The buyers agent told me the client was a 'worrywart" but that's not unusual. After all, a home is the largest purchase most people make and that's one reason to have a buyers agent. Let the agent take care of details so the client doesn't have to worry. 

I have found  the longer it takes to negotiate a contract the less chance there is of working things out. This one took over two weeks. I guess with that and the buyers agents warning I should have expected trouble.

The inspections went fine but a couple of days later water and "some nasty looking black stuff" was discovered in the crawl space under some plastic containers.

The BA said it had rained since the inspection and that's why the inspector didn't notice it. She thought she should get a couple of quotes from waterproofers to find the extent of and cost to correct the problem.

I was shocked when she sent me the two quotes, one for $3000 and one for just under that amount. One quote called for a sump pump. The waterproofers said that they could tell that it was a long standing problem because of the black on the block and the change in consistency of the soil.

Now, I've been in the real estate business in Chapel Hill  for a long time including 12 years as a home builder. Only once did a crawl space require a sump pump and that was a situation with a spring under the house.

I called the seller and asked if he had ever noticed standing water under the house. He said no, The area in question was were he kept the containers of oil for the turkey fryer and he had always just walked around that area.

The buyer was sure that there was an underground river under the house and wanted to back out of the contract.

My contractor son- in- law took a look and realized that it wasn't water at all and that black stuff was turkey frying oil that had leaked from the containers. He said he could remove the oil and fill the low spot for $100. Much better than the $3000 bids the BA gave us. 

The buyer didn't believe it wasn't water. How could two waterproofers be wrong? (I think they were just hungry, we've had a drought) so we hired an engineer to inspect the crawl space and write a report. He found no sign of water intrusion and a properly graded crawl space.

The buyers still wanted out, forfeited their earnest money and terminated the contract. Because of cooking oil they were sure was water!!!

We put the house back on the market and after about 10 days the BA agent called me and said I know this is strange but the buyers thought things over want back in the contract. The sellers decided to wait for a couple of second showings and as it turned out we had two very good new offers on the home and it sold for over the asking price.

I can't help but wonder what those nervous buyers will do if they buy a house with a real and not imaginary problem.