Caesar
Footballguy
Here is the happenings.
My wife and I were home shopping at the end of October. We had to settle a litlte bit on the house because no mortgage company would count my military retirement until after I got a proof of income, which I couldn't get until I was retired. Stupid system, but not the point here. We settled on a decent home which I knew had some minor cosmetic issues, but nothing major in that respect. Mostly, you could tell a lot of the stuff was DIY. The guy had some skills, but was clearly not a professional handyman.
Anyway, settle on the house. Home inspector does his walkthrough and asks me to give him a call so he can discuss his report. He goes through it and talks about some things here and there that are of small concern. There is nothing too bad, but just some advice and recommendations for me. There was two items I was truly concerned with out of the 15 listed. The first was some indication of water in the basement. The owner said that someone had unplugged his brand new sump pump and it just came up through the cracks a little. This story checked out in every detail and the home inspector told me he believed it to be true as there was no other signs of water down there, like rust spots on the floor or mold or mildew. So, I put in the contract to have a professional come out and make an assessment, which he did.
The other issue was the heat pump. The home inspector told me that it was not coming on and that the house was running on emergency heat. So, of course I make sure one of the stipulations of sale is that the heat pump be fixed. At closing, a paper was produced (photocopy) of the business card for an HVAC guy, a note about the system running great, and a reciept for $495 for services, which included a new thermostat (which I didn't really care about). OK, great. Documentation that it was fixed is there. We close on the house in mid December.
Fast forward to last Friday and I am getting a quote from a contractor on my basement finsihing job. We notice the AC (same unit as heat pump) breaker is tripped. Reset the breaker and when the unit should kick on, it trips. Turns out the compressor is grounded, and in bad shape, and of course, the unit is out of warranty. Soooooooo, new compressor which is going to run roughly 2K-3K with labor and the freon charge OR a whole new unit which will probably run me 5-7K. (I am guessing here mostly)
Let me get this out of the way. I am an idiot for not verifying operation, but hey, life sometimes gets in the way and it was a very mild winter here in Cincinnati. Emergency heat (thought I didn't know that was the heat source) was keeping us warm and in talking to others, my electric bill was high, but not ridiculously out of the realm of feasibilty, so I never checked. I suspected something wasn't right, but I just didn't have the opportunity to get someone out to look at it. I am an idiot.
But here is where it really gets interesting to me. The realtor was representing both parties. This is legal in Ohio, though I know it is not legal in some states. Anyway, I call him and see if there is anything I can do about it since it was in the contract. Well, we start by calling the technician who did the work in November. Sure enough, I get an email back saying it was his card, but that was not his invoice form and not his handwriting on the receipt. WTF? So, here I sit at my new job, waiting for the realtor to call me back, wondering if this dude is going to get away with fraud.
So, what do you think? Do I have recourse? Even if its not fraud, something is not right.
My wife and I were home shopping at the end of October. We had to settle a litlte bit on the house because no mortgage company would count my military retirement until after I got a proof of income, which I couldn't get until I was retired. Stupid system, but not the point here. We settled on a decent home which I knew had some minor cosmetic issues, but nothing major in that respect. Mostly, you could tell a lot of the stuff was DIY. The guy had some skills, but was clearly not a professional handyman.
Anyway, settle on the house. Home inspector does his walkthrough and asks me to give him a call so he can discuss his report. He goes through it and talks about some things here and there that are of small concern. There is nothing too bad, but just some advice and recommendations for me. There was two items I was truly concerned with out of the 15 listed. The first was some indication of water in the basement. The owner said that someone had unplugged his brand new sump pump and it just came up through the cracks a little. This story checked out in every detail and the home inspector told me he believed it to be true as there was no other signs of water down there, like rust spots on the floor or mold or mildew. So, I put in the contract to have a professional come out and make an assessment, which he did.
The other issue was the heat pump. The home inspector told me that it was not coming on and that the house was running on emergency heat. So, of course I make sure one of the stipulations of sale is that the heat pump be fixed. At closing, a paper was produced (photocopy) of the business card for an HVAC guy, a note about the system running great, and a reciept for $495 for services, which included a new thermostat (which I didn't really care about). OK, great. Documentation that it was fixed is there. We close on the house in mid December.
Fast forward to last Friday and I am getting a quote from a contractor on my basement finsihing job. We notice the AC (same unit as heat pump) breaker is tripped. Reset the breaker and when the unit should kick on, it trips. Turns out the compressor is grounded, and in bad shape, and of course, the unit is out of warranty. Soooooooo, new compressor which is going to run roughly 2K-3K with labor and the freon charge OR a whole new unit which will probably run me 5-7K. (I am guessing here mostly)
Let me get this out of the way. I am an idiot for not verifying operation, but hey, life sometimes gets in the way and it was a very mild winter here in Cincinnati. Emergency heat (thought I didn't know that was the heat source) was keeping us warm and in talking to others, my electric bill was high, but not ridiculously out of the realm of feasibilty, so I never checked. I suspected something wasn't right, but I just didn't have the opportunity to get someone out to look at it. I am an idiot.
But here is where it really gets interesting to me. The realtor was representing both parties. This is legal in Ohio, though I know it is not legal in some states. Anyway, I call him and see if there is anything I can do about it since it was in the contract. Well, we start by calling the technician who did the work in November. Sure enough, I get an email back saying it was his card, but that was not his invoice form and not his handwriting on the receipt. WTF? So, here I sit at my new job, waiting for the realtor to call me back, wondering if this dude is going to get away with fraud.
So, what do you think? Do I have recourse? Even if its not fraud, something is not right.
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