Yes I figured it was too late. Live and learn. I should have pursued it back then.
In response to some questions.
We live in Indiana.
We signed the Purchase Agreement in August '01. In September we walked by the backyard which had access via an alley. To our surprise it was all torn up. We called the Realtor and asked what was going on. She told us she meant to call us, there were water problems that were being fixed, don't worry.
We closed in October '01. We directly went to the house after closing. We had had rain in Indy. There was four inches of water standing in our basement. We called the Realtor and she basically said "tough s***, you own it now" (As I mentioned in my previous post, she represented the seller, later to find out in several sales).
We found the receipts for the work done with the back yard and the same guy who "fixed it" came out. He told us that he told them the problem and what needed to be done. He opted not to do what this guy told him he needed to do. We asked at the time if he would be willing to testify in court to this fact and he said "no!"
We asked a lawyer what to do and I think we got bad advice. They told us we wouldn't have a leg to stand on since we paid $238,000 for the house, a $12,000 plumbing/sewer problem was a pittance. They didn't know we stretched to buy the house. So anyway we dropped it. We took out loans to fix the pipes leading from our house, and thought the problem was fixed.
The following year we had another rain. Our basement flooded via water coming up through the foundation and happened to pool in a particular place in which we noticed the basement floor paint was chipped and gone. My husband rented some machinery, dug up our yard, front and back. He led all the downspouts at least 20 feet away from the house via pvc pipes and dug several dry pits where the pipes led to for drainage. We also made 2 dry creek beds that led the water away from the house.
We still were flooding in subsequent years. We added one sump pump several years ago as well as a flood gate, and this year we added a second sump pump.
After we added the second sump pump this year, we decided to rip out the wood paneling in the basement down to the cement block. We also ripped out the bathroom that we had never used, basically getting all the wood out of the basement. Much of it was rotten. There is an area near the staircase in the basement which has not flooded since 2001. I think it has not flooded due to the work we had done those first years, the flooded has basically stayed on the other side of our basement. So when my husband was taking out the wood, the staircase was exposed. The bottom step on the staircase was totally rotten. We called our contractor friend and he said although it needed to be replaced, it was very old and continual damage from a long time ago.
Because of the water damage in the basement, the linoleum started pealing, thus finding the asbestos.
Termites:
We were told by the Realtor that there had been termites in the house, but the termites were gone and the damage was fixed. We have continued with the termite inspections since we bought. My husband is renovating one of our bathrooms and when he went to take the tile off the shower, the wall fell down due to termite damage in the studs. We also had a door replaced from the garage and the contractor showed us immense damage due to termites. Within the first year after we bought the house we were walking around the neighborhood and one of the neighbors asked were we lived. Their response was "OH! you bought the house that was overrun with termites!" And that is not exactly what we had been told.
Flipping:
The previous owner did live in this house. Our neighbors, who BTW have not done any grading or changing landscape, told us he lived in the house about 3+ years. So my thought is that he was well aware of the water issues. In fact, we did find some Sherlock Paint downstairs which is paint to help prevent water from coming through the walls.
So there is evidence that he knew about these issues. I was just stupid enough not to follow it up years ago.
