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Old 07-12-2018, 07:58 AM
 
17 posts, read 22,192 times
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Hey guys,

I am under contract on a 3br property in Westfield for close to 700K and last weekend had an inspection done which turned up a couple of major items like presence of potentially live knot and tube wiring in the attic, some aluminum wiring in fuse box / no ground in some outlets / some wrapped asbestos in the basement which needs removed.

The thing that worries me most was evidence of some carpenter ant damage in a small area of the basement which has caused damage to the sill plate and evidence of termite damage in the detached garage also on the sill plate. I called the termite inspection company and the receptionist said based on the report they weren't concerned about the basement, that it was a small area in the basement and would only require a spray, which they are quoting $600 for a treatment with 1 year guarantee and a $125 annual renewal fee. The garage needs further evaluation as the seller had excessive storage which prevented a full inspection.

We fell in love with this newly renovated property but after the inspection it appears that quite a few things were skipped over during renovations.

My questions are, should I run away from this property? How common is carpenter ant damage and if the weren't found in the first place, should I be paying for an annual spray regardless?

Assuming the sellers will pay to have everything major fixed, I am most apprehensive about the wood destroying insect damage as I am like, can you really ever know they're totally away?! and I don't want the burden of paying for annual treatments which cost the equivalent of a yearly subscription to Netflix if it's not need done if not for evidence found of carpenter ants.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Old 07-12-2018, 08:04 AM
 
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Run Forrest Run. !
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Old 07-12-2018, 08:39 AM
 
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Have the sellers address the issues or give you credit for them. How much would it cost to have them remedied? I would say that anything less than $10K is relatively small amount compared to the total value of the property. No reason to run away from the property especially if you really like it.
Carpenter ants and termites are everywhere, you won't be able to get away from them.
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Old 07-12-2018, 08:44 AM
 
17 posts, read 22,192 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by srdjanmax View Post
Have the sellers address the issues or give you credit for them. How much would it cost to have them remedied? I would say that anything less than $10K is relatively small amount compared to the total value of the property. No reason to run away from the property especially if you really like it.
Carpenter ants and termites are everywhere, you won't be able to get away from them.
Everything major requires further inspection and the work needs to be performed by a state licensed contractor for anything involving electrical / asbestos so I could only speculate that it will be somewhere between 10k - 20k

My biggest concern is the ants and termites. My attorney said he sees ants / termites in maybe 3 or 4 out of every 10 houses he closes. For 700k I feel uneasy falling into the 30% - 40%
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Old 07-12-2018, 09:08 AM
 
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How old is the rest of the house? After a while wood becomes too hard and difficult for them to bother with, they'd rather move on to newer construction than deal with your eighty year old wood.

To be perfectly frank, the live knob and tube and aluminum wiring is more problematic. Because your electrical system needing replacement means a lot more work. If someone updated most of it but not all of it then it's not to code, anything over about 50% means they need to do it all. Termites is one thing, your house burning to the ground is another.
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Old 07-12-2018, 09:19 AM
 
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Originally Posted by jaymoney View Post
How old is the rest of the house? After a while wood becomes too hard and difficult for them to bother with, they'd rather move on to newer construction than deal with your eighty year old wood.

To be perfectly frank, the live knob and tube and aluminum wiring is more problematic. Because your electrical system needing replacement means a lot more work. If someone updated most of it but not all of it then it's not to code, anything over about 50% means they need to do it all. Termites is one thing, your house burning to the ground is another.

The house is from the 1930's - The inspector couldn't tell if the knob and tube was live, he said an in depth electrician inspection will be required. he did also notice exposed wiring in several places in the attic but he didn't know if it was live. He noticed however the vast majority of wiring in the fuse box was copper which he said means it's been updated at some point. There was some older aluminum wiring however which needed updated.

I think these are all issues that will need to be resolved in order to sell the house to anyone as a potential buyer wont be able to get home insurance with knob and tube and it is not possible to close on failure of a termite inspection.
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Old 07-12-2018, 09:28 AM
 
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Got it. Who was your inspector, Bill Root? Most of the time they see evidence of knob and tube and just write that down versus seeing if it's live. We had some knobs and tubes but no wires going through it, which is very different.

The aluminum wiring is less problematic if it's limited after switches and the like. One of the issues is heating from maxing out the voltage, but if it's going from a light to a switch and copper after that it's never going to get to 20 amps. Tying in all the lights upstairs and then going through aluminum back to the box, that would be a bigger issue.

Ask them if there are ever any light flickers, that would indicate there is likely rust on the wiring, which doesn't conduct as well. We didn't use aluminum for wiring until the 60's and stopped soon after, so it's not going to be that old.
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Old 07-12-2018, 09:37 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jaymoney View Post
Got it. Who was your inspector, Bill Root? Most of the time they see evidence of knob and tube and just write that down versus seeing if it's live. We had some knobs and tubes but no wires going through it, which is very different.

The aluminum wiring is less problematic if it's limited after switches and the like. One of the issues is heating from maxing out the voltage, but if it's going from a light to a switch and copper after that it's never going to get to 20 amps. Tying in all the lights upstairs and then going through aluminum back to the box, that would be a bigger issue.

Ask them if there are ever any light flickers, that would indicate there is likely rust on the wiring, which doesn't conduct as well. We didn't use aluminum for wiring until the 60's and stopped soon after, so it's not going to be that old.

Our inspector was Jeff DeSimone from Proactive Home inspections. He done a good rate with Radon and Termite testing for $525 compared to almost everyone else who charged higher than that and additional for termite and Radon.
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Old 07-12-2018, 09:42 AM
 
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It kind of sounds like the previous owner kind of knew about the electrical issues and bought anyway and then when nothing happened thought everything would be fine forever. And, frankly, if the previous electricians did the right thing and made correct connections and didn't, say, jam a lot of wires inside connection boxes or things like that, yeah, it probably will be fine.

But, since you're looking at an awful lot of money burning it's probably worth a few hundred dollars of an electrician's time to come out and have a look around.
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Old 07-12-2018, 10:34 AM
 
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I don't quite get all of the details, but I don't think you should run...yet. Most of the houses in Westfield are old, you're going to run into problems like this on many houses. Get more details, do some investigations, try to get a closer look at the garage. Maybe you can knock some money off the price.

I'm not saying you want this house, but you may run into the same exact stuff or worse on the next house if that makes sense. Get your bearings on what is actually going on and then think about the price you are willing to pay for the house you are actually buying (versus the one you thought you were buying) That answer may be zero. But don't run too quickly while you have a deal going, you never know
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