The Wall Street Journal - 06.03.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, March 6, 2020 |M13

compiling data about piling

heights for buildings city-wide,

but the records are incomplete,

said Christian Simonelli, from the

Boston Groundwater Trust.

• Hire an experienced, local home
  inspector to seek signs of settling.


• If your inspector suspects pil-
  ings damage, you can hire a
  structural engineer to find out
  for sure if time allows. But many
  potential buyers walk away from
  the transaction at this point.


• If you waive an inspection, set
  aside funds to pay for any poten-
  tial piling repairs.


• Contact the Boston Groundwater
  Trust to find out if the home is lo-
  cated on solid ground or fill. Homes
  built on fill before 1930 are most
  likely supported by wood piles.


• Ask the sellers if they have in-
  spected or repaired their pilings,
  and for proof that the work was
  done. The Groundwater Trust
  website also has some informa-
  tion about which homes have
  had their pilings repaired.


• Do not rely on neighbors’ expe-
  riences. Piling heights can vary
  greatly from one building to an-
  other and even within the same
  house. The Groundwater Trust is

BOSTON BUYER BEWARE

Considering buying one of the city’s historic homes? Protect

yourself by taking these steps first:

sale is often unrealistic in Bos-

ton’s current red-hot real-estate

market, said developer Marc Sa-

vatsky, who has redeveloped a

number of row houses in Boston’s

South End. “In this competitive

market, the seller isn’t likely to

allow us that luxury,” he said.

An experienced building inspec-

tor can often locate the signs of

rotted pilings without a test pit,

but many buyers are waiving their

right to a home inspection to beat

out other bidders. Homes in Bos-

ton’s coveted historic neighbor-

hoods are seeing strong demand

and limited inventory, brokers

said. In Suffolk County, where

Boston is located, the median

sales price for a single family

home in December 2019,

$595,000, was up 18.7% from a

age likely due to rotted pilings.

Mr. Aiello said when he’s found

signs of rotted piles in inspec-

tions, “the majority of my clients

will say ‘I’m not getting involved’

and walk away. No one wants to

take that on.”

And while Mr. Savatsky and

other developers may know what

to look for when it comes to set-

tling—and have funds available to

repair pilings if necessary—regu-

lar home buyers may not, espe-

cially if they are from out of town.

Even among buyers who do

know about the problem, there

are misconceptions about which

areas are vulnerable to rotted pil-

ings. That can lead to a false

sense of confidence. “I get that a

lot—‘oh, it’s a Back Bay thing, oh,

it’s a Beacon Hill thing,’ ” said Mr.

Simonelli. “It’s not. It’s in many

other areas.”

C. Forbes Dewey Jr., and his

wife Carolyn Dewey found that

out the hard way. In 2001, they

paid $1.04 million for a condo in a

“gorgeous” 1850s building with a

cast-iron facade in the North End

of Boston, said Mr. Dewey, a pro-

fessor emeritus at MIT.

Mr. Dewey had heard of the is-

sue of rotted piles in Boston, but

“I had no reason to believe we

were in that position,” he said.

“Six months later, we found out

that we had a serious problem.”

That is when residents of the

roughly 25-unit building noticed

cracks in the walls and doors that

were stuck open. They were told

that roughly half the building’s

piles had rotted and would have

to be underpinned at a cost of

roughly $3 million. Insurance

wouldn’t cover it, so the condo

board levied an assessment, which

averaged $50,000 for each owner.

The repairs took over a year.

Building residents suspected the

nearby Big Dig tunnel project de-

pleted the area’s groundwater.

“It’s pretty hard to trace where

the water table goes or what af-

fects it,” Mr. Dewey said.

He declined to specify how

much his share of the assessment

was, but said it was roughly the

cost of a Ferrari. “My joke about

it is I’ve always loved Ferraris,

but I didn’t think I’d have to put

one down in the basement in or-

der to keep the building up.”

What Lies Beneath

To build on this unstable surface, builders drove tree trunks into

the landfill until they hit solid ground, then placed foundation

stones on top of these wooden piles. This technique was used

until the 1920s, when foundation technology changed.

Ground

water

level

Fill

These untreated piles

can last for hundreds of years

when submerged in groundwater,

but rot when they are exposed to air.

Once the ground water level drops low enough to expose

the pile tops, they can start to deteriorate within months,

causing the building above to settle.

Organic

silt

2

1

1

2

Source: Boston Groundwater Trust Alberto Cervantes/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Koby Kempel spent several hundred thousand dollars to underpin the

rotted pilings underneath this home before he could do renovations.

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year earlier, according to the War-

ren Group.

“To skip [an inspection] is in-

sane to me,” said Joseph Aiello of

Gumshoe Home Inspection, who

said that in the past eight years,

he has inspected a number of Bos-

ton homes with foundation dam-

MANSION

‘This is one of the

bigger, more costly

issues that you’ll ever

run into in purchasing

one of these properties.’

—Nick Hanneman, Boston-area

real-estate agent

NY