Home buying thread

Cad

Sheriff Cad

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It seems like a no-brainer that a lawyer would take this on contingency (and you generally pay nothing on contingency, not sure who told you do). If they're consistently refusing you it's because there are problems with the case that you may not have had explained to you or maybe didn't understand when they did.

What exactly did they say when they turned you down?
 
Borzak

Borzak

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No idea how any of that works. But do inspectors not carry anything to cover their obvious errors? I'm not an engineer at all but I carry E&O insurance when working which is for errors and omissions. Of course you would have to sue to get to that point.
 
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Borzak said:
No idea how any of that works. But do inspectors not carry anything to cover their obvious errors? I'm not an engineer at all but I carry E&O insurance when working which is for errors and omissions. Of course you would have to sue to get to that point.
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Inspectors in TX are run at the state level, and the ability to get an inspector to testify against another inspector is pretty much zilch. And yes, it would require litigation, but the odds of winning against the inspector are minimal because we would have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did not do their job. That's what makes the inspection report so damning. They carefully worded the document to say "we see this, but if you suspect it's this, then call X person." In the washroom, for example, there is wall-to-wall mold where the washer and dryer used to be. Dude's inspection, when I looked at the report more closely, checked the connection to the water hose and whether the washer worked. We never kept the appliances.

Cad said:
It seems like a no-brainer that a lawyer would take this on contingency (and you generally pay nothing on contingency, not sure who told you do). If they're consistently refusing you it's because there are problems with the case that you may not have had explained to you or maybe didn't understand when they did.

What exactly did they say when they turned you down?
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You would think it's a no-brainer, and almost everyone outside the legal field agrees. That said, every single lawyer pushes back, saying we're up against a two-year battle. Well, no shit, we want to avoid lengthy litigation. If you present a compelling enough case, unless they can prove that there was permitted work done and that we caused this decay and deterioration after we moved into the home, you push for arbitration. Nearly all the lawyers have led with the lengthy trial and the unlikelihood that we can win, and never stopped to look at the evidence we presented. There are no city permits. There is wall-to-wall mold. There is an addition built at ground level with no sill plate, and the walls are essentially gutted. The ceiling is sagging, the insulation is rotting, there are cockroaches, and so on. But, I had an engineer show up today who said, "Well, I would strip away 12" from the floor inside and outside to see what it is under there, but this foundation looks good." Buddy, do you understand there are no damn layers between the concrete and the floor in a room that is a death trap? The foundation, across the entire home, surprisingly is a near 0" perfectly flat and level surface. But the problem isn't the foundation; it is what is sitting on top of it, aka that additional room. I swear, people keep telling us "well, you buy an older home..." uh-huh, and so I buy an older home, suddenly that's a free pass to completely take advantage of people? Nope.
 
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Received an email today that the insurance provider has refused to cover the house, which puts the mortgage at risk. I spoke with a real lawyer who guided us on what to do next. Our realtor was made aware of the issue the weekend prior to Memorial Day. Suffice it to say, our realtor also did not notify the realty company for the last three weeks of what was happening. When the mortgage company called them, they called us, and we let them have it. Now the broker is scrambling because:

We confirmed the 300+ sq ft is non-permitted.
We confirmed the non-permitted work resulted in significant moisture and rot that compromised the additional room + several areas of the home.
We confirmed that the city is not pleased with the level of work that went undetected; they are reviewing 'options.'
We confirmed that the company will have its president call us tomorrow to discuss legal recourse, since they are at fault for breaches on several fronts.
We confirmed the lender is now aware that there is no insurance on the home due to the pre-existing damage; as a result, the mortgage contract is at risk.

At this point, the broker is scrambling to reach a resolution. Initial estimates put the damage/remediation at around $100-$150k, including time lost and damages. Depending on what happens next, at the very least, it sounds like our realtor is about to get shit canned, and the inspector (who's married to one of the realty reps) is about to cost his wife her job, most likely.
 
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Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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Started clearing, grubbing, grading lot today.

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Inque

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The realtor agency called us back today. Said we should have pushed more for information during our option period. I asked them if they knew about timestamps because the text messages and emails I have show that we asked about certain things during the 'option' period, and nobody from the realtor side responded. They had all this new information on the property that they could produce 'now,' but when we needed answers to questions and downplayed, none of it seemed available. Basically, we are screwed.

My best chance is that the inspection team will have a recommendation on legal recourse, but I can't afford any lawyers to fight this, and I can't afford the renovations necessary to fix the core systems in the home, like the roof and foundation, to make it decent.
 
Kiroy

Kiroy

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May wanna contact whoever holds the note as well to see if they will or can assist. Did you say you did a huge down payment? How much is mortgaged?
 
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Kiroy said:
May wanna contact whoever holds the note as well to see if they will or can assist. Did you say you did a huge down payment? How much is mortgaged?
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The mortgage is around $300k—the insurance company has written the house off its coverage. We found more evidence of blatant concealment because they openly installed such new trim on the outside. The forensics guy says this is way too new (obviously) to have not been a cover-up. The boards have zero rot and were freshly painted. Everything underneath the foundation is destroyed. So, once we have his document, we will have a lawyer who will take the previous owners, realtor, and inspector to task. The roof, we discovered, is spongy and about to collapse after they walked on it to inspect it. The prior inspector flagged nothing about it as dangerous, but it cracked in multiple spots, and where it didn't crack, you can hear it give way as you walk on it. Doubt we'll get much from the inspector, but dude dropped the ball big time, so that's one of our targets.

