Episode 7 | PropertyLens Inspects Hidden costs of an Omaha Home for Sale
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In This Episode
Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman
Property: 7202 Mormon Bridge Rd, Omaha, NE 68152
Topics: roof radon homeinspection insurance propertytaxes
Episode Summary
Thinking about buying a home? Don’t overlook hidden risks! In this episode, Bob and John break down what every homebuyer should know before making an offer. From aging roofs to hidden radon threats, they use PropertyLens to uncover potential deal-breakers and help buyers make smarter, safer decisions. They also discuss rising insurance costs, property tax trends, and must-have inspections to avoid costly surprises down the road. Whether you're a first-time buyer or a seasoned investor, this episode is packed with valuable insights to protect your real estate investment.
Key Takeaways
✅ Roof Concerns: The roof is 25 years old and permits for replacement are missing. Buyers should ask about roof history and potential costs (~$9,100+).
✅ Weather Exposure: Strong winds, hail, and ice can cause damage. Inspect for tree overhangs, basement water risks, and roof condition.
✅ Radon Risk: Located in a high-risk radon zone—buyers should request a radon test.
✅ Home Inspection Must-Haves: A four-point inspection is key for roof, foundation, HVAC, and water heater assessment.
✅ Insurance & Property Taxes: Insurance premiums are rising due to hail and wind exposure. Property taxes increased from $3,800 (2022) to $4,100 (2023).
✅ Flood & Wildfire Risk: No FEMA flood zone, but a moderate wildfire risk exists.
✅ Potential Hidden Roof Repairs: Over 30 hail events since 2011 suggest possible prior unreported roof replacements.
Resources
🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com
🔹 Questions? support@propertylens.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bob Frady: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of Property of the Week with PropertyLens. I am Bob Frady, co-founder and CEO of PropertyLens. With me
[00:00:17] John Siegman: Is John Siegman,
[00:00:20] Bob Frady: Who does all the work actually at PropertyLens. So, and co-founder. we, what we normally do is we take a property somewhat randomly. We run it through our system. Then we tell you what we see.
[00:00:34] We've got an interesting one this week. We're going to beautiful, beautiful. Omaha, Nebraska. We go into Omaha, Nebraska. These are the homes that are currently for sale. And we picked this one. Why? Cause it just looks interesting. No other reason than that.
[00:00:49] It's 7202 Mormon Bridge Road in Omaha, Nebraska, selling for about $400,000 has had a price dip recently. And let's see, it has been on the market for 29 days. So, we take our PropertyLens, we run it through, well, we don't show you that part, it's not all that exciting, and we come up with the property report for this location.
[00:01:14] The first thing that we do is we show you what we call the BuyerLens, which are based upon all the underlying data. What are the questions that you should ask to the owner of this property before you make an offer on this house? So, John, what do you tell me, what do you see at the beginning of this property?
[00:01:31] John Siegman: Well, it's exposed to a lot of winds. So there's going to be damage. You got to look for tree overhang. You got to look for all of the pieces and parts associated with that. The roof is in good condition, but it's old. It's 25 years old. It's at the end of its lifespan. So you want to ask questions about that.
[00:01:52] You may not be replacing or you may be replacing. And given how steep that roof is, that is a pretty hard roof to replace. And then, you know, where it is, you've got ice dams, frozen pipes, the standard, things that go along with places that get cold.
[00:02:09] Bob Frady: Place has got a basement. You want to make sure that your gutters are pointing away from the basement so water doesn't come in.
[00:02:16] into the basement unnecessarily, it has a high risk of radon exposure. Radon is a naturally occurring gas from the earth basically decomposing, but it is toxic to humans. So the one thing I would ask about in this location, has this property been tested for radon? If not, get one before you buy this location because it is the second leading cause of cancer, for people in the United States.
[00:02:47] It has a high risk of hail. And what else about it, John? It looks like it's kind of old.
[00:02:52] John Siegman: Oh, you know, it's 25 years old. So you're going to have all of the things that need to be replaced are looking to be replaced at about 25 years. So HVAC. You got to check on the water heater, you got, you know, all of those things that go with the standard maintenance and keeping a house up to date.
[00:03:12] Bob Frady: So this is interesting up here in the very top corner, which is a new feature on our report, which is prior damage. It looks like this location may have been in some gnarly weather. In the past. So we'll want to keep an eye out for that when we look at it a little bit later on. So that is our list of questions that we would have you ask the seller before you make an offer on the property, because the house is right about the age when things start to kind of, you know, go a little sideways and the roof, you want to take a special look at, in our InspectorLens, this is what you want the inspector to look at.
