Bad news.
I think most of you knew about me signing a purchase agreement on that house. Well, the inspection was on Friday, and it turned up some not good things. I knew that the chimney had come down in Katrina, but I was told that they had repaired it. So during the inspection, I asked the inspector to check that carefully. My dad came in town to come to the inspection, and as we were walking around beforehand, he pointed out a part of the roof just below the chimney that was sort of caved in.
So when the inspector went up on the roof, that part was sort of soft. Also, when he leaned on the chimney, it sort of shook. Not good. There were also some discolorations in the ceiling of the living room that I hadn't noticed before, which right below the chimney and the soft spot.
So then the inspector went up into the attic, and discovered the reason for the leakage. First, the chimney been reinstalled rather shoddily with just a few 2x4s which were screwed through the roof flashing, making the roof leak. Also, they reused the same chimney, and the inspector said that generally you would get a new chimney rather than reinstalling the broken one.
Also, at the soft spot we had seen earlier, there was a broken rafter. Not a hairline crack in a rafter- broken, almost in two, so that the roof caved in and the plywood had come apart. To fix it, you'd have to come in from the outside, take off the roof, replace the rafter, and then replace the roof. An expensive job. We weren't sure if they knew about the rafter- in the disclosure they said that there was roof damage from the chimney coming down, but they also said it had been fixed, and this definitely had not been.
Of course, at this point, I had a few options. I could've requested that they fix it, but after seeing their "fix" to the chimney problem, I don't trust them to fix the roof. The husband is in construction, he does stucco, so I can imagine that it really burns him to pay someone else to do the work, but obviously, he can't (or chooses not to) do a good job himself.
I also could have requested that they get it fixed by a third party contractor who you guarantee the job, and then have it reinspected. Problem is, right now it is really hard to find decent roofing contractors. And I had a feeling they would go with the cheapest guy they could find, which is not who I want to repair my roof.
The third option would be to get a quote from someone I picked and either have them put that amount in the escrow account or have them take it off the price of the house. But with the labor market being so tight right now, I wasn't sure I would be able to find someone that I trusted in a timely manner, and all the while my roof would be leaking. Ugh. Not to mention what a mess that would be, having to deal with a contractor who comes and tears out your roof. No thank you.
Of course, at this point, I'm also wondering what else is wrong with this house that I don't know about- what else this guy has "fixed" which is severely screwed up. The people living there were absolute slobs and since they had stopped showing it, had stopped what little maintenance they were doing.
So I walked away from the house. I lose some money doing that, the inspection fee and the appraisal fee, but when you consider the amount of money a house is, it's a tiny fraction. And I told my realtor I wanted to go see houses the next day.
So yesterday, I went with my realtor and my father, who was still in town, to look at several houses. So now for the good news.
I found two houses that I really liked, and I'm going to make an offer on one of them today. If that one doesn't work out, I'm going to make an offer on the other one. :-D
Ok, I know this post has gone on for a long time and it's not funny, but I thought people might be interested in hearing about my adventures. Blogspot for some reason won't let me upload pictures, but I am going to post them on my facebook account, so you can see them there.
Hope everyone is doing well!
Carley
