A house where a leak was left alone can still be sold. The order the damage goes in, and the line between repairing and selling as it is

We are often asked, “After how many years is it too late?” Honestly, it is not a matter of years. It is decided by how much water got in and how long it took to dry. Nobody lives there and nobody opens a window to let air through, so a vacant house never gets the chance to dry, and the damage moves faster. Even so, the stages break down into roughly three.

• The stain stage. Ring stains on ceiling boards, mould on a closet ceiling, drips only on days of heavy rain. The water has usually stopped in the roof space, and finding and sealing the way in stops it. Our spot repairs cover this stage from a few hundred thousand yen. You can sell through an agent or to us
• The stage where the ceiling comes down. Ceiling boards soak up water, give way and sag. The tatami is damp and the floor is spongy. A house that has sat under a blue tarpaulin for years is here. Part of the roof framing and the interior below it need repair; roof work alone will not cover it. Buyers through an agent are harder to find, but we appraise on the basis of repairing, so a price is still possible at this stage
• The stage where posts and beams rot. Post heads and sill rot and the house starts to lean. Termites, which like damp timber, move in and the damage spreads. This is structural repair, the most costly and lengthy. Even so, a Hokuriku house framed with thick beams and posts can usually be saved by replacing only the damaged members. Whether the frame is sound is what we check on site

The further the damage has progressed, the harder it is for the seller to repair it themselves and sell through an agent. On the other hand, we can take on the house however far the damage has gone. That is the important part. But the price falls, because the more the repair cost rises, the more we are taking on. “While it’s still just a stain” is not a sales pitch — it is the price calculation itself.

If the house has started to lean, there are things to look at apart from the leak. Causes and fixes are in Can a leaning house or kominka be repaired?, and how to tell a repairable house from one that is not, leaks and all other damage included, is in Will you buy a damaged house?.

Someone living outside the prefecture pictures a leak as a typhoon or rainy-season thing. Toyama is different. The damage we go in to repair in vacant houses is concentrated in winter and spring, and it is freezing and snow more than rain. Even the leaks themselves mostly come from snow.

Snow freezes and thaws on the roof. Snow on the roof melts from below, from the sun on a clear day and the little heat from inside the house. The meltwater runs down the roof and freezes again at the cold eaves. An ice dam forms, the water pooled behind it has nowhere to go and works its way under the tiles. A roof that would simply shed rain holds water back when it is snow. This is why a Toyama vacant house can leak with no tile out of place.

Falling snow breaks the gutters and eaves. Snow that slides off all at once on a warm day breaks the eaves, the gutters and the neighbour's fence. Once the gutter is off, water from the roof runs down the wall and into it. When we hear in spring that the eaves have come down, this is usually the order.

Snow blows in through windows without snow screens. When the family lived there, they put snow screens on the windows and garden trees every autumn. Once the house is empty and the screens stop, driving snow gets in through the gaps around the windows and wets the timber under the sash. A leak that starts at the window, not the roof.

It breaks in winter and is noticed in spring. Only when the snow is gone can you see the shifted tiles, the detached gutter, the warped eaves. If you can only come back once a year, whether you can look in March or April, after the thaw, changes how far the damage goes that year. What happens month by month is in the year-round calendar for managing a Toyama vacant house from afar; how the roof itself is repaired and protected from snow is in The roof and snow.

As we also repair roofs, we have no reason to hide what repair really costs. Here are the numbers first. All are construction costs, and vary with floor area, roof shape and scaffolding conditions.

• Spot repair (sealing the way in, patching flashing, etc.)from a few hundred thousand yen
• Re-roofing (tiles, snow measures)¥2–4.5 million
• Seismic reinforcement (walls, hardware, foundation)¥2.5–7 million

Switching from tiles to a lighter roofing when you re-roof gives more margin against the weight of snow and helps in earthquakes at the same time. Roof work needs scaffolding, so doing the outer walls and gutters at the same time gets more for the money. Our order when repairing a house is roof, structure, insulation, plumbing, interior. Finish the interior before the roof and the leak stains the ceiling you have just finished.

So, should you repair before selling? As a rule, we advise against it. Three reasons.

Our purchase is those three turned around. The seller's cost is zero, and there is no brokerage fee. Handover in as little as two weeks from the site survey. No clearing out, and liability for defects after handover is waived. In return, our price is lower than a brokered sale would fetch, because we, as buyer, take on the repair cost, the risk of not selling and the clearing out. We do not hide that.

For some people, repairing before selling is the right route. Those whose family may go on living in the house, or who want to sell through an agent even if it takes time. Then we help as the contractor doing the work. The overall costs are in renovation costs. Whichever route, the first step is the same: find out what the house fetches sold as it is. Only with that number can you work out whether ¥3 million of work pays.

We do not demolish the houses we buy. We repair the roof, replace damaged timber, add insulation and seismic reinforcement, and hand the house to its next occupant. We buy leaking houses because we intend to repair them. A buyer who demolishes and clears the site deducts the demolition cost from the price, and the worse the leak, the less the house is worth to them.

One example: a 90-year-old former farmhouse with a storehouse in Takaoka that we bought. Empty for ten years, with a leak, damaged floors and a great deal left inside, the owners had no idea where to start. We bought it as it was, belongings and all, and took the furniture and tools they could not dispose of. "We should have asked sooner" were the couple's words (what our clients say).

We are not here to blame you for leaving the leak. You live outside the prefecture, have no money set aside for repairs, and your siblings do not agree. Years go by; that is entirely normal. But water does not wait. Find out the price now, while the house still has one. That, we think, is the order that loses you least. How we repair a Toyama house from the frame out is in the Toyama kominka restoration guide.