[00:03:50] So let's say you've made an offer. And then you want to get an inspection, you print this out, you hand it to the inspector and say, Hey, take a look at this stuff. And the things that you would check are damage from wind events. You know, earlier in 2024, there was a pretty big tornado that happened outside of Lincoln, which is not that far from here.
[00:04:11] It's about 40 miles away. But, it was very, very windy event throughout the whole, greater Omaha area. So you want to check what condition is the roof in, John, what else would you have the inspector check?
[00:04:26] John Siegman: Well, you're going to have the inspector, most likely the inspector is going to do some type of what's known as a four point inspection, which goes into The roof, the foundation, all of the key parts, because most insurance companies in an condition in an area like this are going to require it anyway.
[00:04:45] So it's going to happen, either from the insurer or from the buyer. So make sure that you get one done. I would look at, you know, I would have them look at the roof, look for pitting and denting of the shingles. I would, you know, check out the basement and does it have a sump pump, does the sump pump work?
[00:05:07] If there is a mitigation system for radon, does that work? You know, all of the structural pieces and parts, HVAC systems, things like that, a lot of places may or may not require permits be pulled for the replacement of these things. So the only way to know the true age is to have it inspected.
[00:05:29] Bob Frady: Yeah, and radon tests aren't part of the normal inspection. So, you want to make sure that they check on a remediation system, and if it's not there, have them run a radon test. And then finally, from an insurance standpoint, the roof looks like, you know, for being 25 years old, it's in good condition. It's made of shingles, but older roofs, from an insurance standpoint, cost more.
[00:05:52] The Insurance companies, especially in the upper Midwest, have become much poorer thanks to hail damage and wind damage. So they're really policing age of the roof when it comes to writing insurance. So because this roof looks like it may be old, you want to get an insurance quote before you buy this property just to make sure that you can get it insured for a reasonable rate?
[00:06:19] John Siegman: I think if you look at this, you're looking at the replacement costs. You wanna make sure that your insurance covers the replacement costs. In a large number of cases, the replacement costs can be higher than the actual purchase price. and I think that when you look at the insurability of this property, there's a number of things that the house, this old 25 years may or may not have.
[00:06:45] Such as smoke detectors, CO2 detectors, leak detectors, a number of things that can make it more insurable that you might want to discuss with your insurance agent.
[00:06:56] Bob Frady: Excellent. So let's dive into the data. Let's see, it was built in 1999. It's 1,076 square feet. This is what you would see from the assessor.
[00:07:06] Of course, you have more than 100 miles from the coast because you're in Nebraska. Let's hope that never happens. It is public water service. There is a sewer connection. It's central. cooling, it's got natural gas heating. It looks like it has radiant floors as well, which are lovely. Radiant floors are really awesome. They keep your feet warm. It's nice.
[00:07:29] It's a ranch style. It's, you know, modest construction. It's a wood frame and in Omaha city. And then here's the most recent listings detail. 4. 11 acres. It's great. Nice house. This is the kind of stuff that you'll see on real estate listing sites, which is great.
[00:07:47] Looks like it went into an LLC in 2022, and now they're selling it in 2024 for a nice bump in the price. Here's something interesting. There was an article, I think, John, it was in the Wall Street Journal today talking about property taxes and insurance becoming a much larger percent of the cost of homeownership than it has in the past.
[00:08:12] In this location, it looks like property taxes have gone up. You know, they went from $3,800 in 2022 to $4,100 in 2023. And you wanna keep an eye on that because local tax authorities are still spending money sometimes pretty aggressively. And it can impact insurability, excuse me, impact affordability.
[00:08:37] Of that whole, because what can happen, John, what can happen?
[00:08:41] John Siegman: Well, lots of things can happen, but if your mortgage is, you know, at a fixed rate and put your insurance and your taxes keep going up, the affordability of the house will continue to go down. In a large number of places, taxes and the insurance actually are more expensive than the mortgage payment itself.
[00:09:01] Bob Frady: Yeah. And that's, and if you get older. It forces you to sell the property.
[00:09:05] Okay. Let's talk about the roof. John and I have been talking about this roof a little bit. Here's what the data tells us. We know that in Omaha, Nebraska, if you replace more than 200 square feet of roof, you need a permit. This house is 25 years old. It's a shingle roof, which is about a 25 year lifespan. We don't show any permits, so it's at the end of its useful life. and this cost to replace it might be light because it's so steep, but it looks like it's about 9, 100 to replace that roof.
[00:09:35] But, when we look at the condition, John, what do you think about this roof?
[00:09:39] Do you think that this is actually 25 years old, or do you think it's maybe less than that?
