Selling your house - would you inform buyers of a serious issue that could be hidden?

JustAnotherSaver

I've done much discussing of having & trying to work with this problem but haven't asked this one on here before.

I've discussed it with friends, family, work colleagues. Would you stay quiet as you want to sell & don't want to be stuck with your house, or is your conscience too great & you'd inform potential buyers of this problem?

Problem in question: We didn't know at the time but our house is built on top of a stream. As such it passes under our living room. It's making what i've today learned is called a 'sleeper wall' very wet which is transferring to the joists & the joist ends are rotting. The walls look like they have heavy salting on them in the subfloor. The DPC has been bridged due to the moist air & this has shot up the living room walls which left the plaster a mess. Looking at the dark marks on the subfloor walls the water level would get quite high (perhaps at a guess, 40-50cm of a 100cm drop).
There is a sump pump in place (looks like DIY fitted) to regulate it.

We knew none of this. Our solicitor thinks we may have a case vs the previous owners as they, under 7.1 of whatever form it is you have to fill out, said it hadn't flooded.

Had we known all this we most certainly would not have bought it.

So question is, how honest are you? Would you inform the potential buyers or would you stay quiet & once it's sold it's not your problem?

Not sure how we'll get on with the legal side of things. I suppose time will tell.


NOTE: This isn't for anyone to get carried away & overreact. This isn't me asking what i should do. This isn't me asking how to fix the problem. It's just simply seeing what others would do with the same situation. How many say yay how many nay. I know it doesn't help my situation, i'm just curious what others would do. Nothing more, nothing less.

mrginge

Yes i'd inform them, i'm a little angel.

Shouldn't the question be 'should I lie on a legal document'?

Blue264

Yes i'd inform them, i'm a little angel.

I wouldn't even try to sell until the issue was resolved, or I'd sell to a contractor who knows exactly what they're taking on and cut my losses. But I'd definitely be taking action against either the previous vendor or the person who performed the survey, or even the solicitor who did the ground check reports.

The house I was raised in had this same issue. There was a reservoir at the back of the house which supplied water to the various coal mine pit heads back in the 1800's. A circle of houses were built around the reservoir over the course of the 1900's, some of which began to subside on the 1980's. It was at this time the cellar of our house began to fill with water. Turned out, one of the supply pipes from the reservoir had fractured, but that was only discovered once our cellar had approx 4ft of water in it. My mum paid to have the cellar drained and sold the house shortly after.

pmd123

Maybe my naivety, but surely any decent surveyor would identify this issue in seconds, and probably any potential buyers long before a surveyor is engaged.

I viewed a property a few weeks back which was riddled with damp, hung around for 10 mins out of politeness, but my mind was made up after 10 seconds.

My answer to your question...

Be honest, because if it is as bad as you describe it'll be spotted pretty quickly anyway.

pinkshoes

Yes i'd inform them, i'm a little angel.

What survey did you have done when you bought?

If the seller stated in writing that the property had not flooded, and you can prove it has, then sue the seller.

You'll need good legal advice over this.

Yorkie1

The thing about these forms is the precision of definitions. Define 'flooding' ... does this count? I don't know the answer to that one, if the stream has always been there and never risen etc so as to cause specific problems?? (I'm not defending the sellers - just wondering).

If you do decide to take legal advice, it might be possible to find a specialist through this members organisation:
http://www.pla.org.uk/

I have no prior experience of them but if your own solicitor at the time of purchase can't clarify the issue for you for certain, they might be worth a try.

JustAnotherSaver

Some interesting points to debate. Bear with me...

mrginge wrote: »

Shouldn't the question be 'should I lie on a legal document'?

If you're referring to 7.1 on the question - has it flooded, then it depends on your definition of flooded.

One mans definition may be water into your living room (above floor level).
The next mans definition may be requiring a sump pump to keep the water at bay.

