I know, you are not a lawyer, or my lawyer, and any advice of a legal nature is not to be solely relied upon, yadda, yadda…
We moved into a house here in Colorado in December. Because the market was so crazy at the time, we wound up buying a house that had been bought at foreclosure and renovated.
Since the purchase, we’ve run into several problems with the house, all because the person who did the “fix and flip” cut corners by doing certain repairs WAY below code. The big two are:
He renovated the first floor bath and basement shower. There were problems with the basement shower leaking into the closet; we had someone look and find out they had used cheap plastic water hoses like you might find on a sprayer attached to a kitchen sink. Obviously not acceptable anywhere. We are having these replaced with actual water lines later today, estimated cost $2-$300.
He put a new A/C unit and furnace in. A few weeks ago, the A/C quit working (on the first hot day of the year). We had an A/C guy out yesterday, and he determined the power line to the outdoor A/C unit had burnt out because it was a 20 amp line in between a 30 amp circuit breaker and 30 amp A/C unit! This could easily have burned the house down, and is so unacceptable it’s not even funny. The power line was replaced by an electrician for $600.
We have a home warranty from the seller, but it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, since code violations are not covered. My realtor seems to think we can’t go after the seller since the house sale is “as-is”. We hired an inspector who didn’t find any of this stuff (and it was hidden in the walls, so that’s not surprising). It just seems odd, and awful, that the seller can make unsafe repairs and get away with them.
Do we have any recourse against either the seller, or our inspector?
Probably not the inspector. Inspectors just can’t see that sort of stuff. At least not the water line stuff.
I think it would be worth the money to hire a real estate lawyer to look over all of your documents and determine whether or not you have a case and if you really got it all “as-is” with no exceptions. You might want to contact the city too because cities have laws that say what has to be up to code before a property can be sold. They may have bamboozled the city and the city won’t like that.
My friends realized they ended up with a lemon when they bought a house and the finished basement filled up to the ceiling with water after a storm. All of the finishing was covering up massive foundation problems. They did go to court, against the previous owner and the real estate agency that sold them the house. They didn’t win because the previous owners swore they didn’t know and that their disclosure was honest to the best of their knowledge (which in turn saved the real estate agency’s case too) but my friends felt it was well worth the money to try.
If you signed off on “as-is,” you’re without recourse. The only person you might have recourse against is the inspector, and even there, you’ll likely find the laws, regs, your contract and his report so full of caveats that it will be hard to get any satisfaction.
Well, since the repairs were made by the seller, and the disclosure (obviously) did not disclose the use of below-code materials PLUS we do not think building permits were pulled, any luck on those grounds?
Speak to an attorney in your jurisdiction. Property laws vary by state.
Sometimes outright fraud can break through “as-is”, however, if you never specifically questioned them about the work done, and thus they never explicitly lied, it depends what the seller had the duty to disclose in your state.
Yes, this. The attorney will also know whether a code violation or failure to pull permits, conduct inspections, etc. changes the situation. It’s one thing if there was dry rot they didn’t fix, but another thing entirely if they broke the law in making the updates.
It would also be worth seeing whether the laws in that jurisdiction require any kind of contractor licenses and whether the work might be covered under their bond/insurance. (In WA, for example, many flippers are required to have a contractor license, though there are exceptions.)
At the very least, the threat of substantial legal trouble with the state might convince this shoddy contractor to refund some money or make some fixes for the bad work.
One approach an attorney might take would be for what is called “latent defects”. This is used to go after contractors who install inferior products that fail later on, or after a manufacturer who sells said products. Since this guy didn’t pull permits, there were no inspections done and he’s in violation of city codes. I would think that buying a house as-is would not negate the latent defects that turn up later. On the other hand, you probably should have checked to make sure the work was permitted before you bought the house.
Selling something “as is” doesn’t give you carte blanche to commit fraud by not revealing the known defects on the Disclosure form.
FYI, here’s how it reads:
"Do you know of any previous or current problems or defects with the following mechanical systems:
Electrical
Plumbing (pipes)
…"
BTW, I know two people who were successfully sued by subsequent owners for failure to disclose. Both claimed to have had no knowledge of the defects. One was a friend’s father, who was trustee for his father’s estate. Since he never lived there, he wasn’t in a position to know of any material defects, and that’s what he wrote on the form. He also sold it “as is.” That didn’t prevent the new owner, who’d incidentally been allowed to live there rent-free while the sale was pending, from suing re a rotten floor board in one of the bedrooms. His argument was that since the room was newly carpeted, he had to have known. My friend’s father swears the carpet installers never told him that the floor board was rotten. I’m not sure I believe him. Anyway, I think the judgment was for ~$1500.
The other was a former co-worker who was sued over a severe structural crack in the detached garage. The new owner discovered it after removing one of those peg board panels that you put up to hold rakes and shovels. My friend swore that that panel had been installed by the owner prior to her, and that they hadn’t removed it in the decade that they owned the house. I believe her. They still lost and had to fork out over $10k for repairs (IMO, because they’d painted it, which made it appear as if they were trying to hide something).
Please see my post. Disclosure laws vary by state law, there is NOT a universal rule regarding disclosure, and your statements suggesting there is one, are false. OP needs to ignore you and speak with a lawyer.
To be honest, I see no evidence of sub-standard work in the OP.
The 30A AC unit does indeed require a 30A breaker but the wire will be 20A. This actually shows a sound knowledge of the electrical code as opposed to the advice you recieved that 30A wire is needed. If the wire actually “burnt”, I can pretty much assure you it was not the fault of the wire size.
Many times an AC unit will quit working on the “hottest day of the year” by freeze-up, but without much more information, the info in the OP is far from conclusive.
As to the “cheap plastic hose”, that is what is usually used to make the final connections to appliances (faucets, toilets, etc). Without a picture and/or more thorough details, your assessment is speculation, at best.
I can sympathize but it would be prudent to get a solid second opinion from non-conflicted tradespeople, rather than a serviceman justifying his bill, before I pursued legal action.
Yes, it could just be 2 issues. I built my own house, and I had 2 issues that had to be resolved in 10 years, and they manifested themselves in the first week. Inconvenient, yes, but hardly an intent to defraud (myself in this case).
As to the permit issues, different scenario from my response. The lawyer closing the deal should have addressed that. If you closed without a lawyer…well.
Cite the part of NEC that says a wire can be smaller gauge capacity than the breaker and load.
You’re right. It was much more likely mice playing with matches.
Not “brand new” ones that were correctly spec’ed and installed.
The connections are to a shower, and I cannot envision a situation where sink and toilet spigot-to-faucet lines would or should be used in such a connection.
Some states require a lawyer. Some states require a broker. I agree that either one should have been looking out for the buyer, but as this was an “as-is” sale at the end of a string of transactions, either one might have simply signed off on their part, assuming the buyers knew what they were getting into.
Um, the A/C unit was not getting any power from the circuit breaker. When the line was replaced by a licensed electrician whom I trust, the A/C unit started working again. If the line wasn’t “burnt”, what do you think the problem was?
The plumbing line was leaking; again, because they used a line that was too small for the water pressure.
In both cases, we had more than one professional look at the issue, and the same conclusion was separately reached by both professionals. None of these issues are “my” assessments.
