Now (post-sale) plumber is asking for much higher than we agreed

[Dean Attali]

Hi all,

I'm very new to real estate investing - just joined BP in June and closed on my first rental property yesterday. It's a great SFH in an A area (Olathe, KS), inspection report came back very clean, everything looked great. I was very excited.

The only problem that we found was that during the sewer inspection, the guy said he ran into some problem with the main line where the camera got stuck but he didn't know exactly what the issue is. He gave me a bid for $3000 to fix it. This seemed very steep for me, almost made me not buy the house, but I decided that if everything else is great and I just have to spend this $3000,  then sure. The quote he gave me in writing did say this was an estimate, but to me $3000 seemed like a large sum of money and I wasn't going to be comfortable if that was not the maximum cost. So I called him up and asked him very explicitly if this $3000 quote is just an estimate or if that's the final cost. He said very clearly that he does not know the exact issue because he could not see it, but this $3000 will be the final cost to get in there and fix whatever he sees. As a lay person who knows nothing about plumbing, that sounded reasonable; he did an inspection, saw he had an issue, and said he would fix whatever issue it was for X amount. He said multiple times that this is the price and it will not go up.

Using this information, knowing I'll have to pay $3000 and have a rental-ready unit before October, I decided to go ahead with the purchase.

Fast forward to today, his boss (the company owner) shows up, and says that after cleaning the sewer line a bit, he's able to see there's a lot more problems than what they previously thought. It's going to be a much larger and more expensive job, maybe 2 or 3 or 4 times the original cost.

I strongly believe that he should honour the price his employee told me. I do have a recording of the phone call we had, so I have proof of him saying $3000 was the final price. The owner's claim is that his employee could not promise me that price because he did not know what the problem was at the time. I do understand where he's coming from, but that's on them, not me (or so I see it). I think the problem stems from his employee overpromising something he could not deliver. I went ahead with the purchase of the home largely because he told me $3000 would be the amount I would pay to fix the plumbing issues, otherwise I would not have bought it. Now I have the house and he's telling me it's going to cost a lot more. I don't think there was any malicious intent here, but it seems reasonable to me that it should be up to him to honour what he said rather than me paying for his mistake.

I want to resolve this ASAP because I want the house to be ready for October because otherwise I will lose October rent, and also the rental market will cool down and will be harder to find a tenant at the price I want. So I'm a bit pressed for time.

To be honest, I would be ok with a compromise too, such as a discount on the required work, but the guy has been very hostile and angry and yelling at me and not showing any remorse or understanding my perspective. I don't want him to do any work for me because of how disrespectful and unprofessional he is. I'm sure other plumbers will also tell me it's a big costly problem (I'm getting bids tomorrow), so my problem is not specifically with him giving me a high quote, it's the fact that I have a house with a lot more repairs on my hands than what I was led to believe and I think the plumber who did the inspection and overpromised should have to pay for his time, not me.

Does anyone have any advice on what course of action I should take? Perhaps I'm being unreasonable and I'm the one who's in the wrong here, I'd appreciate any feedback or similar experiences.

Everyone keeps saying that the first investments usually end up being bad investments and you learn from mistakes, so I suppose this was bound to happen because a smooth sailing first buy is just too good to be true :)