Under contract, mold found on inspection

duckie1905 · August 2014

Okay, so we are again under contract. We actually lost the bid on this house originally but the buyer backed out and the sellers came back to us and accepted our offer. The reason the original buyer walked was mold discovered in the attic, which the seller disclosed to us. After the inspection on the first house we found, mold seemed like a piece of cake so we moved forward with inspection today. The mold was more significant than their agent led my agent to believe. No other major issues showed up on the inspection. The sellers have already gone under contract on a new home, contingent on the sale of their current home, so they are anxious to close. I want to ask for professional mold remediation to be completed before the final walk through with a $1000 credit to install vents in the roof to prevent reoccurrence. The sellers are hoping the HOA is responsible (not a chance in hell) leading me to fear they won't accept our request. My husband says we should thank our lucky stars that we had a second chance on a home we love, offer to split the cost of remediation and be done. Mold doesn't spook me, but I think what I'm asking is more than fair. My husband is afraid they'll reject and we'll end up walking, having to start over yet again. Thoughts?

Xstatic3333 · August 2014

This sort of thing seems to be market-dependent. On our house, my realtor recommended that we ask for lots of repairs and the seller did everything we asked for, most notably installing a radon remediation system. However, I've learned from these boards that this is not common everywhere. Since the seller is eager to make a deal I'd say it couldn't hurt to ask. Do you know much about their situation? Our seller was also eager to sell (she'd already moved across the country), and her agent shared with us that she was taking a sizable profit away from the sale of the home. We clearly wouldn't have asked for as much if we didn't have that information.

The fact that they did disclose the mold problem could also come into play, even if it is worse than they implied. What does your agent think? We pretty much trusted ours' judgement with these sorts of decisions.

OtterJ · August 2014

You won't know what they'll be willing to cover, until you ask. If you ask for them to cover the cost of the mold removal, they could counter and say "we'll split the cost." Or they could say no, and you get to decide what to do from there - walk, or buy it and cover the costs yourself.

Since they're already under contract with another house, it would benefit them to try and work with you a little, so they may be willing to either do the work, or credit all/part of the amount it would cost.

It doesn't hurt to ask for a lot, because they have the option to counter if they're willing to do less.

duckie1905 · August 2014

Thanks for the responses. We have a great realtor and attorney and both have advised to ask for remediation and the credit to add the vents to fix the underlying issue. They suspect the worst that will happen is they'll reject the additional closing credit which we can both live with as the fix is not a huge deal. Or, they don't have the money which isn't my problem since we can still walk and get our earnest money back. They were already under contract for their new home when the previous buyer walked. They've already asked for a delay in closing on the new house and the request was denied so if they don't close with us it is likely they'll lose the new home. Our agent thinks they are starting to freak out a bit, especially since our highest and best was substantially less than the winning offer, and they ended up accepting it outright with closing credit to boot.

Xstatic3333 · August 2014

Given all of that, I would definitely ask. GL!

Under contract, mold found on inspection

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