Three black blobs in one drive aisle. Not a straight edge on any of them, which tells you most of what you need to know about how they got there. Hot mix dumped in the hole, flattened with a truck tire, done before lunch. The trade calls it throw-and-go. Shape tells you how the repair was done. Where it sits tells you why. A clean sawcut rectangle running down the centerline means somebody opened the road to reach a pipe. Could be the sanitary main, could be the gas company. Worth knowing which before you price it. Same clean rectangle out in the wheel path, and you're probably looking at a proper base repair instead. Blobs mean nobody bothered cutting an edge, whatever the cause. When they sit out where the tires run, in cracking that looks like reptile skin, the base underneath has quit carrying the load. Bad drainage is usually the culprit. Nobody catches it early, because the cause is buried and the symptom is easy to drive over until it eats a tire. So on your next tour, walk the curb line and count the layers at the exposed edge. If the curb face is buried under stacked overlays, somebody paved over the problem instead of milling it out, and the water now has nowhere to go but down. Fresh asphalt is a clear cosmetic surgery on real estate, and it photographs beautifully. The road won't tell you everything. It'll tell you plenty, if you know what you're looking at.