Hello all... I am a first time homebuyer who is looking seriously at making an offer on a home. One of the primary concerns I have about this property is the wavy nature of floors on the main level. The house is built on a slab and all of the floors laid on this slab show considerable "wavyness." I'm hoping this is simply due to poor flatwork and not something more major like cracking, etc.

My question is twofold.
1) I want to be able to see the condition of the slab which would mean pulling up the floor and looking in at least one or two areas. My agent insists that if the seller agrees for me to hire a third party to inspect the slab, any liability would be on the third party. Would this be the case?
2) How concerned would you be about what is going on with the slab? How many of you have run across floors that exhibit dips and such simply due to poorly leveled flatwork?

Thank you for any suggestions.

For the most part, probably yes. However, depending on what the home inspector sees, and how he reports it, he might recommend further evaluation by a licensed structural engineer or a licensed concrete specialist or a licensed general contractor or a licensed flooring professional. So third party liability might get passed on to a fourth party.

There are several things that could be involved and it is difficult to provide guidance in a forum like this without pictures, and that only makes it slightly less difficult. There could be soil conditions that resulted in foundation problems which were then covered up with flooring.

Being as close to Mexico as I am, I run into waves and dips in flooring quite often. Nine out of ten times it is the quality of the flooring installation. It's that other one time that you really need to be concerned about.