This happened to me a while back but I thought it would be good to share to possibly save someone 10s of thousands of dollars.

I had some foundation cracks and a few small cracks in the drywall of my house. I got worried and called out a foundation company that offered a “free” inspection. The inspector proceeded to tell me that my house was “sinking and breaking in half like the titanic” and I needed $25k in repairs. I became very stressed. With a repair that large, I wanted a second opinion.

I hired a proper structural engineer. It wasn’t cheap, he charged me $450 to look around for about 15 minutes. I had told him what the foundation company had told me and he laughed. I ended up needing no repairs besides a point and retuck. The cracks in the brick? He said those were cracks from thermal expansion. He saved me about $24.5k.

I later read that a lot of the “free” foundation inspectors operate on a commission basis. They will always tell you that you will need foundation work, otherwise they would be going out of business. Beware of free inspections.