Beat the home inspector, lender, sump pump guy trap.
Read, and protect your rights to receive buyers home inspection reports in a timely manner, when it is not too late to… find another home and back out of the transaction getting your earnest money back. This can prevent you from buying a home that is a drainage nightmare, and not disclosed.
The average home purchase earnest money agreement gives the purchaser the right of satisfaction with respect to backing out of a real estate transaction if a seller does not agree in writing to fix the repairs issue prior to closing of escrow. If the sellers do not solve the problem, and the home buyers accept the problem, they have not done their home work, or did not get the information early enough to alter the situation, which is the case most often, and the topic of discussion is this site as well.
Should that home the buyers are looking at be found out to be an undisclosed drainage problem and basically a money pit, with non disclosing home sellers, bent on deceiving you, and with no money or interest in solving the home drainage problem prior to closing of escrow, you can be out of there with your cash, with only losing a couple of hundred bucks on a home inspection report, while delaying making application for the loan until you, the buyer, or buyers, are satisfied with the results of the home inspection report and your personal observation after learning the ways in this site.
This preserves the home buyers rights, and gives then the opportunity to learn about it before they have paid more fees and are locked in, in most cases, having already sold their existing home as well to buy the new one.
Finding out early in the looking process, before loan application, what the actual condition of the home is, prior to paying hundreds more in fees for appraiser and other bank fees, that will not be given back ever, preserves the rights already given to you and buried by everyone else in the transaction.
Find out before hand if the sellers plan to install another sump pump, or if they will actually “solve” the groundwater problems with hand excavated french drain groundwater removal systems.
It will become your way, or the highway.
Many home inspectors, sump pump installers and home lenders are involved in streamlining home buyers through their own process of understanding the condition of the home, in the lenders time, and not the buyers time.
The lenders set up their own timing, in opposition to the home buyers stated rights to discover the groundwater problem early in the transaction. Without early knowledge, buyers cannot back out in time to prevent a crash of the entire moving plan, and perhaps the kids schools too.
Home buyers have the right to back out of the transaction unless the home sellers agree to fix or solve the problem. Not just install a band aid pump.
Everything is supposed to be made, “time is of the essence” as specified within the earnest money agreement, but then not even the realtors protect or understand that right to its fullest apparently.
Just because a realtor calls himself or herself a broker, does not mean they will discuss drainage with you. They will not in most cases, and will leave it to your discovery.
Proceed to hire a real estate buyers agent with caution, even if she or he is free to you. You could pay for it in the end dealing with the realtor, brokers, lack of experience and patience.
There used to be a many years condition for having experience required to sit for the Oregon real estate brokers exam. Not anymore. Everyone is called a broker now, no matter the difference in education and experience levels. Everyone is a broker.
Lots of these folks are nothing more than new sales associates, with a new title given to them by the state legislature, for other reasons than I have time to get into at this point.
Another area realtors often fall down on, when representing home buyers, is they do not protect their buyers with good enough earnest money repairs clause amounts or language to mandate and define what needs to be done, and at whos choice of method, and by whos bank account. Realtors see all those issues as deal killers, because they are, if left to deal with. If dealt with right away, and not successfully, oh well, on to the next home, where they will scratch their heads as you inspect the crawl space, and start all over again, with a patient realtor that knows you are a deal, and not one of the lost.
Fine. Hit the road folks. Shake some hands. Smile. Go find yourself a home to buy. Forget what you cannot change, and be smart enough to know the difference early in the home transaction by reading the obvious, which is not understood until looked for.
Realtors will not support this program in general.
Talk to your buyers agent ahead of time, explaining your priorities. If he or she is not comfortable with them, including treating their own customers on their own listings, should you wish to buy one of those and they are acting in a duel agency capacity. If the answer looks like no, shake their hands and find someone who gets the importance of it, and is not afraid to rock the boat a bit. No exceptions.
Realtors are mostly all taught the same working methodology, until they get more experienced, when everything changes, if they last that long in the business.
Most realtor brokers do not last more than a year or two.
When a few I know start crying, I remind those short sited realtors of an old Muddy Waters blues song line, “you can’t spend what you ain’t got, you can’t lose what you never had.”
Start reading if you are a real estate broker. Start really protecting your home buyers and sellers, in a market where they need it badly.
You will find that you have uncovered a massive market of under serviced home buyers out there, who appreciate your knowledge and will stick with you over the years to come as well. Provide them with access to this site, so they can learn how to solve groundwater problems and make you life easier too.
Lenders dictate to home inspectors what they expect of them, as they are interested in only their own program, and are not in the least interested in respecting the home inspectors, or the home buyers or sellers rights first off, to simply not proceed with the transaction if terms are not met, or the conditions are beyond repair as agreed.
“Just tell me in time to find a solution to the problem, or back out.”
Nothing in the earnest money agreement obligates or forces home buyers, unless otherwise agree to in writing, to be forced into accepting a sump pump installation, that the home buyers know is worthless in its ability to stop groundwater entry below grade into your crawl space or basement.
If the home buyers have no right to walk away quickly, they have no right period.
It counts for little, if the terms or conditions are changed in mid stream, under the table by the parties to this collusion.
Drainage problems are discovered too late to solve the problem, due to planned late disclosure of the drainage problems.
