Buying a Home with Masonry Problems: What to Check Before You Close

Buying a Home with Masonry Problems: What to Check Before You Close

Before you close on a Chicagoland house, check the mortar joints with a screwdriver, look for spalled or flaking brick, rust staining above windows and doors, step cracks, any bowing in the wall plane, chimney crown and flashing condition, and cracking in the foundation. Those seven things account for most of the expensive masonry surprises buyers hit in the first two years of ownership — and nearly all of them are visible from the ground if you know what you are looking at. Emerald Masonry LLC provides pre-purchase masonry assessments and free on-site estimates across Chicago and the Chicagoland suburbs. Family-owned, licensed and insured, 40+ years of experience. Call (708) 288-1696.

Here is the situation buyers are actually in. A general home inspector is covering an entire house — roof, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, structure, appliances — in a few hours. Masonry usually gets a paragraph and a photograph, and language like "mortar joints show wear, recommend evaluation by a qualified contractor."

That sentence is doing an enormous amount of work. It can mean a modest repointing job, or it can mean a chimney rebuild and lintel replacement across four openings. A buyer who does not resolve that ambiguity before closing has agreed to pay for whichever it turns out to be.

Why Masonry Specifically, in This Region

Chicagoland's housing stock and climate combine badly for anyone who inherits deferred masonry.

The building stock is old and largely brick. Bungalows, two-flats, greystones, worker cottages and courtyard buildings from 1890–1940; post-war ranches, Georgians and Cape Cods from the 1950s and 60s. Mortar has a service life, and enormous portions of the region are past it simultaneously.

Freeze-thaw is relentless. It is not extreme cold that destroys masonry but repeated crossings of the freezing point with water present — dozens per winter here, plus more in the shoulder seasons.

Masonry damage is progressive and quiet. A wall does not fail suddenly. It degrades over a decade in ways a seller stops noticing and a buyer walking through in forty minutes never sees.

And the repair ladder is steep. Repointing is the cheapest masonry repair. Every stage past it — brick replacement, lintel work, section rebuilds, chimney rebuilds — costs multiples of the one before.

The Walk-Around: What to Check, In Order

Do this yourself at a showing, then bring a professional for anything that turns up.

1. The mortar joints — the screwdriver test

The single most informative thing you can do. Press a screwdriver or key firmly into a mortar joint.

• Resists firmly → sound mortar. Good.
• Digs in, crumbles, comes out as sand → the joints have failed and the house needs repointing.

Also look for receded joints sitting noticeably behind the face of the brick, and sandy grit collecting on sills, steps and along the foundation. Check several elevations — the south and west faces take the most weather, and the north face stays damp longest.

What it means: failing joints alone, with sound brick, is the good finding. That is tuckpointing — routine maintenance, predictable cost, and the wall is fully recoverable.

2. The brick faces — spalling

Look closely at the brick itself, especially near grade, below sills, and on shaded elevations.

Spalling is brick faces flaking, shelling, popping or crumbling away. It means water has been getting into the units long enough to freeze inside them.

What it means: the scope just grew. Spalled brick cannot be repaired — each unit must be cut out and replaced with a match, which means sourcing, matching, and considerably more labor. On older buildings, matching hundred-year-old brick is genuinely difficult. This is brick repair and replacement territory.

3. Above the windows and doors — rust staining

Look for orange or rust-colored streaks running down from the top corners of openings, and for a horizontal crack in the joint line directly above a window.

What it means: the steel lintel spanning that opening is corroding. Rusting steel expands to several times its original volume, lifting the brick above it. This is one of the most commonly missed findings in general inspections and one of the more expensive to correct, because lintel repair is staged, skilled work on every affected opening.

4. Crack patterns

• Step cracks climbing diagonally through the mortar joints — usually movement: soil, settlement, or a lintel below.
• Horizontal cracks in a foundation wall — lateral soil pressure. Take this one seriously.
• Cracks wider at one end — rotational movement.
• Vertical hairline cracks — often minor shrinkage.

5. Sight along the wall — bowing

Stand at a corner and look down the length of each wall. You are looking for any bulge, bow or wave in what should be a flat plane.

What it means: this is the finding that matters most. A bowing wall has lost cohesion or its ties to the structure behind it, and no amount of repointing fixes that — it needs rebuilding or structural remediation. If you see this, get a specialist out before you waive an inspection contingency.

6. The chimney

Look up. Chimneys are the most exposed masonry on any house and among the most expensive elements to rebuild.

Check for: white efflorescence staining, flaking brick, a cracked or crumbling crown, rusted or tar-patched flashing, any lean or gap between the chimney and the house, and brick or mortar debris in the gutters.

Then ask the seller two questions: has the fireplace been converted to gas, and how long since it was used? Both accelerate deterioration — gas produces cooler, wetter flue gases that condense inside the stack, and an unused chimney never gets the drying effect of a hot fire. See chimney repair.

