Sits a relatively high hail zone. It's the exposure risk of hail, but then you look at the actual events. There's a lot of events.
[00:26:09] Bryan Falchuk:
There's a lot of them. Yeah.
[00:26:11] John Siegman:
Hence why the exposure is high.
[00:26:14] Bob Frady:
And then finally the property timeline. So the property was listed and then a week later there was a hail event. Not necessarily the most comfortable thing for a homeowner to have to live through, but gives you the history.
Now what's interesting is that sometimes you'll buy a house that the current owners only lived in for four or five years, but our data goes back as far as we can track it.
[00:26:39] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah. The owners don't even know off the time.
[00:26:41] Bob Frady:
Exactly, and that's the big get outta jail free card with inspections is the homeowner goes, I didn't know.
[00:26:49] Bryan Falchuk:
When this is like damage assessment? Does that mean like an adjuster came out and had a look or this is just saying there was a hail event? Like what does this mean?
[00:26:58] Bob Frady:
It's probabilistic to say that given the intensity and size of this hail, the probability that the roof was totaled is 10%. So it's relatively low.
Yeah. We, we've tried to get claims data from insurance companies.
[00:27:12] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah. It's on a clue report or something where you're pulling back the actual claims on it.
[00:27:16] Bob Frady:
Yeah, exactly. And that's where, to get those claims is tough. from the insurance industry, they don't wanna give it to us, which is fine.
But if you are in this area, one of the things, and we'll get to this in a second, so, and here's all the data going all the way back to 2003. So Bryan, given what you've seen from this report, what are the three things that you would be looking at if you were looking at buying 1034 Braemoor Drive in Downers Grove, Illinois.
[00:27:50] Bryan Falchuk:
Yeah, well. I mean, to me, first and foremost is figuring out the situation with the roof. So I would wanna understand if and when it was replaced. If so, who is responsible for that? Is it me? Is it the condo association, et cetera. if it hasn't been replaced, then I need to factor that into what I be offering on the property.
And I would wanna upgrade the roof 'cause it's got a lot of activity. So first and foremost is the roof. And I think anyone in sort of like the middle of the country, probably the first bet, no matter what is, it's basically always hailing like that middle swath of the country. Second for me would be the water situation, the quality of it, the hardness of it. And A, it's a health risk and B, it's an appliance and maintenance risk.
So understanding the hardness and the. Toxicity of the water. And I was struggling to think of what the third thing would be, but I think probably radon would make the most sense. I'd look at the driveway and that is that in need of replacement. But that oddly feels like an easier thing to deal with than radon, I suppose.
Putting it, retrofitting, radon mitigation when there's no basement. I don't even know if that's an option. Maybe you have to have a basement. But yeah, those would be the key things I'd look at. So the roof, the water and the radon. Then you'll tell me like, you completely missed this bigger thing that we talked about.
So yeah, what did I, what did I not think of?
[00:29:25] Bob Frady:
Well, we'll get there, John. Based upon the PropertyLens report for 1034 Braemoor Drive in Downers Grove, Illinois, what are the top three things you're looking out for as potential buyer of this property?
[00:29:36] John Siegman:
First thing that I'm looking for is who's responsible?
Is it the homeowner or is it the HOA? 'cause it's a condo. And perfect example, my daughter, very similar situation. Her HOA is responsible for the roof and the outside structure. So she has an HO six policy versus HO three. So who's responsible? And if it's the association, then when were these things last taken care of?
That might explain why there's no permit, why there's no update, because there's no way that rope is 36 years old, just can't last that long. At least not there. So that's my first thing is who's responsible? What do you have to take care of, right? And all the things associated with Illinois Association, reserve funds, all the rest of that stuff.
So I wanna see all the paperwork. So that's my number one. My number two is for the things that have been upgraded, that we know permits were supposed to be pulled and we have no permits. Where's the permits? Right. Because again, those things may have been taken care of by the association, but maybe, maybe not.
Right. Again, is this, I would think a water heater would be very specific to the unit. Same for HVAC. But those are two things that typically no matter where you are, require permits, and we didn't see any. So where's the permits to be. My second thing. And then the third thing is they mentioned in the writeup other work that was done.
And so I'm always wary about somebody who does work on a place and then leaves. It is like if you wanted new floors, why don't you put them in when you were there to enjoy them? So what might be hiding underneath those new floors would be my question. I. So those would be the three things that I would look at.
Bob, what about you? If you were gonna buy this property?
