Don’t ignore house check

WASHINGTON – Vickie Lewis was raised on a farm in Oregon, so she was entranced when she visited a small yellow house for sale in rural Damascus, Md., in late April.

It was dilapidated and needed a coat of paint, she thought, but it was situated on a 6 1/2-acre lot with a beautiful sloping hill, overlooking a stream and a grove of trees. Lewis knew the house, built in the mid-1960s, would likely sell quickly in the spring’s feverish real estate market. She spent several hours that sunny afternoon strolling the property.

The real estate agent told her that the sellers would not accept an offer requiring a home inspection, but Lewis went ahead with the $437,750 purchase anyway. She was worried that she would lose the house otherwise, she recalled.

“I didn’t buy it with my head, I bought it from my heart,” Lewis said recently. The sale closed in July.

This week she had her first chance to get a full analysis from a home inspector, Arthur Lazerow, president of Alban Home Inspection Service in Frederick, Md. As she walked the property with Lazerow, who pointed to one problem after another, Lewis found out the cost of deferring the inspection until after the sale.

Back in April, Lewis wasn’t alone in going forward with a home purchase without first securing a home inspection. By some estimates from real estate agents and inspectors, more than half of buyers dropped the home-inspection contingency from their purchase contracts – even though many in the industry consider it an essential protection for buyers. A home-inspection contingency allows a buyer to walk away from the sales contract if the inspection uncovers major defects that the seller won’t fix.

Buyers waived the contingency because otherwise they would lose bidding wars: Many sellers rejected such offers outright, viewing them as bothersome and potentially expensive.

In Lewis’ case, she learned soon after the deal closed that the house has a wet basement, a serious mildew problem and contaminated well water. She claims that she got sick from the water and developed blurred vision and chronic sinus problems and headaches, probably from exposure to mold.

Lewis, 46, a small-business consultant and real estate investor who worked as a freelance photographer for high school sports events for The Washington Post in the 1980s, had already decided the property had substantial problems. Eager to get a second opinion, she agreed to permit The Washington Post to set up an inspection. Lazerow, a 12-year industry veteran who serves on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the American Society of Home Inspectors, was asked to inspect the house. He was told little about the property and arrived on site without background preparation.

He quickly confirmed Lewis’ worst suspicions. He showed her how he would have detected what appeared to him to be a substantial mold problem, and that he would have advised her to have a specialist check the property. He would have recommended a well inspection. He also reported that the kitchen floor is spongy and appears to have a water-infiltration problem; that the electrical system is flawed; that the chimney is out of plumb and “at risk of collapse”; that the house has no insulation; that the interior windows are not installed properly, and the roof leaks.

He watched as brownish water gushed from the kitchen tap. “She’s got Coke coming out of her water spigots,” he said with a faint attempt at humor.

The problems he found were serious, he told Lewis, adding that making adequate repairs would likely cost $40,000 or more. “It might be a tear-down,” he told her.

Lewis listened to the lengthy litany of defects. “It’s very hard; it’s heartbreaking,” she said.

She had bought and sold houses in the past. She had previously gotten homes inspected but had never found a major problem. She is not sure what she will do next. She has considered making a complaint to the Maryland Real Estate Commission.

Lewis now lives in a rental house she owns, losing the rent she needed to support the mortgage on it, while she gathers estimates on how much it would cost to repair the other house. Building a new house on the site might cost $175,000 or more.

For some home inspectors, such as Lazerow, the past two years have been difficult, although the steady decline in business has stopped now because buyers are beginning to ask for inspections again.