No Inspection

[Marian Smith]

I recently bought a house without an inspection. It was bank owned and quite a mess—evidently the occupants had to be evicted. 1250 square feet 3-2-2 with half the popcorn removed from the den cathedral ceiling, missing upper kitchen cabinet doors, laminate flooring installed without cutting the door jambs or installing quarter round (so gaps), electrical outlets painted over, a large crack in the one-piece fiberglass tub/shower that had been epoxied over, a broken window and lots of general grime. The master bath was lightly primed over so you could still see one black wall, one pink and two peach colored walls. It was a house of never finished projects.
Anyway, I am a newly licensed real estate agent so I represented myself and made a cash offer. After we settled on a price I asked the listing agent to have the utilities turned on for the inspection. They were never turned on and I never got a satisfactory answer as to why not. At one point I decided that maybe the utility companies wouldn’t turn them on because the evicted people didn’t pay their bills and as the bank owned the property they were being held responsible from the time they foreclosed. Does this happen??? I asked the agent if it was a problem with unpaid bills and he said yes, but then I realized I had lead him there so I’d never really know. Then I thought maybe the listing agents pay to have the utilities turned on out of their compensation package. ??? Lastly, I thought maybe he was afraid I’d back out and wanted to wait until after it looked like I’d lose my earnest money , 1k, if I backed out.
So, I decided to go over the house myself to see if there was anything I couldn’t live with. The HVAC looked original 1977, the roof looked good inside and out, I knew there was a tub leak and the inspector could’nt tell me what I’d find behind the tub anyway. Then I noticed a slope in the front bedroom floor. I used a 4 foot level and determined there was a slope and then put the level on the window sill and it too was sloped and in the same direction. But the area is solid limestone and you never see foundation work around there, so I called a foundation company to ask how to tell if it is a bad pour, or what was an acceptable slope when pouring concrete for a house. He ended up coming out, said the house was built on fill dirt and he wrote up a bid to repair the foundation for just under 10k. I asked the bank for the foundation repair money and 2k for collateral damage from the repair. They agreed so I took the house without an inspection. I am not repairing the foundation because it isn’t that noticeable and I plan to rent the place out anyway. When it is paid off 15 years down the road I will decide whether to repair or just disclose it when selling.