Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Brought to you from Ohio based home inspection company of Habitation Investigation. Information helpful to agents and buyers. Conversations with professionals and entrepreneurs regarding their stories and what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain competitive advantages. Listen to stories from Ohio real estate agents and related businesses to help you know how to improve and who to consider using for yourself or friends. Created by the owners of a highly rated home inspection company in Ohio and the Winners of Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest https://homeinspectionsinohio.com/
Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Would $800 Have Saved $323,000?
A seemingly perfect house becomes a nightmare in this jaw-dropping story of buyer's remorse that serves as a powerful warning for anyone considering waiving home inspections. We examine a case where homeowners discovered their recently purchased property contained extensive black mold, structural damage, and numerous hidden issues that emerged shortly after moving in. Louisville couple sues over house they bought in Alliance
This tale has all the elements of a real estate horror story - a house that sat vacant for ten years, was nearly condemned, then quickly flipped with cosmetic repairs that masked serious problems. The buyers, enchanted by new paint, flooring, and a "fantastic smell," made the critical mistake of waiving their general home inspection contingency. Once winter arrived and the heating system activated, black mold appeared throughout the home, their son developed health problems, and the true extent of the disaster was revealed - foundation cracks, bowing walls, and an estimated $323,000 in necessary repairs.
The consequences have been devastating: two housing payments, mounting expenses, and a complex lawsuit against multiple parties including the seller (who was also the real estate agent and flipper), the mortgage company, and the agency itself. Their story reinforces what home inspectors have long maintained - that for the modest cost of $500-800, buyers can protect themselves from financial catastrophe. As one investor testified, a single inspection saved her entire business from bankruptcy by revealing costly defects before purchase. Remember, some flippers simply "put lipstick on a pig," and only a thorough inspection can reveal what exists beneath the fresh paint and new flooring. Whether you're a first-time buyer or seasoned investor, let this cautionary tale motivate you to protect your investment with proper due diligence.
To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Three-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com)
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How to save money by winterizing your home | NBC4 WCMH-TV
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Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to Stayin' Out and Hot Podcast. This is Jim and Laura, the office goddesses, here with me.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone.
Speaker 2:Alright, laura, we got a story. Yes, we do, don't we A story of buyer's remorse, and it's from the Canton Rep.
Speaker 3:Repository.
Speaker 2:C-A-N-T-O-N-R-E-P, dot com. Canton. Canton Repository C-A-N-T-O-N-R-E-P, dot com. Canton.
Speaker 3:Canton Repository.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, I think Alliance it's a newspaper. This is online, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think Alliance is out of Toledo, Like it's not far from Toledo. It's not near Canton.
Speaker 2:There could be another one, because some of the stories are about moving to Louisville, so I'm kind of oh yeah, that's true, I'm confused. It's still here in ohio is it? Though, yes, yes, it is, yes, it is pretty certain, but anyway this is a bajri moore story where they learned that their alliance house that they bought has black mold and they sue okay, it was not just black mold.
Speaker 2:There were other structural issues and other issues that Correct, correct, that was the headline, but here's what they said. They found it in 2024. They said look clean, smelled fantastic. First of all, all right. Here's my thought. It smelled fantastic, dude Clean should. Here's my thought. It smelled fantastic. Dude clean should not have an odor no, it shouldn't I mean some people think, hey, I smell, I go in. It smells like febreze and that's awesome no.
Speaker 2:And air freshener, and that's awesome. Like no. That means they're covering up something perhaps, or they don't care about the chemicals that are involved in those things. Anyway, it could be either, or a combination thereof so they said clean, smell fantastic, kitchen was new, paint was new, the flooring was new and it was in uh, they said a pretty and quiet neighborhood save for the hum of lawnmowers and few traffic issues, since it is a dead-end street.
Speaker 2:So they bought the house from I won't name the company, but they bought this house, they moved in and that wasn't so great, they said once the weather got cold.
Speaker 3:And the heat kicked on.
Speaker 2:They said he came on and then they got black mold, dry rot, crater, feces in the garage, attic and other issues were detected and, of course, not surprisingly, their son kept getting sick.
Speaker 3:And apparently he had issues with his voice and with talking.
Speaker 2:Yes, so probably mold.
Speaker 3:Toxicity, mold and exposure.
Speaker 2:The sellers they were. It was a flip. They flipped the house. It looks like the person who bought the house is a real estate agent and did flipping also, or maybe that's the main thing to do.
