Independence Demolition Pros: Signs a House Should Be Demolished in Independence

The foundation first

Most Independence houses from the growth decades sit on full basements of concrete block, and the loess clays under the city shrink and swell with the seasons. The signs that matter are horizontal cracks along a mortar joint partway up a wall, a wall that bows inward when you sight along it, stair-step cracking that runs through the block rather than along it, and a floor above that has gone out of level. Hairline vertical cracks are not on that list; they are shrinkage. A bowed wall can be braced or rebuilt, but once two walls are moving, or the wall has displaced more than an inch, the repair bids start to approach the price of a new foundation, and a new foundation under an old house rarely makes sense.

The roof framing, not the shingles

A roof that needs shingles is a repair. A roof that has leaked long enough to rot the rafters, the ridge and the ceiling joists is a structural problem, and the signs are a sagging ridge seen from the street, daylight at the eaves, soft spots when the roof is walked, and ceilings that have stained, dried and stained again for years. Once the framing is gone, the fix is a new roof structure on old walls, and the walls under a roof that has been open to water are usually not worth building on.

Fire, water and the things inside the walls

Fire that stayed in two rooms is a gut and a rebuild. Fire that reached the attic and charred the framing is a total loss more often than not, and the adjuster's numbers usually say so. Water is slower: a basement that has flooded repeatedly, a plumbing failure that soaked the subfloor for weeks, or a house that sat with the roof open through a winter leaves mold in the framing and rot in the sills, and the cost of opening every wall to find it is the cost of an interior demolition before the repairs even begin. In a pre-1980 house, that gut also means handling asbestos tile and lead paint, which is money spent either way.

The arithmetic

Before the arithmetic, one more sign that is easy to miss: the basement after a hard rain. Walk down the morning after a storm and look at the floor line. Water coming in at the cove joint where the floor meets the wall is a drainage problem; water seeping through the face of the block, or standing an inch deep across the slab, means the wall and the footing drain have failed together, and in Independence clay that failure does not stay fixed. Add a sump pump bill, a waterproofing bid and a wall brace bid to the list below before you compare it with anything.

Add up the repair bids: foundation, roof structure, framing, systems, finishes. Compare the total, plus what the house is worth as it stands, against what the finished house would sell for. When the repair total passes the finished value, the house is a teardown, and in Independence the published range for the teardown is $10,000 to $21,100 for a house, the basement houses at the top. A contractor can price both paths on one visit. Owners on the older streets sometimes hesitate because the house is part of the neighborhood's character, and in Englewood, Mount Washington or Fairmount the City's historic review may share the hesitation; that is a reason to ask the Heritage Commission early, not a reason to spend repair money on a structure that is failing.

• Foundation: two walls moving, or more than an inch of displacement
• Roof: ridge sagging, rafters and joists rotted, daylight at the eaves
• Fire reached the attic; water sat in the framing for a season
• Repair total plus current value exceeds finished value
• A dangerous-building notice already names the structure

What to do once the answer is teardown

Order the asbestos inspection, because its lab turnaround and the state's ten-working-day notice are the longest wait in the schedule. File the City permit the same week. Then get the written price. A house with a failing foundation in Gladstone or Raytown goes through the same decision on the same clay, with a different permit office. The house demolition page walks through the sequence from there, and the City's dangerous-buildings rules, for a house that has already been posted, are on the City's site at independencemo.gov.

Primary sources: the City of Independence dangerous-buildings rules at independencemo.gov, the Missouri asbestos program at dnr.mo.gov, the federal lead-paint rules for pre-1978 houses at epa.gov, and Kansas City's dangerous-building ordinance at kcmo.gov.