A Little Caulk Will Fix It

I was recently hired to perform a home inspection on a bank owned foreclosure. Upon arriving at the property the first thing that caught my eyes was the concrete block foundation. As you can clearly see from these two pictures there is a large vertical crack over 1 inch wide in the corner block and significant movement on the wall long side the crack.

When I point this out to my client he looked at me and said something to the extent of: Oh, I see that, but I'm very handy. That's nothing that I can't fix that with some caulk and a little paint. What I hired you to tell me is whether or not the house is structurally sound. I wanted to ask if it looked structurally sound to him, but what came out of my mouth was a simple no. I indicated the cracked foundation and the block movement on the report and strongly recommended an engineer be consulted for further evaluation. Later on that day I got a call from his Realtor who was very upset with my report. I was told I blew his deal and I'd never get another recommendation from him again.

Talk about a promise I pray he keeps.