Speaker 3:flipping and real estate agency is how they get leased quickly or save a little money so the listing agent was also the owner of the house and the owner of the flipping company. So let's, let's make sure we clarify that there too yep, so.
Speaker 2:so the they moved in had all these issues, and so now they are suing the agents, the mortgage company and the agency itself.
Speaker 3:And the seller.
Speaker 2:Yes, who is an agent? So they're suing everybody, which attorneys are likely to do Because let's just throw that spaghetti and see where it sticks see what sticks, because they know for some companies it's so much easier.
Speaker 2:Just let me just give you three thousand dollars just to be done with it yeah, here, here's my eno coverage here and this is not all attorneys, but well, we were sued one time before and their attorney is like well, we know you didn't do anything, but it's cheaper to pay this money out $2,500. It's cheaper to pay this than proving that you did nothing.
Speaker 3:Which is still crap to me. I think it's cool.
Speaker 2:You just prove I didn't do anything wrong and then go after them for the expenses.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:But insurance companies don't want to work like that, so usually the only time wow, I don't know about always, because we have not been in a bunch of lawsuits, but only parties are guaranteed to win in a lawsuit.
Speaker 3:Are. The attorneys Are the attorneys yes. Well, yeah, because they're guaranteed 30% of whatever it is that it is. It's usually 30%, I think.
Speaker 2:So this house was bought at a sheriff's auction.
Speaker 3:It was actually set to be condemned. Let's be very clear about that yes yes. It was going to be condemned until they bought it and then they took it off of the condemned list. So my question is if it was in such rough shape that it was condemnable, why wasn't it still condemned afterwards?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know what? Because, say we buy a condemned house as soon as we bought that, that doesn't change the condition of the house. It's still a condemned piece of crap house Right. So I don't know why the city would remove that.
Speaker 3:I'm just taking that from the list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they did a fungal test and this thing says dangerously high concentrations of toxic spores.
Speaker 3:Which indicated a systemic fungal infestation exacerbated by chronic water intrusion. Well yeah, it was vacant for 10 years.
Speaker 2:This is attorney Attorney speak, attorney, speak, all. All right, you can say there's there's elevated levels of spores. Is what?
Speaker 3:we would say but at at any point in time, though, you've got a house that sat vacant for 10 years, you've got people calling going from that, the windows are busted out you can't tell me that that place didn't have mold.
Speaker 2:That was another factor. The house sat vacant for almost 10 years, which I think that'd be an awesome thing to have on the disclosure. Was the house ever vacant or bank owned? Would be nice things to know. Yes, but I don't think that's part of the disclosure form. Good question to ask though maybe so they all. So they had an inspection a couple months ago and they found cracks in the foundation bowing wall on the foundation, water exposure, substandard roof repairs, buck buckled floors and soft spots which is that in the roof or the?
Speaker 2:floors were new when they moved in, so that probably didn't happen until after they lived there for a little bit moisture.
Speaker 3:It depends because what? What if the floors hadn't actually been leveled or taken care of correctly and when they moved in?
Speaker 2:well, when you put in wooden floors or laminate, you're supposed to leave a little especially anything wood like a little bit of gap on the outside so that it can flex so it can expand and contract a little bit. So I we don't know. There's no picture of the floors in this thing, but here's what this kind of comes down to is the flippers mainly did only like cosmetic repairs, which flippers are likely to do.
Speaker 3:Because that's quick and easy and cheaper than actually doing a legitimate foundation repair or a roof repair.
Speaker 2:Because then you're going to lose money. Yep so, but here's a little bit of a kicker in this Is the buyers signed the form to waive all inspections and buy it as is no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3:They just waived the general inspection. They didn't waive the termite inspection.
Speaker 2:They didn't get one, but they should have they should, because apparently there were a bunch of you destroying insects here when you buy a house you should always get yet. No, yeah, I want the choice to have an inspection. You don't always have to do it. Why would you give up your right to? Anyway, the moral of this story is they sign that form waiving the inspection. The agent is still being sued.
Speaker 3:All agents are being sued and the flipping company.
Speaker 2:The flipping company the agent and the mortgage company, which that sounds like somebody's just throwing them in there to see what happened. Hey mortgage company, they got insurance. They should have some money to help pay for your stuff.
Speaker 3:They should have made sure that they did an inspection on this house and they didn't.
Speaker 2:So anyway.
Speaker 3:It's going to be interesting to see.
