How should I deal with shady/stupid house sellers?

Post date: 2021-04-09 01:45:23

I am moving to Texas and the housing market is insane. It's a complete seller's market with about 24 hours from listing to bids due. But after finding the "perfect" house the buying process isn't going so perfectly. How should I proceed?

Our bid for the house was accepted. During the bidding process we were told "the sellers only care about the offer that nets they the most cash". They also are super anxious to close, wanting to close less than 3 weeks from our bid.

So we put down the Option fee and earnest money, about $8000. Not a small sum in my mind. We then had 6 days to rescind and get that 8k back (the "option" period)

But I've worked in the mortgage industry and bought two houses before. I think I know the routine:

1) get a home inspection
2) seller fixes major issues
3) we buy the house.

Well the home inspection found a lot of "little" things, such as

Exposed wiring at the electrical box
The gas fireplace doesn't work
Dry rot in one area
Water damage to 3 doors in an upstairs bathroom (but no water damage to the floor or walls)
Doors don't latch properly
Some bricks have hairline cracks. Some bricks on a window sill are loose

The worst finding was there was a crack in the foundation. It was small but worrying. The inspector recommended we have an engineer come out to look at the foundation.

The sellers seemed put out that we wanted the engineer (at our expense). Finally one came out. He said the foundation is perfectly fine. He didn't even see the crack but he did level tests etc. said it was a good house. BUT...

He found water by one of the tubs. He recommended we get a plumber to do a complete plumbing inspection given the water damage to the doors.

Our realtor and the sellers' realtor both agreed to extend the option period until after the plumbing inspection. This is normal. But the sellers dug in and said "no way" to extending the option period. They were upset we are doing the plumbing inspection at all.

We asked outright how the doors got water damage. The sellers claimed they "never noticed" the water damage to the doors. I think they are lying as it's 3 doors with big bubbles at the bottom 25%. You can't not notice this......

So we have a bad feeling about this...but we LOVE the house, the neighborhood, etc.

But given the sellers' attitude I expect they will refuse to pay for any of the repairs listed by the home inspector. I'm willing to take some of the repairs on myself, like caulking the kitchen backsplash. Simple things. But major plumbing issues, problems with a gas fireplace, dry rot in the wood...these COULD be simple fixes, or they could become a money pit as the workers find more problems.

I don't feel by asking the sellers to fix these things that we are being "demon customers ". And I doubt any other buyer wouldn't ask for the same.

But, again, they are only focused on cash in pocket. Any repairs will cost them some of that cash.

The option expires TODAY. The plumbing inspection is next week. (We DO have an addendum that if the plumbing inside finds problems we can back out and get our $8k back).

I'm wondering, assuming the sellers refuse to do a single home repair before sale, how to proceed.

My thinking is they need to agree to extend our option or agree to the fixes TODAY, or give us our $8k back and we walk..... but this is the only house we've found in months that fits our needs. And there's other buyers waiting in the wings, so I feel our threat to not buy is a hollow one.

So we are stymied. How should we proceed to get the house but not catch ourselves in a money out with thousands and thousands in repair bills?

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