When the power's off, the water can rise

Hi, Matt.  I immediately thought of the sump pump not working when I read your title.  It's common in my area to have electric powered sump pumps but not the battery backup. That's a hard lesson learned--I hope your seller corrects this soon.  Thanks for sharing!

Hi Matt: If the power is "disconnected" and not just temporarily out - would the battery backup be able to handle the sustained load?

:)

In my opinion, all houses should have the utilities left on while they are on the market.

Matt,

Were they in a flood plain or what? That's strange and also stupid to turn the power off.

I recently went into a short sale home in which all the utilities were off. The home had been on the market for over 200 days. The heat was shut off during the cool moist spring months... The home had that mildewy, moldly, sour smell just like at my Grandma's cabin at the coast. She doesn't keep the heat on either - not even to just 60 to 65 degrees to keep the air flowing.

My buyer went into an allergy attack and developed a headach immediately and we had to leave the home. Plus it wos too dark to show it anyway.

I tried to scrub and clean and get that smell out of my Grandmother's house but it is impossible. Once the mildew spores are in the carpet, they don't seem to come out. I never go to Grandmother's cabin anymore because I'm always sick when I stay there.

It is a big huge shame to see this happen to a lovely home, because they didn't want to pay for the ulitities. The sump pump issues is a much bigger loss, but any type of mildew or mold is also a serious health issue.

One of the things I like about the North Carolina listing contract is that it spells out under sller responsibilities that they are to keep working, existing utilities in order to make the property available for showing. This is easily overlooked, but one of the things I try to point out when reviewing the paperwork.

There's nothing like going to show one of your own listings, fliking the light switch, and nothing happens, or expecting heat/air to be on in extreme weather and sweating or shivering through a showing because the power has been turned off.

There has been a lot of damage due to power being off.. or here in NH, not being properly weatherized for the winter.  I would think the power costs are a lot less than what it costs to repair all the damage.. or the price reductions due to the damage.

I believe listing contracts here require that all utilities be left on, but that doesn't prevent the banks from turning the utilities off.

That sounds like a mess. Fortunately, we don't have too many basements here. In fact, I've never seen one. People do turn their pool filtering equipment off and let the pool revert to a Louisiana swamp. Not good for adding value to a home.

I think you handled that great. I would pull my sign and avoid the delayed headaches. If the seller is that short sighted now, what other horrors await after you get a contract and approach closing - better to get clear of the contamination before you get sucked in too deep.  You may not get that listing again, but you've got your integrity and even if that seller hates you, he'll respect you.