[00:32:01] Bob Frady:
If I were looking to buy 1034 Braemoor Drive in Downers Grove, Illinois, I'd be concerned about three things. Number one, the work that's been done, was it permitted. When you're replacing HVAC systems, that's a big deal and they're usually dedicated to the unit.
So was there a permit pulled? Not saying there wasn't, but we don't have record of it and we know that it's required in this area. So was the work permitted? Because in some cases, if it's not permitted, you gotta rip it out. If had that happen to me, it's no fun to have that happen when you sell a place.
Number two is I would definitely get an insurance quote before I bought this place because the replacement cost is $300,000 more than the actual sale price of the condo. Given the bad weather in that area of the country, and we're not saying it's going to happen, but the pro, the possibility is much higher than it is in other places.
If that place gets destroyed, you may not have enough money to rebuild it. So I would definitely get a quote before I bought the place to figure out exactly how much it's gonna cost me, and then the third thing I would look for is who's responsible for the roof? It may be the, it may be the condo association, but if they replace the roof, will you get an assessment against the cost of that roof?
That can be an unexpected expense that you just aren't anticipating. But otherwise, this place is lovely. It didn't really the picture, well listen, the pictures make it look like shangrila. Now. We've all had pictures and then met someone in real life and then you don't look like your pictures. It's always a possibility, but those are the three things I would look for.
[00:33:49] Bryan Falchuk:
There's a picture in the kitchen looking towards the fridge and the island where the dishwasher handle is clearly being elongated and I thought maybe there was like an ice maker or trash compactor next to the dishwasher, but it's just the fish eye lens or whatever. I'm like, yeah, the. There's no question.
This is not what the kitchen actually looks like from a size standpoint, but it is a lovely looking house and I'm so risk averse, just working in insurance for so long, I'm like, oh, you can't buy this house after seeing everything. But there's, there were no like massively red flag red flags there, largely things you, you can't cost money but you can deal with.
[00:34:23] Bob Frady:
Yep, exactly. This, the, there aren't a lot of red flags on this property. There's, which is great. I tell people in 1998 when I got my first really cool job, I bought a used BMW, and I ordered this newfangled thing called a Carfax report, and there was nothing on it. It's like the service records are all right there.
This is great. I felt great about that car because someone else had taken a look at it and said, it looks okay. Now we've raised a few issues here, all of which could be answered from a good agent to say it looks pretty good. All that said, here's a few things to take a look at.
[00:35:09] Bryan Falchuk:
That's interesting.
I'm not moving, but and this one's one, looks like it's sold, but it does strike me as the things that, in hindsight, I wish I had been aware of. When we were buying our house, 16, 15, 16 years ago, or 17 years ago. Yeah. Just to make me a better positioned buyer or insurance buyer for that matter.
[00:35:30] Bob Frady:
It's always tough. Buyers rely on agents and inspectors to protect them, and a lot of them do a really good job. But we've seen that 45% of people wish they had done more research on their property before they bought it. That's why we're here.
[00:35:49] Bryan Falchuk:
First time homeowners who have the surprise in the first couple of years with huge bills.
Yep. Oh, we're not throwing our money away on rent. And then the AC system fails. Or the furnace or the what? the water heater, whatever. Our water heater blew. I happened to be showing a friend the new house. We were in the basement. We hadn't fully moved in yet. It was our first week of ownership.
While we were standing there, all of a sudden the water started gushing, which it's happened twice, and I happened to be right by it both times, luckily. But these are not things that I thought of when we were buying the house. It didn't even occur to me that could happen. So yeah, for really, valuable to, to kind of be ready for that, especially if you're newer to homeownership.
[00:36:32] Bob Frady:
All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to wrap this pony up. So, Bryan, any parting words?
[00:36:41] Bryan Falchuk:
If you guys can now develop a time machine, then yeah, that would've been helpful. No, it's great. It's great. And it is, it's easy to get caught up in all the things that you see, but, actually a lot of them are things you can deal with, so just kinda keeping a level head with it, but better to have that transparency.
[00:37:01] Bob Frady:
Well, thank you very much, Bryan. It was wonderful having you as a guest today. if you're in the industry, check out the PLBR.
[00:37:09] Bryan Falchuk:
PLRB
[00:37:10] John Siegman:
PLRB,
[00:37:11] Bryan Falchuk:
That's alright.
[00:37:12] Bob Frady:
I even wrote it down, looked at it. So, and I read it wrong. My dyslexia is catching up with me. And for this week's episode of Property of the Week, I'm Bob Frady.
[00:37:25] John Siegman:
I'm John Siegman.
[00:37:27] Bob Frady:
See you next time.
