[IN] Bought a home with dangerous wiring
Long time, first time and all that. My wife and I purchased a home in Indiana from a flipper. During the flip, the seller installed all new electrical and did a ton of other stuff. It's no surprise that much of the work was done hastily and incorrectly, but there's one problem that seems so ridiculous that we'd like to pursue reimbursement for the repair.
We had a washer/dryer stackable combo delivered and installed, but the installers left saying the outlets behind them weren't live. Having had the house inspected and reinspected twice, we were surprised. We had an electrician come out, and he found that the washer plug just needed the GFI reset, but the dryer outlet was not live. He traced it from the panel in the basement and found that the 220V breaker was live and the wire coming out of that was live into a wall, but just inside the wall, it was severed. So we had a live wire in our wall for the few weeks we had the house and who knows how long before that, which is dangerous. The electrician left.
We emailed our agent who passed the information onto the seller's agent, and we emailed the home inspection company. We received no response, so we scheduled the repair. The electrician came back to find that they had a wire from a 110V breaker to the attic into a junction box where it was side-by-side with the wire coming up from the dryer outlet just below. The two wires were in the same junction box and capped, but not tied together, which is why we didn't even have 110V to the dryer outlet. The total cost of the repair was ~$850.
Since then, we emailed both the home inspection company and the seller directly several times. The seller is saying that we should have called before the repair (even though we sent an email that went to his agent) then he went silent again. The home inspection company said they won't even refund the cost of the inspection because there were people in and out of the house after the first inspection before we found the problem, so they're not sure the problem was there when they did the inspection. There was nothing done around the area of the severed wire, but it seems like an odd response because that's how inspections work.
Ideally, we'd like the cost of the inspection refunded because they didn't find such a glaring and dangerous problem, and we'd like the seller to pay the cost of the repair. Do we have a legal leg to stand on, or are we just relying on good will for these to be remedied?
TL;DR Bought a house with a dangerous live wire in the wall and paid to have the dryer outlet rewired. Do we have a legal leg to stand on?
Thanks in advance.
Posted Jun 19, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC
Home inspections are not intended to identify and diagnose problems requiring a specialist, such as wiring issues. They may tell you basic information or the inspectors opinion, but they are not a catch-all solution. You could have hired an electrician to inspect the wiring if you were concerned about it.
That being said, if the seller was aware of this problem and did not disclose, you may be able to sue the seller for the cost of the repair.
Thank you. That's kind of what I suspected. Does the seller himself have to be aware of the problem? I think it might have been one of his workers, but I think it was his company that is listed as the seller.
Yes, to hold him responsible he either needs to be aware, or it needs to be an issue he should have been aware of.