[00:09:44] John Siegman: I think it's less than that. We all know that
[00:09:47] Bob Frady: Tell me why. Tell me why. Tell you why.
[00:09:50] John Siegman: I will. So, we all know that while permits are supposed to get pulled, nah, they don't get pulled all the time. And so, there's always that chance that you have some unpermitted work.
[00:10:04] But the condition of this roof is in decent shape. It's a B. It's, you know, it's solid. And, if you look at the shingle roof lasting 25 years in Nebraska, under normal conditions, there's just no way that that roof could be that good. Now, maybe it's a fortified roof. Maybe they've gotten lucky and all the storms went around this one location.
[00:10:32] There's possibilities here for other things to have happened. But, I would definitely be questioning why, you know, I don't see a permit for a roof when we know it's required. But the roof is such, in such good shape, something's, something's going on.
[00:10:51] Bob Frady: Something is going on. So whenever something's going on, what do we recommend?
[00:10:57] John Siegman: They ask a lot of questions.
[00:10:58] Bob Frady: Exactly. This is one situation where you want to ask a lot of questions before making an offer on this house. Now, you may love the house, you may love the location, you may say, that's fine, I'm going to replace the roof anyway. But it's something that you want to know before you make an offer on the place because you don't want, here's 10 grand worth of expense that you weren't anticipating to come up and bite you.
[00:11:23] So, and here's why we think. The roof might not be 25 years old, tracking back to 2011. There's a lot of events, a lot of hail in the area. There's some, there's some big hail, you know, 2.7 inch hail. Is that, that's a big piece of hail, with a 75 percent probability that the roof was totaled, not saying that it was totaled, but those sorts of conditions many times will destroy a roof, which is why.
[00:11:50] You know, John's estimate of this roof, maybe being closer to 10 years old, is a good one because there have been 30 events altogether between wind and hail, in this location. And it keeps going on and on and on and on. How far does it go? Here we go. 24 hail, wind, hail, wind. Gosh, there's a lot of hail and wind in this area.
[00:12:17] John Siegman: And while we don't cover. Park in the garage.
[00:12:22] Bob Frady: Yeah, exactly. If you have a, make sure this house has a garage. Park inside. We have historical imagery going back to 2019 and it looks, you know, relatively the same. The angles of the satellites and the sunlight's a bit different, but it's relatively the same.
[00:12:42] So here's where it gets interesting: these are the permits that we have for this location. The last permit was pulled in 2001 that we have a record of. Now we do as diligent a job as we can. We look at multiple sources when pulling permits. This is what we see for this location that the last permit that was pulled was in 2001.
[00:13:01] And in here is no roof permits. This is a new build permit, from 1998 and then putting in all the stuff in 1999. So no roof permit. We don't have homeowner service history here. This is where, now this is something that we haven't launched yet. We want to at some point where the homeowner could say, Hey, I updated this roof at this point and here's the receipt.
[00:13:25] We don't have any prior inspections. Here's the estimated utility costs, electric costs per month, about $63 a month. So it's relatively, it's a small house. So it's relatively modest and it is served by the Nebraska Public Power District. So you go in and check and see, you know, what's on there. If you want to get solar, it would take you about 14 years to pay back. It will cost you about $12,000, maybe 10 years with federal incentives.
[00:13:53] Here's the risk assessment. Thank you, John. Tell me what you see.
[00:13:57] John Siegman: Well, I definitely see that there is winter risk. This shouldn't be a shock to anybody who lives in Nebraska. Hail. There's some, you know, pollution risk. That's probably, radon. or a nuclear plant. Something along those lines. And then, you know, it's actually average for most things. Which isn't bad.
[00:14:20] And then, you know, you're not going to have an earthquake there. Which they probably appreciate. But, you know, it's not surprising it's got winter risk, it's got hail, it's got wind. The events that we would expect in that location.
[00:14:36] Bob Frady: Excellent. And then we move on to flood and we see it's not in a 100 year flood zone and it's not in a 500 year flood zone. So, you don't need flood insurance if you're buying this house, you may want to get it. because there has been a lot of flooding in the Midwest, but you may, and if you did get it, it would be cheap because you're not in a FEMA flood zone. You're not even really close to it in terms of being able to measure it.
[00:15:05] Here's the weather data. Of course, winter risks, frozen pipes and ice dams, two of the things you would want to check for when looking at the property. Lots of hail, let's see, lightning, tornado, all sorts of average, including wildfire, which is interesting.
