Undisclosed water damage to our new home, what are our rights?
My husband and I closed on our first home last July. We had it privately inspected, and only a few things were found that we needed to update, which we have.
Last week we noticed a dark patch above our windows in our living room. By the next day that patch was about three feet wide, dripping down our wall and hitting the window below it. We then looked closely at the room above it and, surprise surprise, there was water forming what turned out to be a huge "water blister" so to speak in that wall under the paint. The next two days were REALLY fun once water started to literally pour in ruining two walls on the main floor, one in the room above it, a window, and now the original hard wood flooring under that area.
We had a contractor out withing the next couple of days, and he noticed that the above room had been previously repaired because of water damage. He also found some badly home-repaired problems with the roof, siding, and gutters that he said have probably been sending water into the walls for years.
Seeing that the previous owners had lived here close to 50 years, and because the one wall was pretty "modernly" repaired, it’s obvious that they knew about the water damage and didn’t disclose it when they were selling. I seriously doubt that our insurance will cover a new roof, walls, windows, flooring. . . and we obviously don’t have that much money floating around to take care of the cost ourselves! My question is: what kinds of rights do we have? To my knowledge we opted out of arbitration when we were closing. Any help, as always, would be great! Thank you!
When I said "privately inspected", I meant that, yes, we ourselves hired a professional to inspect the home for us. As for the contractor, he is a trusted friend of ours. We wanted his opinion first before we went to the ones that will want to "scare" us into a lot of unnecessary work.
Posted in Wood Flooring Questions and Answers
Here is my simple response. Call an attorney. They can tell you better than anyone one here. Find one who will give you a free consultation if possible. I smell law suit but I am not an attorney.
Best of luck and so sorry to hear of your situation.
You had the home "privately inspected". Does that mean a professional home inspection or ‘one of your friends who knows what he’s doing’ ? A quality professional inspector would have caught those ‘badly repaired problems’ as quickly as did a contractor. To the next point. Did you get an opinion from another contractor, and are you certain the one you used was not scaring you into an expensive repair which may not be needed ? Work is scarce right now, and some contractors use those tactics. I suggest that you get an independent PROFESSIONAL assessment of the situation so that you know exactly what is occurring here. Once you have done so, then your next course of action will be much easier to determine.
If the owners were aware of the problem and did not disclose it, you could possibly go back and try to sue them for the repairs.
But it might be hard to prove that if an inspector did not find it and everything was to code.
How do you know your insurance won’t cover the damage? Have you asked?
That is what homeowner’s insurance is for. You will have a deductible ,but all you can do is call and ask.
Depending on the extent of the damage you may also be able to claim a tax write off for damage to your residence.
You can sue the previous owner but their argument will be It did not happen to them, you had the place inspected so it is your problem. You can sue the inspector.
First thing: I AM NOT A LAWYER, SO DON’T CONSTRUE ANYTHING SAID HEREIN TO BE LEGAL ADVICE!!!
I am a Realtor(R) in Ohio, and we have some pretty tough rules about these things. Failure to disclose material defects, especially water, is quite common.
If they knew about it and did not disclose, you most likely have a claim. However, you’ve got to PROVE it.
1st – ask the neighbors. They’ll commonly rat out the old owners.
2nd – have your insurance agent pull a CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) report. If they made a claim, it willl show in that report.
3rd – get a thermal inspector out. I am a certified thermographer, and I use an infrared camera to find this sort of stuff. You can commonly see where the paint does not match undeneath, and from that infer whether the sellers made repairs.
4th- get an attorney to help you with these issues.
5th – do consider the possibility that a pipe just broke about the same time you purchased, or also the possibility that an ice dam created a roof leak for the first time. We had a bunch of that here in Ohio, as there was about 2 feet of snow on some rooftops for a month.
I actually use an infrared camera before my buyers write to look for water. It has saved many of my clients the trouble of going after a house that is not up to par.
Feel free to hit me with email questions at webmls@cinci.rr.com. I will be more than happy to get you some decent links on the subject.