Are your tenants worried about this? If your building is one of those listed below, you might as well have to be. Structures generally considered to be at risk for damage or collapse in major earthquakes include: Soft Story: wood-framed structures with an open ground floor usually used for underground parking, with one or more floors of housing units above. Extremely popular as a means [...]

The San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and Westside areas will experience the greatest impact of the new law in Los Angeles requiring the refurbishment of wood-frame apartment buildings to better withstand major earthquakes, according to the Times data analysis. City inspectors spent about two years developing a list of 13,500 so-called Soft Story buildings that are likely to require seismic reinforcement. These apartments, which feature flimsy [...]

Buying a home is a major investment. If you've been looking at properties that were constructed before 1930, there's a possibility these buildings may have some kind of foundation issues. Here are four things to look for when searching for older real estate: 1.doors and windows that stick: while this may not sound like a huge issue–let alone a deal breaker–when the doors and windows [...]

Foundation underpinning is a process used to repair, strengthen, or increase the depth of an existing foundation by lowering the footing to take purchase on more supportive soil. Settlement is one of the biggest sources of home foundation issues. Base support is a method used to figure out sub-standard soil conditions, which cause settlement, to reinforce the current base. Foundation damage can range from minor [...]

The climate of your place plays a major role in the kind of base your home will have. California is mainly known for its Mediterranean climate, which means that it has warm, hot summers and cooler and rainier winters. Due to these changing conditions, the foundation of a property can suffer some damage as a result. When it comes to damage to the base or [...]