Who is responisble for my new house sinking?

[mijohnst]

What is the name of your state? New Mexico

Sorry, I also posted this in another thread, but this one looks more suitable.

My wife and I purchased a house about 15 months ago in our area but before we purchased the house we were concerned about the foundation because of some wavey looking tiles in one room. So before we made an offer on the house we paid a structural engineer to inspect the foundation, structure and roof. The report came back that all of these areas were in good condition, so we purchased the house. The engineer also told us the the wavey tiles were due to a poor tile job.

Within 5 months of moving in we noticed a huge crack in one of our rooms. It had not been disclosed in the disclosure even though it was there before we made the purchase. The crack is in the only room in the house with linoleum flooring (changed from tile to cover it up) and we noticed it after normal the wear and tear from walking over it when the floor finally tore. We called our insurance company (Allstate, who we hate now) out to look at it and without even taking a good look, they rejected our claim because it wasn't "sudden damage."

Thinking this was more of a cosmetic problem we decided to start saving money to have it fixed. Within 8 months after the insurance rejected us, we noticed large cracks in our drywall, broken tiles, doors and windows that will not close anymore and countertops moving away from the wall very rapidly. I mean most of this stuff is happening within the past 6 weeks!

We are so disgusted because we really felt like we covered all our bases and now this is happening to us. I guess my question is, who is responsible? The previous owner for not disclosing problems they may have known about, the engineering company for signing off on the house as having no problems, or the insurance company for taking our money but basically ignoring us. Do we need to hire a lawyer?

Thanks for your time! Any advice is good.

 

[seniorjudge]

What is the name of your state? New Mexico

Sorry, I also posted this in another thread, but this one looks more suitable.

My wife and I purchased a house about 15 months ago in our area but before we purchased the house we were concerned about the foundation because of some wavey looking tiles in one room. So before we made an offer on the house we paid a structural engineer to inspect the foundation, structure and roof. The report came back that all of these areas were in good condition, so we purchased the house. The engineer also told us the the wavey tiles were due to a poor tile job.

Within 5 months of moving in we noticed a huge crack in one of our rooms. It had not been disclosed in the disclosure even though it was there before we made the purchase. The crack is in the only room in the house with linoleum flooring (changed from tile to cover it up) and we noticed it after normal the wear and tear from walking over it when the floor finally tore. We called our insurance company (Allstate, who we hate now) out to look at it and without even taking a good look, they rejected our claim because it wasn't "sudden damage."

Thinking this was more of a cosmetic problem we decided to start saving money to have it fixed. Within 8 months after the insurance rejected us, we noticed large cracks in our drywall, broken tiles, doors and windows that will not close anymore and countertops moving away from the wall very rapidly. I mean most of this stuff is happening within the past 6 weeks!

We are so disgusted because we really felt like we covered all our bases and now this is happening to us. I guess my question is, who is responsible? The previous owner for not disclosing problems they may have known about, the engineering company for signing off on the house as having no problems, or the insurance company for taking our money but basically ignoring us. Do we need to hire a lawyer?

Thanks for your time! Any advice is good.

Hire a good real estate attorney yesterday.

 

[LindaP777]

What did the structural engineer who inspected the foundation say when you called him?
What exactly was disclosed from the seller?
I don't see how the insurance company is responsible. Please explain why you do.

 

[mijohnst]

Thanks for the responses LindaP777 and seniorjudge.

I'm assuming that what you're asking about what he said when I called him a year after he did his survey and all these problems started to increase rapidly. He came out and said, "Yes, your slab seems to be sinking." He said that he felt bad about it because he remembers how concerned we were at the time. He also made us turn off all the water in the house while we watched the water meter outside of the house for about 30 minutes. The gage did not move showing that it was not likely a water leak.

Today he came out and had me dig a hole near the footing of where the house is sinking and did a measurement somehow about how compact the dirt is under the slab. It turns out that it was fine and there was no moisture in the soil. This second visit he was much more coarse then before (since we’ve seen him twice) because you could tell he was very uncomfortable and he was not apologetic as he was before. He just wanted to get out of here. All he said was that we needed to hurry up and put piers under the house to stop the settling and that the problem was probably deep in the ground somewhere.

As far as what’s been disclosed from the seller, he marked on the disclosure that there was no foundation problems or major cracks even though he covered a major crack in the foundation with linoleum. He also didn’t disclose a major pipe burst in the driveway that happened 3 years ago. We found out from the community developer about that. Under the pluming section when asked if there were any major pluming issues in the past he has marked no.

I think you’re right about the insurance. I guess we’re just upset that we pay so much money to them and feel that they offered no help or support and also didn’t really inspect the problem. The adjuster looked around for 15 minutes and said we didn’t qualify for any sort of claim because the damage wasn’t “sudden” enough…

 

[John Se]

describe "huge" and "large"

relating to the cracking and the amount the house is sinking. also what type of soil are you on? Was your house built on footings dug into the native soil or built upon compacted fill?

 

[mijohnst]

I know that the soil under the house is compacted. We did a test that shows that it's compacted pretty well. I also received all my water readings for the past 15 months and there are not spikes in water usage, ruling out a water leak under the house.

As far as the cracks go, the one major crack in the foundation is about an inch or so across. Here are some pictures. Some are before we moved in and the rest are from after. Keep in mind that the crack in the foundation that you see was covered by linoleum before we moved in. The rest of the cracks and uneven door/window jams have happened in the past few months. Also notice all the re-patching in the drywall and stucco. These are things that I thought the structural engineer would point out as signs of a problem.

Removed pictures

 

[mijohnst]

Well, it's been a while since I've posted about this, so I thought I would update.

It turns out that my foundation isn't sinking...the footer is seperating from the slab. I can't even find anything about fixing this type of problem. A contractor today told me that slab jacking wouldn't help since it's not sinking.

We haven't taken any legal action in this case because I'm having nightmares about lossing this in court and then having to come up with the money anyway to fix it. Guess we're just screwed either way.