Without prior knowledge of the homes condition, prior to determining to go all in and buy it, the home buyers are at the mercy of everyone else, and no one will step up to defend their earnest money agreement stated rights, even if they do know the difference.
Prevent the streamlining of a sump pump installation, set up by a controlled and delayed late home inspection report, done that way in part just to give the home buyers no time to do anything else but install a sump pump prior to escrow closing.
Protect yourself from lenders, home inspectors, and sump pump installers, by reading how to proceed in opposition to their plan.
If a lender does not go along with you, with your plan to order and pay for home inspection reports yourself right away, before making application for the loan, after your own inspection for drainage purposes, as discussed first when you are pre-qualifying for the loan at the lenders office, go to the next lender, after shaking his or her hand, and telling him or her exactly why you can not deal with this lender.
That is where control starts for the home buyers, and where industry change begins.
There are literally hundreds of sump pump installers and home inspectors in every home market. Especially in the Portland, Oregon market.
Most of them are talking the same old, very old, lingo. Many sump pump installer companies and home inspectors pass referral fees back and forth all the time, and have for decades I am told. More information is available on this site with respect to this problem of collusion among people who can influence professional home installations, under the pretext of an inspection report.
These types of home inspectors are probably making as much off referrals as they collect doing home inspections, where they are really working it.
The play is fleshed out right away in the beginning, when the home inspector gets the first chance to talk to the homeowners and suggest they should meet his sump pump guy first.
The stage for the perfect home drainage crime has been set. All the actors are in place. They are on spot, and basically on cruise control by now, expecting the same old drill will work again, as it always has in the past.
I will not disclose this in detail at this time, as I have previously on this site.
Don’t be lender, home inspector and sump pump guy scammed.
Part of why the real estate financing industry is in such turmoil is from their own greedy and shady scams.
This is not one of their most profitable misrepresentations, but it offers them total control over whether they have wasted their time on a home that will not close, or have invested their time in one that most often will close, even if the drainage problem has not been solved, for what ever reason the bank does not care. This is why so many properties are in the lenders REO, real estate owned portfolios. They are stuffed with home drainage damaged homes, that they will not pay any money to fix.
Home buyers and home sellers are systematically force fed, until they could puke, stories of underground rivers and springs under the home, and how a sump pump is the answer.
It bodes well for home sellers and buyers to protect, recognize, respond, and to change this perfect crime, that circumvents the rights of both the sellers and buyers, as given to them in the earnest money agreement.
What good is a clause in the earnest money agreement, that says, “this transaction is subject to the home buyers satisfaction of a home inspection report”, containing a repairs cap clause, etc, and other protections, if the buyers will never find out about the home drainage problem in time to solve it?
Or if a home seller has already been programmed and motivated by what they believe to be less money to install a sump pump rather than take the bid to actually solve the drainage problem, what chance does another professional have in attempting to educate them on the fly, when ignorance rules.<
The planned late disclosure of home inspection reports by home inspectors and lenders is discussed in more detail in past articles.
The fact of the matter is that most home inspection reports are planned to be delivered late to home buyers by the lenders and home inspectors, usually the last week when the home is in escrow and set to close.
There is no time to install the proper groundwater removal system prior to closing of escrow, or perhaps not even enough time to get a bid for one, even if the sellers would step up for what by this time, the sellers believe is the more expensive option, after talking sump pumps and prices, rather than installing a hand excavated french drain groundwater removal system that will actually solve the groundwater problem.
Home buyers should have controled this a long time ago. Read more on other articles about this subject, as it is detailed better within those articles.
The home buyers should always be asking themselves, “what else have these sellers not told us about home drainage and the general condition of the home?
If you are a home seller, and you want to avoid the problems that can arise as a result of home drainage problem non disclosure during the sale of your home, read my site and e-books, looking for articles on home inspections, lender scams, real estate, and other articles discussing how sellers get double dipped financially and emotionally by not acknowledging and dealing with home drainage problems, prior to listing the home for sale, or at least during a home transaction, if caught having to deal with solving the problem.
Home sellers would be well advised to inspect the home themselves, or hire a home inspection person themselves, after clearing it with the bank they intend to use the home inspection report with, to get the loan.
This takes the scam out of the lenders and home inspectors hands. The home inspector now works for the buyers directly, and not their prospective bank, even after they had paid the fees to hire the inspection in the buyers name.
Timely attention to home drainage problems, prior to marketing the home, will save you money and grey hairs in the end, if you are the home seller.
The use of my buyers due diligence check list and other solutions to common real estate scams can change everything for you and your family when buying or selling a home.
This is not some fly by not information that is just going to go away. Plan on hearing more about it, everywhere you go.
If you are a home buyer, turn what would have been a home escrow sale fail, into a closed escrow on time, as projected, without getting burnt or losing your rights to back out of the home transaction early, before you are on the streets, because of some criminal act of ignorance and greed perpetrated against you by lenders, home inspectors, and sump pump installers, as well as realtors who are part of the problem, but can’t get involved without becoming road kill themselves.
No one can do this for you. You must learn and teach home drainage to not be a victim in the future. The issue is not going away folks.
There is no alternative to truth. You must step up and realize the truth, and deal with what is, and not with what they say it is. On many levels.