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Purchased home not built to code.

Asked Feb 18, 2010, 08:20 PM — 5 Answers
We purchased our home in Aug 2007. We had a home inspection performed and no major issues were found, so we purchased the home. Then in the Spring of 08, the city began local city sewer and water in our area. As a result of the high vibrations, we began to notice that the living room addition began to buckle and walls cracked to where you could stick your hand through the wall to the outside. After contacting many contractors in our area we founf that when the addition had been built in 82, it was not built to code of that time, nor of present day. And regretfully the addition would need to be torn down and rebuilt to current day code to fix the damage substained. After all estimates have come in, a house we bought not even 3 years ago, now needs $40,000 in repairs. My main question is, do we have an recourse or legal standpoint with this issue. Since we believed when we bought the house that it had been built correctly. Or does this unfortunately fall back on us as a buyer beware sale?

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AK lawyer's Avatar
AK lawyer Posts: 9,947, Reputation: 4217
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#2

Feb 18, 2010, 10:52 PM
Who performed the home inspection? Liability of the home inspector would defintely be one thing I'd want to look into.
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ebaines's Avatar
ebaines Posts: 10,055, Reputation: 5539
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#3

Feb 19, 2010, 09:38 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by AK lawyer View Post
Who performed the home inspection? Liability of the home inspector would defintely be one thing I'd want to look into.
In general home inspector's can't be sued for this sort of thing, as the inspection they perform are obviously limited to things they can observe visually. I bet if you read the home inspection contract and the inspection report you will see that the inspector specifically disavows any responsibility for anything he may have missed. No inspector would stay in business very long if he made the mistake of guarranteing there's nothing wrong with the house.

Did the seller provide a disclosure statement? If so, and it did not disclose this issue, perhaps you have recourse there, especially if the previous owners were the ones who had the addition built.
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Velcore's Avatar
Velcore Posts: 3, Reputation: 1
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#4

Feb 19, 2010, 10:37 AM
The Home Inspection was performed by Homeguide Home Inspection. And yes the sellers did provide a disclosure statement at time of purchase that does not speak of any foundation issues. Furthermore, when we contacted the township to get copies of the permits that were pulled along with the inspection report of the finished addition, and certificate of occupancy. The only thing they had on file was the building permit. No electrical or plumbing permits, no final inspection report, or certificate of occupancy was on file with the township hall. Furthermore, the building permit that they did have shows the previous owner as the one who built the addition.
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Fr_Chuck's Avatar
Fr_Chuck Posts: 72,624, Reputation: 37036
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#5

Feb 19, 2010, 06:53 PM


Did the sellers build the addition ? If the people you bought it from, did the addition, then you should be able to go back to them, since they built it and it was not up to code, BUT<

If you bought it from someone, who bought it from someone, and they bought it from the person who did the addition, no one may have even known.

If lets say you sold it last year before this happened you would not have known to the people you sold it to.

So who owned it and did the addition ?
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Velcore's Avatar
Velcore Posts: 3, Reputation: 1
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#6

Feb 19, 2010, 08:27 PM
The previous owners that we bought from put the addition on. It is now also coming into light that the previous owner did the work himself and was not a licensed contractor. He also did not disclose this in the disclosure statement but in fact stated as to the opposite, that there was no work done to the home withought permits or by non licensed contractors. As we become more aware of everything we are beginning to think we better seek legal counsil. The funny part about the whole issue is the township has the building permit pulled by the previous owner, but no electrical or plumbing permits, as well as a final inspection report of the addition once it was finished.
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