home inspections prior to sale questions.

as some of you know.....we have our condo on the market, and at the same time, we are selling my fathers house too. well.......long story short, someone made an offer on my dad's house, and we took it. that was about a month ago, maybe a lil less. fast forward to now......we have the appraisal done, and that works out,cause its more that what we took the offer of. secondly, the house passed its initial inspection, and you guessed it...there is a but! turns out,during the inspection, the dish washer and stove failed, because they found mold in them. now...here is the thing.......as far as i know, we are gonna have to replace the stove and dish washer, but we are also gonna have to have a mold inspection/test on the house. basically....what i wanna klnow is how screwed are we now???

i honestly have no clue as to what all is involved in the mold test, but i know it aint cheap...and the stove and dish washer aint gonna be cheap, cause they are the old drop in type. any advice or ideas/comments are much appreciated.

 

I've never been on that end of a home inspection, Will. To the best of my knowledege (may vary from state to state), It will be up to the buyer if they want to ask you to make the repairs. When my wife and I bought our house, we used problems in the home inspection to negotiate on the price. In my case, the house was a bank owned forclosure and the bank refused to fix anything.

Either way, I hope it works out for you and doesn't cost you too much (if any at all).

 

we can deny it, but im not sure how that works............are we not liable to replace them since they failed? and yeah, we should go crank up the a/c, but its happening tomorrow or wednesday i think, and im 2 hours away.....and my bro and sis are 4 hours away, so i dont really see us getting back up there in time.

 

having experience doing home inspections (father owns a company)....I'd say you had the nasty black mold. Depending on building code in your county however, they may have to write you up for any mold. What i'm not sure of is why they need to do a mold test? If they want to test the whole house, it must mean they found it elsewhere (crawlspace/attic).

And how do you manage to grow mold in an oven man

Are you sure they just found mold in the dishwasher

 

Also, wouldn't it be on the buyers to have a mold test done?

 

thanks man, and i hope it doesnt cost too much as we are basically out of money from the estate....we dont even have the $$$ for the next months mortgage, which we thought was alright since they made the offer and we accepted. we figured they'd have it by then.

 

Where I'm from the buyer pays for everything. It is your responsibility to know what your buying.

 

as for the mold in the oven......the last few years when my dad's health was declining, he would use the stove very seldomly, but it would never get cleaned. then he got to the point that he didnt use it at all, so im guessing thats how mold get in there and set up....same with the dish washer. as for finding mold anywhere else........it was only reported to have been in the stove and dish washer, so thats why they are gonna do the test.

 

I don't think the test is going to cover anything more than those two appliances then. Why would the house pass an inspection, and finding mold inside an isolated appliance warrant a mold test for the whole house. Tear apart those applianes(assuming they still work, just dirty) and give them a good cleaning. Careful using bleach as it will eat rubber seals in the dishwasher.

edit: if the home inspector is calling for a mold test cause he's worried about maybe mold being within the walls around the appliances then he needs to get some better tools. My dad has gauges for testing moisture content up to about 3 inches deep on a surface.

If you need more clarification let me know, i'll give my pop a call.

 

In our department we do the building inspections as well but we don't deal with any kinds of mold as far as I know. We call in the health inspector for something like that. Let me try and get a hold of him and ask him what the deal is.

 

well.....what we may do...if possible, is tell the buyers that we will knock off the price of a new stove and dish washer from the price of the house...not sure yet. the appliances are old as hell, so it may be better that way.......only thing is, we really dont have the money for all that.

 

see if you can get some used appliances.

 

Both are replaceable items, so I'd remove them, then have the test done and give $750 in credit back on the purchase for the new buyers to buy what they want to put in instead of the cheapest stuff you can find.

 

thanks for the responses. either way, i gotta wait a couple of days to find out what the realtor tells my sister,who is the executor of my dad's will. then i guess we'll see what happens.

 

well............after rereading my sisters email.....which was jumbled together........i figured this much out......

the house passed the initial inspection...the dish washer and stove did not because they do not work properly.....mold wasnt in them. they did the termite inspection, and that passed, but the guys who inspected for termites found some moisture/mold...whatever, and im guessing it was under the house...not too sure as of yet. im kinda thinking this.....all the rain we have had lately....including where my dad's house is, is bound to have moisture and probably mildew under the house, because of the dampness from all said rain. we will see i reckon.

 

Please be real careful of "Home Inspectors"
I have found that MANY (not all) are grads of the school of XXX for the week of ????. (you can get my point).
Some are very good at one area but it is almost impossible to be an expert in ALL areas. I have gone back on houses where the A/C failed to pass their test only to find that the inspector had all the doors wide open and took temps near an open light bulb.... (The system was with in specs).
Also make sure IT WAS mold and not a stain or algee, there are specific tests and the normal Home Inspector owns the proper tools.

Please beware,
My thoughts
Yuma Taco,

 

Brief education - Home Inspectors are 'Generalists' and not expected to be "experts" in everything.

While there are plenty of bad ones just as i see in the heating and cooling business, the electrical trades, the framing trades, the roofing trades, overhead door / opener installers, etc., a good Home Inspector is paid a fraction of what it would cost to have an alleged 'expert' in each trade inspect that component in that home.

The idea is that if you got a good home inspector and not one from the diploma mills and/or a realtors favorite because they don't 'complicate' their sales, you are generally spending among the best $300-$400 bucks you have ever spent.

Obviously, the 'inspector' you followed on the A/C call was not a 'good one'. A good home inspector will call out concerns and defer them to the alleged 'expert'. Whether that tradesperson is a 'good one' will be anyones guess.

A good inspector will also not make a habit of being wrong. This means continued ed and paying attention while you go so you are less likely to make the same mistake twice. It also means researching the hell out of something when you don't have the answer.

The longer you are in the business, the less likely it is you run into something you haven't seen before, similar to 'professionals' in any trade. Guys that just hope they don't run into something they are not familiar with again instead of researching it to stregthen themselves professionally are probably the guys that make the same mistakes repeatedly, regardless of the trade or occupation.

 

We just went thru selling one while building another. Didn't have any issues either way but we did have my cousin as our inspector for the new house. He's has his own inspection business & is degreed engineer. He covered us well. IMO, you should do as has been mentioned for the appliances - either split cost or give an allowance & let the buyer get their own stuff IF it becomes a sale or no sale issue. Make sure to point out that the appraised value is already higher than your asking price so basically you've already allowed for appliance replacement. Might not have to discount further or up any cash to split cost. Hope what was found under house won't mess you up. Good luck.........