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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,186,228 times
Reputation: 57820
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In our state any inspection done after listing is subject to disclosure. The estimates for repair are not. I would stick to your counter offer and let the buyers walk. Then pay for the contractor to do the work, and get another inspection after (different inspector) and show both reports and the receipts for the work to new potential buyers.
Also note, after you send such a letter (do have it in writing with your own copy) to agent and broker, you are more likely to be questioned about any future repairs to your home the agent throws the way of his friends. After you became aware of this, you don't want to continue to enjoy the results of repairs. More like a cease and desist situation.
Then you also need to copy the contractors.
I know someone who did this on a house. Somwhere here we talked about the movie, Pacific Heights. Someone having an in (in this case a tenant) with a home and owner and eventually taking over the house and owner's id as his. There are many levels of this.
With the person I know, he moved into a woman's home, lease purchse. Owner lived a few hours away. Essentially rent for a set number of months and close at a certain date as he waited for his finances to be in order. (And that looked good too...benefits at a certain age, investment maturing, etc.). The owner is successful but not savvy in some business aspects, the intricacies of real estate, contractors and English is not her first language.
We saw the man do lots of restoration to the house. We thought it was part of the rent agreement. He made the house grand. He couldn't do a commode repair without ripping out the wall behind the commode, then the wall higher, then the whole wall and before you knew it there was a grand new entire bathroom. Of course he had some manic issues. He did pay for some things.
But in the end the seller got bills from contractors because they were told by the tenant that the tenant was working on behalf of the owner, was asked to make these arrangements for the owner. The contractors gave estimates thinking the tenant was having the owner approve them. He was just mulling it over himself. Then he was enthusiastically telling the owner what he was having done. The owner had no idea she would be paying for this.
He was not as intentionally mean as the guy in Pacific Heights. He had pysch issues. He was playing both sides to make a house beautiful.
So the contractors put liens against this woman's house now. And she has to pay an attorney to help her get them off and somehow place blame on the tenant. And while the liens are there she can't sell the house to anyone else.
Moral of the story for you: Get out fast. Get out of the listing even with this crazy person.
Any contractor doing any work to a house on the tenants word that the owner is agreeing to repairs is a fool. A contract is not enforceable unless signed by the owner and or the tenant having power of attorney to act as the agent for the owner. As the owner all you have to do is place a notice of non responsibility and that warns all contractors who are bidding work. In order to put a lien on a house you must have a enforceable contract.
I specifically write in lease that the tenant is not allowed to do any work or act as a agent to allow work to be done by anyone. No exceptions. Any and all repair or changes are to be approved by me.
In hindsight, a big mistake on our part. We have known the agent for years, he's gotten great reviews and has a solid reputation, so what could go wrong? Plenty it turned out, at least from our perspective. We felt like complete afterthoughts to the agent once the inspection was finished. Other than hearing our all our siding needed to replaced, we were the last to hear about anything that was going on, or at least it felt that way.
The last straw for us was when a small roof repair appeared on the final bid from our contractor, the one we had decided to use for the siding repairs. It was the first we had ever heard about anything needing fixing on the roof; the agent had negotiated and set up the repairs without ever telling or consulting with us. Likewise, he decided for us that "his" paint contractor would do the painting, supposedly to save us all of $100. Again, he never asked us if that's how we wanted to do things.
Use someone else. By the sounds of it, he's quite possibly not behaving in a matter that fits your best interest. Find your own contractors.
In our state any inspection done after listing is subject to disclosure. The estimates for repair are not. I would stick to your counter offer and let the buyers walk. Then pay for the contractor to do the work, and get another inspection after (different inspector) and show both reports and the receipts for the work to new potential buyers.
We never received a copy of the inspection report; it was offered to us at the very end but we refused it. So, other than a very quick glimpse of two pictures where there was supposedly evidence of moisture damage, we have absolutely no idea what is really in the report or what the inspector said. The agent was handling everything, negotiating everything (supposedly) on our behalf. So we are not sure what the inspector's report said, or what there is to disclose. We do know the inspector had an opinion that there was moisture damage/intrusion, but do we have to disclose that? We are having repairs made based on what contractors we actually spoke to told us needed to be done, not on the opinion of an inspector.
