Chattels and Fixture Repair Problem
Here’s a small problem, but it seemed to get significantly worse as time went by. The buyer sees a house which is unoccupied. It’s being staged by a home staging company. Inquiry is made about the drapes, curtains and window coverings. They are apparently owned by the home staging company which wants a small fortune for them. So, OK, left them take their window treatments.
They take down the drapes, the rods, and remove the plastic wall plugs inserted into the drywall.
The owner comes along and repairs the spots and paints over the area with a 6 inch roller running about 10 inches in height. Each plug would have been smaller than the width of a pencil. Now, throughout the entire house on both sides of every window is a 60 inch patch.
What’s the problem with the patch? It’s the same colour, but there was only one coat of paint throughout the entire house. All of these patches are really quite noticeable. Now, the entire house needs a second coat of paint. No problem, a painter will be pleased to do the job for $3,000.00.
The window treatments were chattels. The screws and plugs used to affix them were also chattels. They don’t become fixtures just because they were buried into the drywall. The seller’s obligation was to repair the damage caused by reason of the removal of the chattels.
He was well-intentioned but really just magnified what would have been a very small problem. The one coat of paint would have been fine, that’s what the buyer saw when he bought the house. I know it seems like a small problem, just a few plugs for window treatments, but now we have a $3,000.00 painting problem.
And, yes the buyer will repaint a few prime areas now, but essentially, this was a complete non-issue until the attempted “repair”.
Comments(0)