At this point i should probably point out that:
1) the pump isn't on all the time. It's every few days i think.
2) looking at the dark marking on the wall where i imagine the water level was for years before the pump was in place, it's about half way. Although the neighbours said the water would come above floor level - there was no evidence of this.[QUOTE=Blue264;65498798But_I'd_definitely__be_taking_action_against__either_the_previous_vendor_[/quote] We're going down that road

.or the person who performed the survey,

I thought they would be the most 'to blame' although 1) my solicitor says not and 2) i got mocked on here for thinking they may be when my solicitor said not

or even the solicitor who did the ground check reports.

The one we've got looking into it works for the same company. I wonder if this is perhaps a bad idea. Not sure.

My mum paid to have the cellar drained and sold the house shortly after.

It's no good draining our sub floor - it returns same day.

pmd123 wrote: »

Maybe my naivety, but surely any decent surveyor would identify this issue in seconds, and probably any potential buyers long before a surveyor is engaged.

Not so. We didn't anyway.

Furniture was cleverly placed so you didn't see the areas effected on the walls. Carpet didn't seem wet. The pump hadn't kicked in while we were there. The only clue really is a pipe leading out from the subfloor to the main drain & we only know that now.

pinkshoes wrote: »

What survey did you have done when you bought?

Homebuyers report.
I know i know. We should've gone for structural & maybe (or maybe not) that would've picked it up. It's done now though.

If the seller stated in writing that the property had not flooded, and you can prove it has, then sue the seller.

I doubt we can prove it has. We'll see what this solicitor says though.



It's gotten us really down & is effecting our day-to-day life now. I'm making more mistakes at work, worrying about things - how to put things right, how much repairs will cost that we hadn't planned for. Still, there's little we can do about it now & there's also nothing else on the market. Just wondered if most people had a conscience or not

AdrianC

The simplest answer is, as ever... Do unto others, as you would be done unto.

If you were buying off them, and found they knew damn well of a problem such as this, but had kept schtum, what would your opinion of them be...?

JustAnotherSaver

AdrianC wrote: »

The simplest answer is, as ever... Do unto others, as you would be done unto.

If you were buying off them, and found they knew damn well of a problem such as this, but had kept schtum, what would your opinion of them be...?

That's the funny thing though..

Friends & family say "you must surely hate them" or things to that effect.

I think my wife does but I personally don't. I can see why they kept quiet - they wanted a sale. Doesn't mean i'm happy with it, i'm not, but i understand why they did it.

Our solicitor reckons we have a case, but i personally don't feel we'll get anywhere. Let's say i'm wrong, let's say i win, whup-tee-doo ....... from what i've read & been told when looking into claiming in these cases winning & coming out with some money are 2 different things. I'm not interested in winning, i'm interested in getting some money in my pocket once the legal fees are done with so that i have some cash to put towards repairs.

I may be wrong & i'd love to be wrong, but i don't think that'll happen myself.

Halle71

This is interesting as we are experiencing something a bit similar and I've been thinking about the moral dilemmas.

We bought our current house in 2009 and the previous owners built an extension in 2006. God knows how it got through our solicitors but they never got it signed off/got a building regs certificate. I don't know yet if they lied, as our whole pack of docs is with our current solicitor, but it's definitely a question that comes up - have you extended/do you have certificate? If they had said no I would have picked it up and our solicitor should have as well.

It's not as bad as your problem but it is causing us a world of pain.
Building regs have told us they cannot give us a certificate because too much time has passed - they will give us a letter of comfort which buyers and lenders may or may not accept. Our buyers have just dropped out because they couldn't get a mortgage, but just before they did they asked for the certificate.....
Our solicitor told us not to say anything unless we were asked for it but I am worried that on our seller's info I have put that we 'have certificate, to follow' because I believed we had at the time.

At worst we will are a house we can't sell, at best a more limited pool of buyers. We can't get indemnity insurance because I contacted building regs about a 'lost' certificate.

But who is to blame?
The conveyancer we used has gone into administration, but the CLC who regulate them, have retrieved our papers and will do an investigation.
Our vendors must have known about it and I'm not sure if I would knowingly do it to anyone else.....

Doozergirl

It costs money to move house. May as well fix the problem- what I would do.

You really need an independent specialist to advise you. There are so many wrong tradesmen and questions a guy can ask a forum before looking for the answer in the right place.