The buyers did walk. And, that's why we also cancelled the listing and will be using a different agent next time. We really don't like having things done "in our behalf" when someone hasn't come and talked to us about it first or if we were OK with it. The agent never asked for our opinion beforehand, or how we felt about something she wanted to do, or if we had other ideas, etc. We always felt like an afterthought, and whether it was true or not, that she was therefore advocating more for the buyers.
In our state any inspection done after listing is subject to disclosure. The estimates for repair are not. I would stick to your counter offer and let the buyers walk. Then pay for the contractor to do the work, and get another inspection after (different inspector) and show both reports and the receipts for the work to new potential buyers.
We never received a copy of the inspection report; it was offered to us at the very end but we refused it. So, other than a very quick glimpse of two pictures where there was supposedly evidence of moisture damage, we have absolutely no idea what is really in the report or what the inspector said. The agent was handling everything, negotiating everything (supposedly) on our behalf. So we are not sure what the inspector's report said, or what there is to disclose. We do know the inspector had an opinion that there was moisture damage/intrusion, but do we have to disclose that? It also turned out he had an opinion about our roof that we didn't know about until the agent had arranged for those repairs with our contractor.
We are having repairs made based on what contractors we actually spoke to told us needed to be done, not on the opinion of an inspector.
The buyers did walk. And, that's why we also cancelled the listing and will be using a different agent next time. We really don't like having things done "on our behalf" when someone hasn't come and talked to us about it first or asked if we are OK with it. The agent never asked for our opinion on anything beforehand, or how we felt about something he wanted to do, or if we had other ideas, etc. We always felt like an afterthought in all the wheeling and dealing, and whether it was true or not, that he was therefore advocating more for the buyers.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,186,228 times
Reputation: 57820
if they paid for the inspection and you never saw it, and are using a different real estate company this time around, I would think you are OK on the disclosure. I would still get your own inspection after, any prospective buyers can still get their own too if they want but if the siding issue comes up you will have evidence that it was fixed. Despite having a new agent for the sale, the old agent may end up showing it to other people.
Any contractor doing any work to a house on the tenants word that the owner is agreeing to repairs is a fool. A contract is not enforceable unless signed by the owner and or the tenant having power of attorney to act as the agent for the owner. As the owner all you have to do is place a notice of non responsibility and that warns all contractors who are bidding work. In order to put a lien on a house you must have a enforceable contract.
I specifically write in lease that the tenant is not allowed to do any work or act as a agent to allow work to be done by anyone. No exceptions. Any and all repair or changes are to be approved by me.
And yet pretty much anyone can sue anyone for anything. And, at least sometimes, get a lien placed, right or wrong. If it is then incorrect, one spends a lot of money correcting it. Or one pays the price and then turns around and sues the culprit that caused it all. Better to head it all off at the pass and just get out as soon as you see a glimmer of this craziness.
Just who in th' heck paid for the home inspection?
I'm a licensed home inspector and no one has the right to see the report except the person who paid me. If I inspect your house I give you a report and discuss the results with you, alone. If you want to give the report to someone else, that's fine, but I won't talk to them.
a big mistake on our part. We have known the agent for years, he's gotten great reviews and has a solid reputation, so what could go wrong? Plenty it turned out, at least from our perspective.
Never use an agent that's a friend.
Never have a repair made on your home without reviewing the inspection report.
The buyers paid for the inspection; we knew the report was theirs, and never expected to see a copy of it (nor did we ask to see it). However, it's our understanding that once the buyers asked for repairs based on something the inspector saw, we could ask to see that part of the report so that we knew what the buyers were basing their request on and get another opinion, if necessary (which I'm glad we did).
As I've written, in this case the repair request was for a full tear-off and re-side of the house (basically a renovation vs. a repair). We never asked to see the inspection report, but one of the contractors did because he was absolutely baffled by what the inspector had seen to indicate such a drastic request. We only got a glimpse of the pictures.
Apparently there were also some issues with the roof that the inspector noted and that the buyers wanted fixed, and that we only learned about when they showed up on the final bid from the contractor that the agent negotiated (without talking with us first). We have no idea what else the inspector found, but again, the buyers paid so the report was theirs, not ours to see. The roof repairs showing up without us knowing there was even a problem was the last straw for us with the agent.
We were offered and turned down a copy of the report when the buyers cancelled the sale. The agent told us we should contact the inspector and talk with him if we disagreed with his opinion on the siding - we didn't take him up on that idea either.
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