[00:15:26] people think that wildfire is just sort of a California or western states thing, but Massachusetts had 110 different wildfires burning earlier this summer, because especially if things get droughty, then, and there's trees, they like to burn. Now they're not as big or as consuming, but Nebraska does have an elevated risk of wildfire, especially in the western part of the state.
[00:15:48] There's the environmental pollution. There you go. Right on. Not a surprise. Not a surprise. A little bit of mold as well. So you want to check for that potentially. and let's see, insurability. Now here is where it gets a little more interesting. The range it, we have, some friends of ours and we give them the parameters of the property and they tell us based upon the filings in the state, here's the range of insurance costs.
[00:16:17] And what we're seeing is that the actual costs are coming in more towards the higher end than the lower end. So if you look at the higher end, it's $4,800 per year, which is $400 per month. So if your mortgage is $2,400 on this, on this location, then $400 for insurance and another $400 for property taxes, you're looking at $800 against the $2,400 spread.
[00:16:43] So yeah, a third of the, so you have to add a third onto your mortgage costs. When considering buying this house. So it's a big factor people overlook a lot. This is only going to go up. I haven't read anywhere about insurance rates getting cut. So that number is only going to go up.
[00:17:06] And if you want to check, you can go in and get a quote. Click here and get a quote. We don't have any claims. relatively okay for average for crime job. You know, people see crime being a C. What do you tell them?
[00:17:22] John Siegman: The U.S. is a relatively safe country. You know, it's you and everybody thinks that their own neighborhood is really, really safe, even when it's not.
[00:17:32] So. C is a perfectly fine score. This isn't, you know, while we use a report card type of approach and nobody wants to bring home a C, C for crime is perfectly okay.
[00:17:45] Bob Frady: C's get degrees. Just remember that C's get degrees.
[00:17:47] John Siegman: Absolutely. And there are plenty of industries where C players score high. But you know, it's not anything to where if you saw D's and F's, D's and F's need to be considered.
[00:18:03] Bob Frady: So, John. Let's say that you were an advisor to someone who wanted to buy 7202 Mormon Bridge Road in Omaha, Nebraska. What are the top three things you would have them look out for?
[00:18:18] John Siegman: The first thing, you know, as we discussed is the road, you know, it looks like it's 25 years old, but maybe it's not, we don't know.
[00:18:29] If it is, you're going to be replacing it soon. If it's not, then you've got an unpermitted road. So questions need to be asked. Second thing I would have is, send somebody up into the attic and take a look around. Because you're not probably going to go there yourself. But you want to make sure that it is ridiculously well insulated.
[00:18:50] Because if it's not, you're going to get ice dams. And nobody wants it raining inside their house in December or January. And then the third thing that I would look out for with this house, is just making sure that there's decent clearance, no overhangs, because there's a lot of wind. Entry branches do bad things to structures.
[00:19:14] What about you? What would you look for or advise them about?
[00:19:18] Bob Frady: If I were advising someone on 7202 Mormon Bridge Road in Omaha, Nebraska, I would look for these three things. Number one is the roof. How old is that thing? Is it, has it been improved or has it not been improved? It looks like it's original to the house, 25 years old, which means you'll be replacing it soon.
[00:19:38] The second thing I would do is I would order a radon test or I would understand what mitigation has been put on for radon for that location. Radon is usually not part of a standard inspection and you want to know that beforehand. Have they had any experience with it? Have they had a test? Is there a mitigation system in place? And if there is a mitigation system in place, when was the last time that it was serviced? because you do have to service it every two to three years.
[00:20:05] And then the third thing I would look for is just what are the mechanicals look like, you know, the house is older, there's a lot of work in there that may or may not have been done. So how old is the water heater? How old is the stuff in the kitchen? So listen, it looks like a nice place. It looks like it's relatively modest, in terms of its affordability, which is great.
[00:20:27] Oh yeah. One more thing. Here's a bonus thing I look for is how much does it cost to insure this thing? Because insurance costs are skyrocketing. And you want to make sure that you don't have an affordability problem between property taxes going up, which they are in the area. So actually that last part, the last bonus is two parts. Number one, when does the property reassess? Does it reassess on sale?
[00:20:50] Because then, you know, the difference between the listing price is significant. So are your taxes going to go up? And the second is what's the insurance cost? Because those costs can eat up a huge portion of your budget. So number one, the roof, number two, radon, number three. Property taxes and insurance together as a total cost of ownership.
[00:21:10] So that's what I do.
[00:21:12] Bob Frady (2): Anything to add before we go? Nope. I think we covered it. For this week's episode of property of the week. I'm Bob Frady.
[00:21:20] John Siegman: I'm John Siegman.
[00:21:21] Till next
[00:21:22] Bob Frady: time. See you then.
