Seller Warranty Against Water Damage

[Treavor Johnson]

Hey there and thanks for reading my first post!

I am currently under contract for my first official investment property. I am suspicious that the seller may be trying to cover up some damage to the property and would love to get some more insight into how to protect myself or identify if that is the case.

Here is what I know:
- The property has a finished basement that is partially underground (approximately half the story).
- The property was purchased and flipped by the current owners.
- The property was under contract for at least 60 days before I ever looked at the property.
- There was a fresh new paint smell when I toured the property.
- There was some standing water that existed in the crawl space.
- The property inspector was suspicious of water entry in the basement but had no proof as the area had been freshly repainted.

My fear is with this property that the finished basement has a water entry issue. This is based on both the inspector being suspicious and repainting the house after it had already been under contract. I guess I could note that there were a couple of other things that were simple that were just not done during the flip so maybe the group flipping the property did not have the best attention to detail?

Now my questions to you.

Am I being too fearful or appropriately fearful?
Have you ever dealt with something like this before and if so what did you do?
Given the information, what would you do?
Do you have any other advice?

Thanks so much for your time!