You Won't Believe This.... Probably Not Closing This Week
The drama continues... let this be a warning to all of you that have never bought a house before or anyone that is thinking that new construction is the way to go...... The process is a royal pain in the @ss and developers are a shaddy bunch -- so are realtors. Neither one of them has the homeowner/buyer's best interest in mind.
We had our home inspection today. Originally, I was thinking that $450 was a lot of money, but it turns out that this guy was worth every penny - I would have paid double that to hear this guys opinion!! The short version is this: The HVAC in our house is poorly done and we shouldn't close until it gets corrected. In addition to some things that are not up to code (lots of house lingo that went over my head, so I can't explain) there is also bad circulation in the master bderoom and guest bedroom - and there is no excuse for not having done this correctly. Also, one of the gas pipes is put in an unsafe place and not up to code (very scary). The electrician and the plumber were both furiously working while we were there, so we couldn't really check that the water flowed correctly, or the lights turned on like they were supposed to. In theory, the gas pipe issue was being remedied today.
According to our home inspector (who used to be a developer himself), it looks like they knew that the HVAC was a problem, and instead of fixing it the correct way, which would have been considerably easier BEFORE they put up the sheetrock and painted, they attemped to do a patchwork fix-up. I don't know how our inspector learned this, but the developer had issue with the original HVAC guy and had to have a new guy come in to finish it. To address the HVAC issues, the home inspector thinks they need to knock through the wall in our office closet and add a duct/vent (??), which will entail moving the closet door over as well -- not a small undertaking. He doesn't even know how they can address the issue in the guest bedroom, and they will need to move a vent in the master bedroom (so re-sheetrock, spackle, sand, and paint).
Our realtor was trying to tell us that we could just put some money in escrow and still close on Friday. I told him that there was NO WAY we were going to close if there was still this much work to be done. They need to make major changes - why would I move in before these corrections got done? And if we can't move in right away, why would we close on the house before this stuff got done? Who are you working for??? The realtor doesn't make his commission until we close - so its in his best interest to get us to agree to the corrections and still close as scheduled. The developer is having some trouble with the bank, so he wants to close ASAP as well. Neither of these things are our problem and we don't plan on closing until everything is the way it should be!!! While this is a pain for us, it isn't nearly as much of a pain as it is for them.
Adam wants to walk away entirely. He feels like with each passing week we learn of new trouble with the developer - what else is wrong that we haven't uncovered yet? I am suprisingly, freakishly actually, calm about the whole thing. It's annoying, but there isn't anything we can do about it. I still like the house and want to move in. I keep hearing from people, as much as I don't like it, that this just comes with the experience -- wonderful!
Our developer, naturally, disagrees with the home inspectors assessment (shocker!). We will be getting the official inspector's assessment tomorrow morning. Our realtor things we should get a second opinion, (not sure why exactly, I think the home inspector's comments should be enough - he's already a neutral party!) since the developer and the home inspector disagree. Luckily, Adam's uncle is an HVAC guy, so he said he would come up and take a look at it. Unfortunately, he can't come up until Wednesday night, which was when were supposed to be doing our final walk-through -- we can't do it on Friday morning as originally planned, because they were going to be staining the steps that day so we couldn't see anything past the first floor -- can you tell they are in "last minute scramble" mode to close?
We'll keep you posted.
