Image via WikipediaWho's liable for items overlooked during inspection? By Barry Stone
Inman News®
DEAR BARRY: We bought our home two months ago and have discovered three defects that our home inspector overlooked. These include a water leak under the kitchen sink, a gas leak in the front yard, and an unsupported PVC pipe for the front-yard hose faucet. Is our home inspector liable for these defects? --Lissa
DEAR LISSA: Some of these defects may involve liability and some may not. Here is a short review of each of these items:
1. If there was a visible plumbing leak under the kitchen sink, your home inspector probably should have seen it. If the cabinet below the sink was packed with miscellaneous stuff, the problem may not have been visible on the day of the inspection. In some cases, storage prevents the discovery of defects during an inspection.
2. If the gas was leaking at or near the exterior of the building, the inspector would most likely have encountered it. If the leak was occurring in one of the yard areas away from the building, it could easily have been missed.
3. If the yard faucet is installed on an unsupported PVC plastic pipe, support is needed to prevent breakage, but this is too simple a repair to involve concerns over liability. All that is needed is a metal stake driven into the ground and strapped to the PVC pipe.
When issues such as these arise, the home inspector should be contacted immediately. Reputable inspectors will address these concerns by revisiting the property to see what may have been missed. A mistake many people make is to have the problems repaired and then contact the inspector to demand payment.
When liability issues occur, the inspector should be given the opportunity to see what was missed during the inspection. Home inspection agreements, in many cases, specifically require notification prior to making repairs.
Hopefully, you have a home inspector who takes pride in his work and will seriously consider your concerns.
DEAR BARRY: We bought a foreclosed home, as is, from a bank. When we removed the old carpet, we found large cracks in the slab, leading to costly foundation problems. The contractor who repaired the foundation found evidence of previous foundation repairs that were done incorrectly.
We searched the county records and found that this older work had been done without a permit. Is the bank that sold us the properly liable for not disclosing this problem? --Carrie
DEAR CARRIE: Banks are exempt from disclosure laws because, in most cases, they are unfamiliar with the homes they acquire through foreclosure.
If you had bought the home from a private party, that person might have had knowledge of the substandard foundation repairs and would have been required to provide disclosure. In your case, the bank was probably unaware of the problem and could not have provided disclosure.
Unfortunately, some banks take advantage of the disclosure loophole by avoiding information that they might have to disclose. For example, if you had hired a home inspector and had then decided not to buy the property, the bank would probably not have requested a copy of the report.
Without having seen the report, the bank could maintain plausible deniability with other buyers.
To write to Barry Stone, please visit him on the Web at www.housedetective.com.
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