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Found a leak caused by the sellers--anything we can do?
We closed on our house back in June. It's 2 years old, the sellers moved across the country, and nothing came up on the inspection. A couple weeks ago I was vacuuming and found a mushroom (really!) growing out of the baseboard in one of the guest bedrooms we don't use much. I had our inspector come over and he used his moisture detector, and found an area about 1 foot by 3 inches that was wet behind the wall. (This was nothing that ever could have been found on the inspection--the wall/carpet doesn't feel look wet.) So we took off a bit of the drywall and found wetness and mold and a pipe. The plumber came today and took off more drywall.
The sellers (the only previous owners) had hung something on the wall and put a hole in the pipe. The hole in the wall was spackled. My husband is home with the plumber taking a ton of pictures. We're contacting our agent, but she wasn't all that great, and the sellers' agent is a total used car salesman, so I don't know how much they can help. Do we have any recourse with getting the sellers to pay for this?
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Re: Found a leak caused by the sellers--anything we can do?
Are you united with the CCOKCs?
No you have no recourse.
That's what I suspected. The plumber only needed a couple of hours to find the problem and fix it, so hopefully the drywall repair won't be too bad.
Maybe I should have started an organic mushroom farm...
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Some states require you to disclose water damage. Contact an attorney, not your agent.
You would have to prove that they knew about the leak and intentionally did not disclose it. If the inspector didn't notice, then the previous owners might not have either.
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To add to this, they probably didn't know because the nail was plugging the whole until they pulled it out. It probably wasn't a leak until just before closing when they pulled the picture down, took out the nail, and patched the hole. It might not have even been a leak during the inspection.
It looks like you are in MD, which has stricter disclosure laws than some states. I don't know what the outcome would be if you tried to pursue anything, but is it worth the legal fees to find out? The cost of a plumber and drywall guy is probably far less than the legal fees to sue for non-disclosure (which it might not even be).
I have had friends be successful with getting money for this type of thing. Call an attorney.
Welcome to home ownership. You buy it, you responsible for it.
You would have to prove in court that the sellers knew about the leak and that with malicious intended did not disclose it.
You won't be able to prove that. So you will spend a lot of money on a lawyer and court fees (I suspect many times over the cost of you just fixing this issue yourself).