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I want to prefacre this by saying that we are going with FHA and want to get our case number prior to the April 1st changes. There are also VERY few available houses in our price range at the moment.
We found a house we like, which was listed for 10 hours when we made a bid. Apparently there was a lot of interest in the house and they had a lot of showings. Therefore the sellers were stalling for days to see if they could get a better offer but they ultimately accepted and we are now under contract. However, the inspection revealed a more than 17 deficiencies (and about 17 more that were maintenance issues). The deficiencies were mainly centered around electrical and water ponding issues. They agreed to fix everything except the water ponding in the yard. The seller works for a builder who convinced them that "it is not a problem" though our inspector thought otherwise. My concern is that the ponding has caused the two cracks in the foundation that they have fixed, and may cause more issues. As such we are requiring that we get an estimate on the problem over the weekend. The sellers are insistant that we get the loan application done by Monday, and that the appraisal must come in by March 25th. We tried to get them to allow us to submit the loan application within 2 days after the parties agree on the inspection issues, but they won't budge. My realtor says in 10 years she has never seen the sellers to be so insistent on the appraisal date and the loan application date. Especially since the closing date is April 29th.
The whole situation seems very odd to me. We will of course walk away if our 2nd inspection reveals that the ponding issue is causing serious problems, or if it will be very expensive to fix. However, even if it doesn't, does the sellers behavior seem odd and out of place? My husband thinks they are just trying to get out of the contract and are kicking themselves that they accepted our bid so quickly.
I have had clients that put pressure on buyers and we always had a better backup offer in place. So yes, we were completely inflexible with the buyers in those situations.
Ponding water can be fixed with a very simple french drain in the yard. You can get a french drain put in for next to nothing....I would not lose a house you love over a problem with yard drainage unless your talking about 10 acres of drainage problems, or flooding.
A standard run of the mill 6-10,000sqft residential lot would be around $1000 to have a french drain system installed. Its fast, its easy, and it does not (usually) require permits.
...all well and good...until you walk away and the higher bidder discovers the same issues as you, and they also walk away.,
Then the seller comes crawling back, and begs you to reinstate your bid.
Don't do it! Your bid was made, and rejected. Bid em down 5% just for being foolish. Today's bid is tomorrows dream. I have no patience for people who try to game you.
I'm wonderinng why the sellers never took care of the ponding in the first place...or perhaps they tried and nothing worked??????
I've watched my across the street neighbors try to remedy their ponding for years. Nothing worked except a drought. Turned out there was a small underground spring cutting across their property.. which nobody really cared about or paid attention to when the subdivision was built in the late 50's.
Food for thought. But I do think they have a better offer on the back burner.
Beware of ponding issues. A french drain can work if there is someplace for the water to go. If the ground water is high, a french drain is worthless and you are stuck with a pumping system to move the water to some other place it can drain away. It comes down to where the water ponds in relation to your property boundaries.
If the ponding is toward the center of the property but close enough to the house to cause problems, a french drain is about as good as the Maginot line in preventing anything. It would take but a day to get that sorted out though with a proper inspection. A home inspector isn't equipped to figure that out, you need someone who know about this sort of thing.
Checked the flood zone maps? If you haven't done that already, its a big guess but those maps will tell you about ground water levels in general.
Don't treat water ponding lightly. It could be a small thing but it could be a nightmare if the solution isn't simple. Once you get foundation migration or rotation, watch out, that becomes very expensive.
Best solution, get the right inspector and know for sure. Like I said, one day and some money.
Also, there is a large weeping willow which concerns me because don't they only grow near bodies of water? There is no body of water here...except the ponding in the yard.
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Quote:
Originally Posted by divakat
Also, there is a large weeping willow which concerns me because don't they only grow near bodies of water? There is no body of water here...except the ponding in the yard.
People plant weeping willows. My parents planted one in our house growing up. Then she was sorry because they grow very fast, and it always had to be trimmed.
We had a ponding issue in our neighborhood, it was due to springs in the rock that were cut into when creating a tiered back yard. It foreclosed, sat on the market for over a year, then was bought cheap by a flipper. The flipper made a nice natural water feature where the spring came out of the rock, and put in extensive drainage to keep the water out of the back yard. Lucky they were on the up side of the hill so it drained out to the front and into the sewer drain on the street.
IT WAS NOT CHEAP. Think many thousands of dollars for them to fix this. Yours might be different but you can't make a decision without knowing.
Hire a GEOLOGIST to look at this for you. A home inspector will say, there's water in the yard. A geologist will let you know what's happening and what it would take to fix it. Then get a bid.
When you figure out how much it will cost to repair, look at the difference in cost for to you to start over (new inspection, new appraisal if that's been done, increased FHA loan fees) and look at the cost of other houses on the market. Then do the math. Is it worth it for you to fix it? Or is it better to move on?
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Logic! Yay boy!
