My second rental is a 1970 split foyer that I closed on dec 15. The seller was an investor as well. I did light rehab i.e. new basement carpet, new paint, new kitchen linoleum. Signed new tenant. All is well until she calls. Water on floor in lower level bathroom. Now the bathroom is partially finished, outer basement wall covered with piece of melamine. Looks like it was just jerry rigged in there. Handyman went over and found a vertical crack in basement wall (no bulging) and some slight water leakage. Not a whole lot of water in the ground pretty mild winter. Now the seller didn’t disclose any leakage and to me it looks like he slapped up a piece of melamine to hide a large leaking crack. Do I sue? Can I win? How to go about it?
You have a good case. Not only lack of full disclosure but even a cover up. You can sue in small claims court for $5K or less. You may even get on TV with judge Judy or Joe or Alex.
To fix the problem you will need a back-hoe and some tar and water proofing membrane. Probably better to hire a professional contractor.
To start the lawsuit you will need to send a certified letter to the seller giving them notice of the problem and 10 days to cure or pay damages. If they refuse, then go to the JP office nearest you and file the lawsuit. It costs less than $100 to get a court date set.
What if the wall is buldging ?but the rest of the walls are fine and the house has not dropped and the rest of the house is in great shape?what is the remedy and or cost to repair say 30 feet of buldging wall?
Well I was thinking of getting a goffer with a shovel and an elephant that had nothing better to do than hold up a house for a day and a reaging bull to knock the wall down and a kazillion termites full of concrete to build a new one ;DBut ya know I think you might be on to something with your idea. :DAnother thought I had was to fill the crack with concrete and paint it and if someone asked aboutl the bulge I would simply let them know that that is how we tell if the house is male or female.
You will need beams and jacks to hold up the house while tearing out all or most of the wall. A back-hoe will also be needed to dig out in the front of the wall. After repouring or restacking the wall you will want to waterproof it. The reason for the bulging is water pushing against it. I would suggest a french drain be put back against the new wall instead of just dirt. I guess the cost to be $12 to $15K
I think you are going a bit over overboard. Most foundation have a few cracks in them; its almost unavoidable. The question is how serious it; only a qualified professional could judge that.
However, I have fixed a few drainage issues in my time in this area. There are two potential sources of water. One is the water coming in “surface water” or ground water. In other words is water draining up agianst the house?. If not then its a ground water problem. In that case the sitution is the following. You need to creat a situaton where it is more favorable for the water to go down vs thru the crack in the wall. Understand that water travels along the path of least resistance. Given the age, it is likely that the fill around the foundation has got compacted and its drainage ability is clogged up. I would dig out the foundation in that area put heavy blackplastic against the foundation, perhasp put cement in the crack if its really big and back fill with a nice mixture of gravel and sand and dirt. There is a 90% chance that will solve the problem.
I did this on a property lasy year that had routinely several inches of standing water in the basement. A few weeks after the work (about 8 hrs of digging out about 30’ of foundation down to 4-5ft deep), we had 14" of rain in 3 days…zero water in the basement. Total cost=$25 for black plastic and 8 hrs of shoevl and pick-ax work.
As for sueing; that cost money and time plus there is no guarentee you will win and/or get money out of it (even if you do “win”).