Expert: Dottie Worthington - 5/15/2007

Question
Dottie:

I am going to try to be brief and to the point, hopefully, but here goes.  We live in East Texas and sold our home last year.  Our real estate agent represented both us and the buyer.

The buyer waived his right to a home inspection and we disclosed to the buyer that he really needed to fix the sloping back yard and make that a priority since we had removed a swimming pool a few years back.  We had one problem when we had torrential rains and we had water come in through our patio door dampening the carpet in front of the patio door and about 12 inches out.  It was cleaned and the pad was replaced and we had no further problems.

Now a year later, since we have had very heavy rains, it flooded the den area.  Since he moved in he replaced the patio door with french doors and replaced the carpet with laminate flooring.  Needless to say...he had to pull up all laminate flooring and it will have to be replaced.

They are consulting with an attorney and wanted to sue us for damages.  On top of all that, Pg. 2 is missing in our disclosure statement and we have no idea what the realtor did with it.  They are accusing us of taking the page.  We are honest people and we would never ever be deceptive.  We answered all the  questions on the papers that were giving us and never noticed that page 2 was missing.

Since he waived the inspection ...and we did tell him to fix the back yard because of the slope.. can they sue us?  Can they win if they do?  We didn't tell him of the water, so we feel we might have made a mistake there, but we did tell him that he needed to fix the back yard.

We signed the first disclosure papers on May of 06 and closed in July of 06.  He was over at the house many times...had people looking at the back yard and even told me that he wanted to go over there one day with a friend to inspect the back yard for repairs.

I wont go on any longer, but could you please give us some advice since our realtor cant say any thing since she represents both parties.

Thank you for responding

Cindy

Answer
Unfortunately in our litigious society, anyone can sue for anything. I hope they signed the form that said they were foregoing the inspection. check that first. Ask the Realtor for all copies of the forms that the buyer was provided. Did she check the box on the contract that said she represents both parties? Did the contract say they had received the disclosure? If so, that means they received it with all pages. Does the Realtor have E&O insurance? I would try to work it out instead of going to court, because only the attorney's win in that case.