Thanks again for everyone’s comments! This will absolutely be useful if/when we decide to attempt this again. It’s already useful for lecturing our friends on house buying as if we know something about it! On Monday we are cancelling escrow. For the curious:
The foundation actually checked out okay, but there is even more water under the house than there was a month ago and the source is still not evident to anyone who has been under the house, including the seller (unless he does know, and isn’t telling us). Per the plumber we called in, the seller replumbed the house without sufficient cleanouts so we can’t run a proper pressure test. Our person said he did not recommend starting the pressure test at the street because of how it could affect the the neighbors’ properties. (This house’s access is not directly in front or back, but around the corner on a different street.)
We had estimates of $3,500 to fix both the clean out situation and a pipe that is two inches too short (there is some concrete involved), plus $1,000-1,500 to run the pressure test, and after that we’d *still* have to spend god knows what to actually resolve the standing water issue, whatever it turned out to be. We were quoted at least $800 to repair roof tiles and that told the roof felting has 1-3 years left on it, so another $4k or so, not including gutters. The tankless water heater was installed without a service valve, so our assumption is that its very poor performance is due to years of deferred maintenance .
Seller offered a $2k closing credit and it just wasn’t enough. It’s not our dream house. Plus, this guy’s credibility is just shot for us — he’s got two public citations from the licensing board, one with pending disciplinary action, and he actually told my husband that the tub spout was *supposed* to be that loose, otherwise you’d get hurt if you hit your head on it.
I’ll be interested to see if he puts it back on the market or just starts renting it again. It’s been for sale since December 2013 and this was the first time it had ever been pending.
