Thread: "New" problems in an older house

Hello all,

I'm not an inspector but hope you all may be able to help me out with a question.

My girlfriend's parents bought a house about 9 years ago from someone they knew. They didn't use a realtor and the sellers inspector(who happened to be friends with the inspector) gave the house a clean bill of health. Anyone who looked at the house could see there must be at least one thing wrong, and there was but it wasn't anything serious(cracked cabinets, some broken floorin, etc)

Fast forward to about a month and a half ago and someone fell through the floor. They went ahead and had the floor repaired(who wants a hole in the floor anyway =P). When the person who was doing the repairs went into the crawl space he said most of the wood was rotted under there. So instead of a simple beam replace it turned into replacing nearly a rooms worth of flooring and wood. They didn't know what they could do and hoped it was the only problem.

Now a few days ago someone staying with them wanted to do something around the house so he went to fix one of the sections of sinking floor. The person went under the house again and found that most of the area was rotten. Upon further investigation he looked around and found lots of rotted and termite damaged wood. He said it looked so extensive that there is no way it wasn't there 9 years ago.

Now that you all have a little history my question to you, is there anything they could do? They were thinking maybe they could sue the original inspector, but being so long ago they could never prove he was at fault(at the time he had never mentioned any termite damage or rotting). I've done a bit of research and they could sue had it been 8 years ago, but since it has been so long I don't know. If anyone has any advice that would be great!

Thanks much!

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Originally Posted by Christopher Meyer

Hello all,

I'm not an inspector but hope you all may be able to help me out with a question.

My girlfriend's parents bought a house about 9 years ago from someone they knew. They didn't use a realtor and the sellers inspector(who happened to be friends with the inspector) gave the house a clean bill of health. Anyone who looked at the house could see there must be at least one thing wrong, and there was but it wasn't anything serious(cracked cabinets, some broken flooring, etc)

Fast forward to about a month and a half ago and someone fell through the floor. They went ahead and had the floor repaired(who wants a hole in the floor anyway =P). When the person who was doing the repairs went into the crawl space he said most of the wood was rotted under there. So instead of a simple beam replace it turned into replacing nearly a rooms worth of flooring and wood. They didn't know what they could do and hoped it was the only problem.

Now a few days ago someone staying with them wanted to do something around the house so he went to fix one of the sections of sinking floor. The person went under the house again and found that most of the area was rotten. Upon further investigation he looked around and found lots of rotted and termite damaged wood. He said it looked so extensive that there is no way it wasn't there 9 years ago.

Now that you all have a little history my question to you, is there anything they could do? They were thinking maybe they could sue the original inspector, but being so long ago they could never prove he was at fault(at the time he had never mentioned any termite damage or rotting). I've done a bit of research and they could sue had it been 8 years ago, but since it has been so long I don't know. If anyone has any advice that would be great!

Thanks much!

Sorry

Not a damn thing they can do. They bought the home , how long ago, 9 years. These concerns may not have even bean dreamt of by the rot and termite fairy.

Lets check one more thing. No maintenance was done , obviously, in the nine years, or else they would have caught it a year or two or three ago.

One cannot just live in a home and never expect to do any maintenance or up keep or even looked in the crawl in nine years.

Hmmmmmmmm, nine years. Nope, nothing anyone can do with the exception of fix their own mistakes.

That's kinda like driving the hell out of a car for nine years and never doing any maintennence.

Originally Posted by Christopher Meyer

I've done a bit of research and they could sue had it been 8 years ago, but since it has been so long I don't know.

If anyone has any advice that would be great!

Thanks much!

.
Grow up.

Take responsibility for your own actions.

Pay for the upkeep of your own property.

Stop looking for someone else to blame for your own problems and inabilities.

Stop looking for Something for Nothing.

Get a Job, ( if you have one Save some of your money for such events.)


* that's 6 off the top of my head.
.

They relied on the seller's inspector. Friend or not, the buyer's should have gotten their own inspection. What did that inspector say about the crawlspace? Did he even go in there?

From the sounds of things, nobody went into that crawlspace in the 9 years your girlfriend's parents have lived there until somebody went through the floor. Bottom line is they dropped the ball themselves. You can't ignore home maintenance and then try to pin the responsibility on somebody else.

Originally Posted by Billy Stephens

.
Grow up.

Take responsibility for your own actions.

Pay for the upkeep of your own property.

Stop looking for someone else to blame for your own problems and inabilities.

Stop looking for Something for Nothing.

Get a Job, ( if you have one Save some of your money for such events.)


* that's 6 off the top of my head.
.

Thanks Billy

As usual I scanned the Post.

I did not see the part about if it were 8 years ago they still could have suid. Bull crap on that one. Obviously you have absolutely no idea of how much termites can eat in a year or how fast wood rot can spread once it had started and left unchecked.

Again. Take Billies advise and have the owner take responsibility and pay for their own misgivings.

What is really scary is that up until a few months ago no one stuck there head or had someone else stick there head into the crawl space or smelled moldy rotten wood in all the time it has been rotting. No one has ever checked on a plumbing leak. No one ever checked for termites and any other wood destroying organism.

You can not tell me that no one ever saw termites swarming with all that termite damage. Even if they did not know what termites looked like they would have been flying all over the place at least every spring.

Anyway. Even with you investigating and your friend telling you it all had to be there 9 years ago, think again, it could have been as little as a year or 2. and even with that, 7 years after it should have been checked out.

A home is maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Use this as a lesson learned.

Christopher,

Lots of things can change in a decade - to give you an example I've seen a case where cast-iron drainpipe rusted through and introduced enough water in the crawlspace to raise the humidity to the point where things were rotting badly within a year or two.

This is the kind of thing that could easily have happened years after the inspection, and still had time to produce extensive damage.

Until they invent the Wayback Machine (YouTube - Peabody and Sherman), it will never be possible to know what really happened.

Also, Now that you have disclosed all the problems with your home to all of us and the rest of the world. I am sure you will truthfully idsclose all the problems when you go to sell the home, correct?