I am buying a house with a deck. What should I have inspected before I close?

Why the general inspection is not enough

A home inspection covers the whole house in a few hours, and the deck gets the same treatment as everything else: a walk across, a shake of the railing, a look from the yard. That catches a wobbly guard and a missing board. It does not catch a ledger bolted through stucco with no flashing, a joist end that is soft for the last six inches, or a post base sitting in soil. Those are the failures that drop decks, and they are only found by getting underneath with a flashlight and a probe.

In North County, where decks are often ten to thirty years old and built in a dozen different ways by a dozen different hands, we think a separate deck evaluation is one of the better uses of a buyer's inspection period.

What a deck-specific look covers

• The ledger: how it is fastened to the house, whether there is flashing, and whether the wood behind it is sound.
• Joist ends, beams and the rim: probed for softness, checked for hanger corrosion and missing nails.
• Post bases: on footings and lifted off the concrete, or buried and wicking water.
• Stair stringers, landings and the pad they sit on.
• Guards and railing posts: height, baluster spacing, and how the posts are attached to the frame.
• Decking: species or product, remaining life, fastener condition and any soft spots.
• Drainage and irrigation: sprinklers hitting the deck, planters on the boards, grade sloping toward the house.
• Signs of termites, which in San Diego County means a separate wood-destroying-organism inspection by a licensed pest inspector.

Permits and records

Ask the seller's disclosure and the listing agent whether the deck was permitted, then verify with the Carlsbad Building Division, or the equivalent department in the city where the house sits. A permitted deck with a final inspection on record was at least checked at framing against the code of its day. An unpermitted deck is not illegal to buy, but you inherit it: any future sale, insurance claim or remodel may surface it, and bringing it to current code can be a substantial project.

If the permit lists a company, you can look up that company's license history on the Contractors State License Board website. That is consumer information, not a judgment on the work, but it tells you who built it and whether they were licensed to.

Condos, balconies and California's inspection laws

If the property is a condo or a unit in a multifamily building with a balcony or elevated walkway, California now requires periodic inspections of those elevated wood elements, and the homeowners association holds the reports. Ask for the most recent one before you close. A balcony that looks fine from the street can have rotted joist ends where it meets the wall; the second-story balcony we rebuilt in North County was losing pickets for years before anyone looked at the framing, and the real damage was at the ledger.

What the findings mean for the deal

Group the findings into three buckets: safety items that must be fixed before anyone uses the deck, such as a failing ledger, rotted posts or a guard that moves; durability items that will become safety items in a few years, such as missing flashing or wet post bases; and cosmetic items, such as gray boards and a tired finish. Get a written scope for the first two buckets from a builder who looked at the deck in person, and negotiate from that rather than from a line on an inspection report. Sometimes the right answer is to plan a rebuild and price the house accordingly; sometimes it is a weekend of repairs.

Related questions

Sources and further reading