Home Improvement Contractor - Licensed Contractors
I need help with recourse due to bad plumbing in Jacksonville Florida?
Purchased a rehab house in Jacksonville Florida. Plumbing to sewer was bad. Pipe is dislodged, sewer empties into sand. All of the plumbing to the house built in 1914, was re-plumbed. The problem lays on my side of the sidewalk, not city"s responsibility. Plumber that pulled permit is out of business. He was hired by a general contractor that is still in business. Do I have any recourse, before I pay a plumber a small fortune to fix it?
Public Comments
- Sure sounds like it is your problem. The house was built in 1914. Nothing lasts forever.
- In most states, generally when you buy a house, the owner must disclose the problems that he could or should normally be aware of. Therefore, if you bought it from the owner who lived there, a disclosure requirement may be able to help you if you can prove that the person withheld the information from you and thus incorrectly marketed his home. Unfortunately, if you bought it from a bank after foreclosure or at a foreclosure auction, then the property you purchased is bought as-is, where-is every time. The bank, not having lived in the property, has no obligation to disclose problems that it can easily defend as having no knowledge of. When I purchase property that I can not do a complete inspection on, then I usually wind up having to add several thousand dollars of margin to protect from the unknowns. With that old a house, I probably would not have been interested without a complete top to bottom inspection, otherwise the cost of the potential unknowns begin to exceed the potential return. Unfortunately, the lure of the up-side on such a home can be very great IF it doesn't have serious problems, but the opposite is true as well. That can tend to suck some people in as they think they are getting a great deal and haven't accurately assessed the total cost to repair. Good Luck