7. Grade, gutters and downspouts

Cheap to fix, and enormously predictive. Look for gutters overflowing or full, downspouts discharging right at the foundation, grade sloping toward the house, and splash staining on the lowest courses of brick.

What it means: most masonry damage is a water-management failure. If these are wrong, whatever masonry damage exists will keep progressing until they are corrected — and it tells you something about how the house has been maintained generally.

8. The basement

Efflorescence on interior walls, damp or musty air with no plumbing source, water staining at the wall–floor joint, and parging falling away from the foundation. See foundation masonry repair.

9. Painted brick

Not automatically a problem, but always a question. Paint traps moisture in brick that needs to dry outward. Look for blistering, bubbling or lifting paint — that usually means the brick underneath is spalling behind the coating. Ask when it was painted and why.

Reading the Findings: What Each One Costs You

| Finding | What it actually is | Relative cost | Urgency | |---|---|---|---| | Failing joints, sound brick | Routine repointing due | Baseline — the cheap one | Next season | | Localized spalled brick | Repoint + replace units | Multiples of baseline | Within a year | | Widespread spalling | Restoration project | Significantly higher | Soon | | Rust staining at openings | Lintel replacement, per opening | High, and scales per opening | Soon | | Cracked chimney crown / flashing | Crown and flashing work | Moderate | Before winter | | Leaning or badly spalled chimney | Rebuild above roofline | High | Safety item | | Step cracking | Depends on cause | Varies | Investigate | | Horizontal crack / bowing wall | Structural — rebuild or remediation | Highest | Before you close | | Failed parapet (flat-roof buildings) | Parapet repair or rebuild | High + liability | Before you close |

We do not publish square-foot pricing, because no two walls are in the same condition. But this ordering holds on every job we estimate, and it is what you need to negotiate intelligently.

Solid Masonry vs. Brick Veneer — Know Which You're Buying

It changes what you inspect and what failure looks like.

Solid multi-wythe masonry (most pre-1940 Chicago buildings) is several courses of brick thick, with soft Chicago common brick behind the face brick. The wall itself is structural. It fails through joint and unit deterioration.

Brick veneer (most post-war construction) is a single decorative layer over a framed or block structure, hung with ties and drained through flashing and weep holes. It fails at those hidden components — and because they are hidden, problems surface late.

A quick tell: look at a window or door reveal. A deep reveal usually indicates solid masonry; a shallow one usually indicates veneer.

Using the Findings: How Buyers Actually Handle This

1. Do the walk-around yourself at the showing, before you are emotionally committed.
2. Get the general inspection, and read the masonry section closely rather than skimming to the roof and furnace.
3. Get a masonry contractor out for anything on the expensive list — spalling, rust staining, chimney condition, any bowing. A free on-site estimate turns a vague note into a written scope with a number.
4. Decide what you are asking for. A repair or a credit. Credits are often cleaner, because you choose the contractor and control the quality rather than inheriting the fastest bid the seller could find.
5. Prioritize by consequence, not by appearance. Water entry, steel corrosion and anything structural come first. Cosmetic mismatch comes last.
6. Budget the rest. Masonry repair that is not urgent this year is still coming. Knowing that at purchase is very different from discovering it in year three.

What This Looks Like After You Own It

If you buy the house and the masonry needs work, the sequence that protects your money is consistent:

1. Fix the water first — gutters, downspouts, grade, splash. Cheapest work, largest effect.
2. Address anything structural or safety-related — bowing walls, leaning chimneys, loose masonry over walkways.
3. Stop active water entry — chimney crown and flashing, failed sills, open joints.
4. Repoint with mortar matched in hardness to the brick — the mix matters enormously and a wrong one will spall the faces off an older wall.
5. Replace failed units with matched brick.
6. Protect with breathable products only — never paint, never a film-forming sealer, never sandblasting or high-pressure washing.

The Bottom Line

Almost no masonry problem should end a purchase. Brick is fixable, and the great majority of what buyers find is ordinary deferred maintenance on an ordinary older house.

What ends badly is not knowing. The buyer who reads "mortar joints show wear" and moves on has accepted an open-ended obligation; the buyer who spends an hour with a screwdriver and gets a written scope has a number, and a number is negotiable.

Two findings genuinely warrant slowing down before you waive anything: a bowing or bulging wall, and a chimney that leans. Everything else is a price conversation.

Emerald Masonry LLC is a family-owned, licensed and insured masonry contractor serving Chicago and the Chicagoland suburbs with 40+ years of experience in tuckpointing, chimney repair, brick repair and replacement, lintel and parapet repair, foundation and limestone/sill repair, caulking, sealing, and commercial, residential and historic masonry restoration. We give honest assessments — including telling buyers when a wall is in better shape than the inspection report implied.

Free on-site estimates. Call (708) 288-1696 or request an estimate.