Speaker 2:So now the people are not living there, they're living somewhere else, expenses piling up.
Speaker 3:To mortgages two this, two that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a rental place paying the mortgage. They're saying it will cost them almost $323,000 to fix this place.
Speaker 3:I really wonder how bad the foundation is. Is most of that a foundational repair? I would love to inspect this house just for my own curiosity it sounds like just a moldy mess yes.
Speaker 2:So all right. Foundation say you need to steal eye beams right there. I don't know, we'll guess like say five, there's a little bit on cheap end, but let's say five hundred dollars each one okay use like five to six turn over here, but say five hundred each one. Let's say you did five on the front wall, five on the back, 10, then 12, 13 let's say four.
Speaker 3:Let's just say you get 20 total yeah, let's just do five on each wall and call it a good so you got 20 total beans, which is a pretty big basement, right, all right, that is a big basement.
Speaker 2:You're looking at ten thousand dollars so where are they?
Speaker 3:I wonder if the if that is, uh, including mold remediation, because if that includes mold remediation I could see that then because that's not going to be cheap to do remediation.
Speaker 2:Wow, if they do it right. Well, which is another topic.
Speaker 3:That's another topic that we could get into that. We've seen that's been a mess.
Speaker 2:So this, this crazy expensive and I can see somebody going jumping that number up go, hey, we have percentage of that, we're still good.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, and not only are they suing for all of their money back, they're also suing to have the sale voided out where it would be as if they had never purchased this property at all.
Speaker 2:Like an annulment.
Speaker 3:Like an annulment. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out in court and what ends up happening with this, because this case could set a precedence in the rest of the state, yeah, so anyway, I think the whole moral of this story is. Get an inspection.
Speaker 2:Don't be an idiot. Have the house inspected.
Speaker 3:Whether it's a flip or whether.
Speaker 2:Especially if it's a flip or whether, especially if it's a flip.
Speaker 3:We've seen horrible flips like you did that one, so jim did an inspection one that's bad a couple.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm thinking about this one because like it's the biggest one that I think of and he's in the back two bedrooms and he's walking on the floor and he's like they don't feel right to me. So he's looking outside and he moves away bricks and he sees that the deck is taken all the way down to the dirt, but on top of that deck are the two bedrooms that the flippers added those that on the outside, because also there's like the siding didn't look right yeah something just didn't look right to you.
Speaker 2:I looked underneath there and I'm like, oh, it's a deck and I go inside and they just put carpet on the deck. They put walls around the deck, put carpet over top of the deck, boards, no insulation, no ventilation was now a crawl space underneath there. This is the same house where they did duct work and routed to those rooms to get some heat back there, but at the same time they disconnected the exhaust pipe for the water heater and the furnace, because they just did shitty work.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But they wanted to add that deck to say hey, we got two, two more.
Speaker 3:We got two more bedrooms back here yeah, let's just, let's bubble up, but let's not tell you that these last two bedrooms are right over a deck and they're going to get moist. They're going to have water come up into the carpet, it's going to start getting moldy, it's gonna start smelling and it's just. It's gonna need torn down like so I?
Speaker 2:I was it was just my guess a legal layman here. I doesn't know too much about the law, but this real estate agent, who was also the seller, the person who bought the house and did the renovations- that's going to be a problem she's in deep shit. Yeah, Because legally she knew the condition of the house she owned it.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Okay, probably I don't know what she disclosed anything. She probably said, nope, we never lived there, don't know anything.
Speaker 3:Right, which is still bullshit, because obviously you're in there, you're repairing things, you're fixing things. You see the condition of that. You're covering it up.
Speaker 2:Well, and she's a licensed real estate agent, so therefore she's more of a subject matter expert. So she should know better than allow these people to do this stuff like, hey, it was you or at least your, your uh subcontractors that you hired through your company to spray paint over all the mold and stuff that was down the basement and you cut and you covered up things. So it's like it's all right, this is.
Speaker 3:this is bad for that agent well, and not only that, but depending on how they did that spraying of the mold and all of that, you could have mycotoxins floating around now, because the mold wasn't killed and it started to try to protect itself. So there is so much crap that could be wrong in addition to that.
Speaker 2:With this house, it should just be condemned yes, yeah, well, yeah, it was supposed to be condemned. Well, it was condemned before and I should probably put it back on there. And yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 3:I don't know why the city went to follow it up on that. I, I and you know. Maybe they should have thrown the city into this, because why would the city take it off of the condemned list?
