Real Estate Agents, Home Inspectors & Attorneys

[Danica Perrault]

Attorneys, Home Inspectors and Real Estate Agents please give me some advice!

I’m a 1st time home buyer in Boise, moving from out of state. I paid top of the market price for a flipped 1970s home in May. It’s been a month of hell since moving in. There’s no way I would’ve paid full price or even bought this house knowing what I know now.

I feel like my agent is not representing me well. I can tell the home inspector did not have my best interest in mind; he was suggested to me by my agent- she claimed he was the best in town. The Form 17 is inconsistent & borderline fraudulent with everything I’ve come across in the house at this point.

The sprinkler system was shot & not hooked up to code.

The outlets weren’t grounded.

Water heater was from 1996, and had to be replaced.

Sunday, I began painting the wall behind the master shower & part of the wall near the baseboard would not dry. When we touched it, it was soft, discolored and felt damp! We called 3 people that came to check on the situation & found that the shower piping inside the wall was not tightened enough so the shower water was pooling up inside the wall. The next guy found out that the wall was made out of PARTICLE board!! Which is unacceptable especially in a bathroom. The 3rd guy went under the house into the crawl space and found water from both my laundry room and master bath, a vapor guard with water sitting stagnant on top of it, a cracked pipe and a pipe that didn’t even have a cap on it!

It’s been a rainy week here and we now found out that the gutters weren’t installed right so all of the rain water is going under our house into the crawl space.

Now the walls in the master are cut open, there are holes drilled into the floors in order to dry the flooring from water damage, and giant fans all throughout my house. I’m worried that there is particle board in at least 1 other bathroom. Do I have them cut open to check?

Real estate agent Red Flags: Even though she had just spent 2 days showing us homes, she said because of covid she couldn’t be at the inspection. Inspector asked that outlets be grounded/ fixed to code, Seller said I used to be a contractor I’ll do it, Agent said “let’s let him do it!”

When I told her how upset I was about all of this and requested that she get receipts of the work that was done on the house from the listing agent or seller she was reluctant. Her bigger concern was if I was going to sue her or not.

I then requested to have her on the phone when I called the home inspector; She told me I had to be nice to the home inspector or else he’d hang up on me. She also informed me that he didn’t even go into the crawl space that I’m having these issues with, he told her he didn’t know it was there... We have two crawl spaces. Is that because this portion was an add on? 

Home Inspector said “oh how much could a cracked pipe cost about $150 and $50 for the cap”. He said who did you call to have check on this, unfortunately I told him the company and he only had bad things to say about them.... wonder why? Because they did the job he failed to do. Now he is asking me to sign something saying I won’t sue him if he has the work that he missed fixed? The cap & the crack is the least of my worries. But had I known about them from his inspection I wouldn’t have offered on this house. After I refused to sign it, he said you aren’t going to get any more out of me by suing so your loss.

The seller is saying nothing was wrong with the house when they left it; he owned it from November 2019 on the market April 2020. He said he’ll see if he can find any details or receipts for the work that was done on the house.

How do I address all of this? Is there anything I can do to help this situation?

Thank you!