Sneaky, Just Not Sneaky Enough

Sneaky, just not sneaky enough.

Some sellers who move out of the house and have it painted and nice leave the place looking nice. 

And some sellers do things to try to hide problems that are being pushed off onto someone else.  When I see sneaky in one spot, I suspect sneaky elsewhere.

In the corner of the main level, under the master bathroom shower, I saw a painted area about 6'x4'.  The paint matched, just not close enough.  You can see it for the most part in the photo beside.

So I ran the water in the bathroom for a while. I like to run warm water so any thermal image has a more pronounced signature.

A little stain developed!  And it grew.  And the moisture meter measured 100%.

This was not unexpected.  I had seen a couple of other things that piqued my attention.   Plus the information from the seller that they "will not fix anything" found during a home inspection.

Looking at the area with Mighty Mo the moisture becomes visible.

That little brown spot on the left side of the photo above, which was growing, can be seen in the image on the right as the darker blue spot.

And the moisture fanned out from there.

We have a leak coming from the master bathroom shower above!

This is something I see often, unfortunately.

People want to knowingly sell a problem so someone else, priming and painting carefully so the problem is not so visible.

My recommendation:  recently painted areas, or particularly painted areas, are usually done for reasons.  It might take a home inspector to figure out what the reason might be, and things go from there.  And a home inspector with the ability to show a problem not so visible to the naked eye is an even more important part of the buying decision. 

 

 

Jay Markanich Real Estate Inspections, LLC  

Based in Bristow, serving all of Northern Virginia.

Office (703) 330-6388   Cell (703) 585-7560

www.jaymarinspect.com