Speaker 2:I don't know, the people did pull permits for electrical work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they pulled one permit for electrical work and that was it. So at what point in time does the city not come in and say you know what? This house sat vacant for 10 years. What exactly are you doing here?
Speaker 2:So that tells me that all they did was cosmetic, which like listen, if you're buying a house, do not take the flipper's word on it, don't take the seller's word on it, on how they claim their house is fantastic condition. They likely do not know or care they may not care and there's so many, so many different people.
Speaker 2:We did an inspection one time and, and after the new people moved in. Between our inspection and the new people moving in, the sellers changed out out the water heater, took out the new one and put in an old piece of shit water heater.
Speaker 3:And we had our pictures and the model and serial numbers. Well, here's the serial number.
Speaker 2:It's not even the same one, is it? No, michael, they took it from you. And then I had a seller one time I visit. I think I was doing I don't know why I was there I was doing doing something helping another inspector out and Sewer scope the buyer. Well, I don't know if there's that, it doesn't matter. Anyway, the buyer was there and the buyer and the seller were talking. When the seller bought that house, like say 10 years ago, before he moved in his, the people sold it to him, changed out all the kitchen appliances and that's not.
Speaker 3:According to the, the contract, that's not supposed to happen. What's in that house is supposed to stay there, unless it's specifically listed that it doesn't. Because that's what we did with our house, like we left, whatever we left there, stayed there, and we put specific things in that we were taking x, y and z with us yes, so it's.
Speaker 2:It's sad you can't trust people.
Speaker 3:100 and I would also add, if you've got an agent acting as a dual agent not that there necessarily is a problem with that, but the only person in all of the whole transaction of a home sale that is neutral is the home inspector. They don't make money if the house sells. Their job is not contingent upon that house. Selling like a real estate agent is especially as a dual agent. So you want to not get rid of your inspection contingency. You can say, listen, I want the inspection and we could still take the house as is.
Speaker 2:For information only.
Speaker 3:Information only, but I still reserve the right to walk off of the inspection if I want to, and you can still buy it as is.
Speaker 2:But you need to protect yourself because I think the way the contracts are written, they can get out no matter what.
Speaker 3:It's easier for a buyer to get out than a seller.
Speaker 2:Yes. So if I was the buyer I'd go hey, I want to do a home inspection, just for information only. I'm not going to ask any kind of requests for remedies. Get your inspection done and then something serious comes up you could drop out yeah, save all the heartache. Avoid having to sue the real estate agents. The seller.
Speaker 3:For what? Five to 800 bucks, depending on what all you get To get out to get out of a 300,000 to $500,000 home. That's well worth it.
Speaker 2:Well, I guarantee, wow, these people thousand dollar home, that's well worth it.
Speaker 2:Well, I guarantee, wow, these people would have wanted it. They wish they wish they had had it now. But who knows if they're? If they're, I mean, let's just say they're being so strict and trying to save every little penny and not spend money to protect themselves. I don't, I don't know they may do it again, but this has been a very costly, painful lesson for them to learn that you do not waive the home inspection even if the house looks good, because, as we call it, you could have a flipper that just put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig, it just has fresh paint on.
Speaker 3:There was a woman that we did an inspection for. She had just started a company and when we did our inspection I think when she got estimates she came to us because we did another inspection for her, to us because we did another inspection for her, and she told us that if she had purchased that first house without the inspection, that her company would have gone bankrupt right away because of the amount of stuff that would be needed to fix in that house to make it so that she could rent it or whatever I don't remember that story yeah I think she wrote out a, a review for us at one point, but she said that it saved.
Speaker 3:It saved her company, because she she would have lost everything if she had bought that house, and that we weren't deal killers. We were. How did she word that? Nightmare, nightmare preventers and that she would never go without an inspection from here on out, because of that first experience where she almost got taken advantage of and just by the grace of God she happened to get an inspection on that and found that that really would have been not pleasant.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, that's it for this one, I believe. Thank you everybody. Hey, if you're in Ohio, contact Habitation Investigation for Home Inspections. Thank you everybody. Bye guys.
Speaker 4:You've been listening to the Standing Out in Ohio podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify or Google Podcasts to get new, fresh episodes. For more, please follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook, or visit the website of the best Ohio home inspection company at homeinspectionsinohiocom or jimtroffcom. That's J-I-M-T-R-O-T-H and click on podcast. Until next time, learn and go do stuff.
