Property Disclosure Statement - Flooding

[Jeremy Loemker]

Tried finding one similar and got nothing, so here goes.

Purchased a small SFH in Dec 2014, rented Feb 2015, and had my first real issue in June (while on vacation, OF COURSE). Tons of rain had 2 inches of clear, non smelling water in the basement, which also happens to have the kitchen, bath, laundry (like i said, small). Water eventually drained out before I could get back to pump, fast enough to avoid any major VISIBLE damage, clean, and get on with things (renter very nice about situation). Flash forward to Dec 2015, lots of rain again for midwest, renter gone at christmas, 2-3" of rain in basement again, bought pump, cleaned, back on with life, some wood swelling of trim boards. As i write this, our town had about 3.5" of rain in 36 hrs or less, and again there is 2-3" of rain that somehow made it into the basement (even after i had a plumber install a check valve on the only visible drain).

I'm now at the point where its been roughly 20 months with THREE occurances of basement flooding on a house where the basement is very much needed space. I bought this house "As-is", but there was a Property Disclosure Statement that said NO knowledge of flood problems. From online record this person owned the house for about 3 years. So 20 months, 3 floods, 36-40 months ZERO? and to add to it, the basement had of course been freshly painted, with new adhesive tiles, and all new baseboard TRIM. So nice of them.

I had hoped the floor drain would correct for 99% of rainfall situations (we'd had some pretty decent 2"+ rainfalls in the last 6 months), but I now find that was wrong again. I've scheduled a waterproofing company to come in for an estimate next week, and am just angry its gotten to this point. The only silver lining again is that the tenant is gone for the next 2 weeks and i'm not paying hotels to stay elsewhere.

Do I try and fight the good fight that it was a misleading/fraudulent disclosure report, or do i take my lumps on this and it is what it is?

(side note, with about $2500 invested so far, and about $100 a month profit after mort/tax/ins/maint, the money has just about broken even here. Im reasoning if i have to spend up to 7500 more and be at 10K cash, that $1200/year on $10,000 cash still leaves me with an ok 12% annual return)

Thanks much for any advice i could get. Based upon my 1st try at posting on a different topic, you guys (and gals) are all awesome, and every morsel of knowledge i can get from your shared experiences is highly appreciated. Sorry for the punctuation and grammar, writing this over lunch break.

Regards,

Jeremy