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Any Recourse for Buyers in Sonoma?

I have friends who bought a house that just closed last week. It was an "as is" sale that was a foreclosure. This week when they ripped up the carpet to replace it, they found that the subfloors were mostly ruined by urine saturation and need to be replaced. Do they have any recourse or do they just have to deal with it?

Posted by Jane Hansen on 08/15/2007 12:01 AM

Comments (4)

sonoma, real estate, sonoma realtors, sonoma real estate

4 Comments on Any Recourse for Buyers in Sonoma?

AUG

2007

Jane,

I was just in Sonoma over the weekend and had a great time. Do the disclosures say anything about the subfloor damage? Most foreclosures do not disclose anything as they have never occupied the property so there is no recourse if that is the case. Did the buyers have a home inspection done? Did it divulge anything in regards to the subfloors? If an inspector blatently missed it and should have caught it, there may be some recourse there. If it was "hidden" and there was no way an inspector could have caught it, then yes, my opinion is that the buyers just have to deal with it.

Often the floors can just be sealed with Kilz and that will take care of it. It would be worth a try before ripping up subfloors!

I assume by foreclosure you meant the seller was a lender. Generally they have some kind of "buyer beware" type addendum that has some language about no disclosure, acquired in a judicial proceeding, never lived there, and so on and so on. The buyers would have to have signed that document.

If it was a pre-foreclosure short sale, there should have been a disclosure from the seller (prior owner). But, if that was the case, it might be hard to collect anything since they had to short sale to get out of the house.

Jane, I think they just have to deal with it. If it's a lender sale then I'm sure you had the pages and pages of "as is" disclosures. Also, there is the issue of carpeting covering the floors. An inspector (if they had one) can't see under the floors, neither could the sellers nor your buyers. (The odor however should have alerted everyone to the possibility that there could be a problem with the subflooring!) If the subfloors aren't warpred they can correct the odor problem with sealing them (Kilz is my preferred primer/sealer, but I've heard that any primer will work just fine.)

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