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Khane

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Home Inspection is probably an even more crooked industry than Realty. Goddamn.
 
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Jysin

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Inspector paid off by the sellers? The only thing that makes sense, aside from sheer incompetence / malfeasance.
 
Fucker

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Khane said:
This is the majority of home inspectors. They are usually retired contractors who were probably shifty/shady when they did that shit as well.
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Yeah. Most of them are shit. Simply checkmark things without really looking. Higher value homes get the good inspectors, though. I sold my main home a handful of years ago, and they had teams of people checking things all day. Worked everything and crawled around everywhere. Found two stuck valves in them exterior hose bibs. Bank not gonna give a jumbo loan on a $400 home inspection. :D
 
Intrinsic

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Had a couple of recent meetings as things progress on the lot. Most importantly final windrow meeting. When we showed up the first thing he told us was that the manufacturer rep pulled their ability to sell us the Weather Shield Classic he had previously quoted and we would need to move up to their Signature product line.

We went over the differences in material and construction, etc. I didn't like where this was headed because we already had our window budget at $50,000. He closed out by saying that he got Pella to agree to honor the previous pricing we already received. That was a huge relief. We didn't want to have a $10k issue right at the start.

The Signature line looks a little better also. Includes grilles between glass for a better divided lite appearance. That's something that I wanted but was going to have to pay extra for in the Classic line.

Also, decided that instead of doing a back door + 4 windows in the living room to go out onto the patio, we're going to do one 16' wide quad slider door. Cost wise it actually ends up about $2k cheaper in window pricing, but we will need an extra LVL. Based on our framing quote a 22' LVL is only $185 so even if we need stacked and additional framing work it islujely a wash. Wife was super excited about that when she saw it in the show room, so that decision was made pretty quick.

Anyways, a lot of rambling about windows. Footers are going in and concrete should start Thursday/Friday. I bought a drone that should be here tomorrow so that I can take some overhead photos of the build. Also some Indians on Fiverr are doing a full 3D photo rendering and walk-through, hopefully they wrap that up in the next couple of days. They sent a couple of previews. Couple of things aren't quite right and a few things we already want to tweak.

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Seananigans

Seananigans

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Intrinsic said:
Had a couple of recent meetings as things progress on the lot. Most importantly final windrow meeting. When we showed up the first thing he told us was that the manufacturer rep pulled their ability to sell us the Weather Shield Classic he had previously quoted and we would need to move up to their Signature product line.

We went over the differences in material and construction, etc. I didn't like where this was headed because we already had our window budget at $50,000. He closed out by saying that he got Pella to agree to honor the previous pricing we already received. That was a huge relief. We didn't want to have a $10k issue right at the start.

The Signature line looks a little better also. Includes grilles between glass for a better divided lite appearance. That's something that I wanted but was going to have to pay extra for in the Classic line.

Also, decided that instead of doing a back door + 4 windows in the living room to go out onto the patio, we're going to do one 16' wide quad slider door. Cost wise it actually ends up about $2k cheaper in window pricing, but we will need an extra LVL. Based on our framing quote a 22' LVL is only $185 so even if we need stacked and additional framing work it islujely a wash. Wife was super excited about that when she saw it in the show room, so that decision was made pretty quick.

Anyways, a lot of rambling about windows. Footers are going in and concrete should start Thursday/Friday. I bought a drone that should be here tomorrow so that I can take some overhead photos of the build. Also some Indians on Fiverr are doing a full 3D photo rendering and walk-through, hopefully they wrap that up in the next couple of days. They sent a couple of previews. Couple of things aren't quite right and a few things we already want to tweak.

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Appreciate how much info you're sharing man, I'm definitely interested in seeing the progress of the build if you're still willing to share all of that too.

Getting there!
 
Intrinsic

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Khane said:
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I don't know man, tried to find someone local and through Facebook builder groups. Unfortunately, our drafter / designer is still stuck in the stone age and his renders are as bare bones as it gets so had to look elsewhere. Did use an American bro to do our HVAC Manual J, D, and S!

Seananigans said:
Appreciate how much info you're sharing man, I'm definitely interested in seeing the progress of the build if you're still willing to share all of that too.

Getting there!
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Yeah, of course. I'm trying not to spam the thread with every little conversation. There's stuff almost daily with all the decisions and conversations going on, but will reserve progress updates to some of the bigger things.

One of the last remaining major conversations is soffit. I think I mentioned before that the designer wants the house to have 30" soffit. His wall detail and other drawings show 2' - 6".

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The builder thinks it is excessive. And we have no idea because no one can point me to a house locally that has 30" overhang and the largest our builder has done is 24". The rendering above was done with 30" per plan. But it is something that we just can't figure out because there's no place to go look at all this on our exact house side-by-side before the build. And it has been challenging trying to exactly nail down the cost implications of 16" vs. 20/24/30".

My thought yesterday was that all these pictures are done without gutters. No one models gutters or renders them b/c gutters are ugly and no one wants to see that on their beautiful picture. But what dawned on me is that gutters are 6" wide, so if we have 30" overhang + 6" gutter we're going to have 36" sitting out there. So maybe we can get away with 20" or 24" and then have the 6" gutter visually make up that difference. It'll be painted the same color as the trim/fascia board.

I also really need to beef up my columns. They look too skinny proportional to the rest of the house. I LOVE the back view. No idea why but it is so cool to me. It is everything we want and really, to us, makes the front look so boring. Hopefully some small tweaks can get us there through the process. Wish we could capture whatever it is about the back that we love and incorporate that into the front.

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