Flat roofs and soft spots

10 years ago

We made an "as-is" offer on a house in the desert, with a Santa-Fe style flat roof. The home inspector found the roof to be in poor condition with at least one leak noted (it was raining at the time) and a couple soft spots on the roof. We hired a roofing contractor to take a look; his recommendation was to pull up the entire roof, replace the underlying plywood where needed, replace the skylights, replace the vents, add flashing (there is none right now), and restucco. 10 year warranty. Pretty expensive. We tossed it at the seller and said we wanted the roof fixed or a price reduction. The seller countered with a different roofer who will pour latex into any cracks he sees and pour new elastomeric coating onto the rest of the roof. 5 year warranty. Cost to the seller will be about 1/3 of the other quote. Our agent says that roofer claims some soft spots on a roof are "normal" (really?) . This is the cheapest house in an expensive neighborhood (I can guess why), has great potential, but our budget isn't unlimited and there is more stuff to fix. The roof is the big problem though. What would you do?

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Comments (5)

millworkman
10 years ago
"5 year warranty."

Then you can count on needing to do all the work mentioned above within and all on your dime. You answered your own question..................
klem1
10 years ago
Your questions can only be answered after a professional inspection that will likly require opening the roof in at least one area. The main things that must be known before knowing what need's to be done are (1) exactly what type and how much decking (2) how many layers of roof on building. That will cost at least $500. Deal with a commercial roofer or be certain residential roofer is properly trained on flat roof as well as qulify's as a warranty vendor for flat roofing manufacture for type roof in question. You didn't even tell us wherther it's EPDM,modified bitumen,tar and gravel or what ever. You did mention "Santa-Fe Style",which if true is ponded. This doen't sound like something that should be done based on interweb advice. Get a qulified roofer and trust them.
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Desert Gardener
Original Author
10 years ago
I'm not looking for advice on how to fix the roof, just comments from more knowledgeable people on the general situation. Both of you have validated my feeling on which way to go, so thank you.
dchall_san_antonio
10 years ago
Are you going to bring the property up to the neighborhood standard sometime in the near future? If the rest of the houses have a flat roof, then keep it that way. If the others have a gable roof, I would ask for a discount for the repair and then put that savings toward a gabled roof over top of the existing roof.
Vith
10 years ago
I don't get it. It is an "as-is" house. There will be problems. That is why it is cheaper in the first place. The first contractor you mentioned had the correct way to fix it, the second is basically saying they will do some caulking.