We are purchasing a house that we negotiated roof work to be done prior to closing. Since the work is repairs, and most compaines won’t garuntee repairs, the seller said he would give us a 2 year warranty.
Can we just get something in writting from him, and both parties sign? Would this be sufficient?
Your agreement would need to satisfy the merger doctrine otherwise you couldn’t enforce the warranty. It won’t be a problem, but you will need an attorney who is familiar with the concept. For this reason and some others, I prefer a concession from the seller.
You could ask that the seller simply buy a two year home warranty, to be purchased from funds at the close of escrow. You could also just negotiate a lower purchase price.
We did get a concession from the seller of 1200, half of what the estimate was. The problem is the deal is good as it is. And the sellers are not willing to give in anymore. The seller is also willing to give us a 2 year warranty if we go with the 2400 repair who does alot of work for the owner apparently.
Otherwise we just get the 1200 concession. I liked the idea of trying to get a warranty from the seller.
Most of the roofers I have had come out want to replace the entire roofeven though the shingles are 2yr old. whoever put the roof on didnt install new flashing around the chimneys so there is deck rotting there. Roof quotes we have gotten have ranged from 12000 to 25000 for replacement.
Most full time handymen I talk to , the unlicensed types that I do work with that do odd jobs say just to replace whats messed up since the shingles are new, and the majority of the roof is good.
In a bind on what to do, the house will be owner occupied by my fiance, so I want to get it done, but also get it done within budget since there will be about 34k worth of other work to be done as well.
From your description of the problem, I would remove the shingles around the chimney, replace the area of decking that is rotted, install correct flashing, and re-shingle the repaired area.
However, I would NOT use the same guy who installed the roof incorrectly in the first place. He is incompetant.
If there was no flashing around the chimney, there may very well be other problems with flashing, drip edge, ice water barrier, or even bad decking that was shingled over and not repaired.