Expert: Dick Dennis - 6/27/2006

Question
My husband and I just moved, and purchased a used house.  Trying to save money,
we did not hire an inspector, but went through the house ourselves.  I already
have fibromyalgia, but since moving here 3 weeks ago, I have been getting
non-stop migraine headaches.  When we looked at this house, they had a strong
cinnamon scented air cleaner plugged in. After we moved in, I took it out and
smelled a bad odor.   I was waking up in the middle of the night from it.  I
told my husband to check the basement for mold.  He ripped the paneling off of the
wall, and it was covered in thick mold.  He broke his back cleaning the
ductwork and scrubbing it with bleach outside.  I read on Consumer Reports that
the job should be done by a qualified mold specialist, because bleach does not
kill mold on porous surfaces, and cleaning it only spreads the spores through
the air.  I just called several contractors to come out and look at it.  Of
course they want money first to test the mold.

 -   We also had a roofer look at the roof, and he said there are illegally 3
roofs on there.  

We were in the house one week when the plumbing failed.   The shower backed up,
and we were unable to flush the toilets. The pipe in the basement overflowed,
spilling water all over the floor.  (There was a mop leaning there, so it
doesn't take a genius to figure this was an ongoing problem.  When we bought the
house, no one said a word.  The man across the street is, by God's grace, a
plumber, and got some type of machine that unclogged it.  He told us he has had
to do this house 'several times'(I don't know if he did it for the previous owner - a young guy who bought the house, and only had it for a short while before selling to us.   

The mold contractor told me it is "very expensive" to clean up the problem.  The
entire area has to be encapsulated....etc.  

Then, when we were all set to buy the house, our realtor told us the young guy wanted us to pay him $600+ for the oil he had put in the tank.  We never heard of this.  The realtor told us it's done all the time.

We paid $216,000 for this house. We live in South Jersey.  Did we get ripped?

Can you please tell me who is responsible to pay for the mold problem, the
plumbing, and the roof?  Is it the realtor who sold us the house?  Will our
insurance cover it (haven't called them yet, but I read that a lot of insurance
companies won't cover it) or do we have to do something legally?

Please answer asap.  God bless -
Sharon

Answer
There was a time, Sharon, when buyers would purchase houses, the old saying, "Let the buyer beware" applied in every case. But too many buyers were taken advantage of. Little by little around the U.S. the states passed laws stating that the seller must reveal any problems with the house prior to the close . . . if they knew about it.

The listing Realtor (at least here in California) has the seller sign a document disclosing any negative past history on the house, again, as much as the seller knows.

As you can see, you mitigated that law by refusing to hire an inspector to check out the property. You took the chance yourself by thinking to yourself that you can do it yourself. How bad could it be? you may have thought. Your personal inspection was a complete waste of time and now it may cost you a whole fistful.

However, the fact that a mop was standing in the corner and the neighbor said that he was called over a few times and an expert could probably testify that the mold was there for a long time, probably before the seller sold it too you.

A good REAL ESTATE attorney could solve this problem for you. The attorney will probably name the Realtor in the suit that you probably should file, but don't expect too much from him/her. Realtors' expertise is real estate, not geology, plumbing or structures as case after case has proven. But if you can prove that he/she did know about all that stuff, then he could be in jeopardy, too.

You may have been able to avoid all this anguish by hiring that inspector. But now you have to go hire a REAL ESTATE attorney and hope that he can also win back your attorney fees, too.

I do wish you well.

Dick Dennis             dixiedee13@aol.com
www.OldProblemSolver.com