Seller Agent Didn't Disclose Active Termites and Changed Inaccurate Listing After Accepting Our Offer

We’ve been thinking about relocating out of town then found a quirky 100-year-old house we really liked that’d give us a lot of equity. The price was a little higher than we thought was right, so we offered $18,000 under (which seems like a lot, but we were pretty sure it was fair) and wound up settling on $6,000 under. It still seems pretty high for the property and area, but we really vibed with the house and didn’t want to lose it.

Counter offer was accepted contingent on the sale of our current house, which we got pretty easily. Set up an inspection and found a few problems. The main ones being active termites in a small section of the house, old wiring that includes cloth wire and a weird combination of multiple shut-off switches in the basement, galvanized pipes, old floors and foundation that’ll need to be taken up and jacked, a gas stove top with only two working eyes, and an HVAC from the mid-90s.

We were fully planning on doing a total rewire and knew about the issues with the floor. We already have quotes from foundation companies and knew it’d be a project house just like our first one. But here’s a few things confounding us:

The termite inspector we hired mentioned he’d already been out to the property a few months back, found activity, and as a result, the previous sale fell through. The house was taken off the market as ‘By Owner’ and then relisted a little while later with an agent. It seems like nothing has been done to try to fix the issue, no treatment or anything. And the price actually went up after returning to market.

The original listing is just flat-out wrong. I don’t expect them to want to divulge termites, but it sells the house as having all new wiring and HVAC, which it doesn’t. It does have a new electric meter, but that doesn’t remove the fire risk from the old wiring or the chance that the 30-year-old HVAC can go out any day.

The listing was changed between our offer being accepted and the inspection to remove mentions of wiring and HVAC. When we went back to the listing to figure out the discrepancies between the house and the listing, we noticed it was changed a couple of days ago. Our buying agent still had the printed version to confirm the difference.

This is starting to feel sketchy and it’s frustrating because we quickly got our house market-ready, found a buyer, and got this far in the process to feel like we’re kind of getting scammed. I guess I’m just kind of wondering how unusual this is and if there’s anything we can do to at least leverage all of this towards a better price or to have some kind of recourse. Yeah, we still really like the house, but we can’t just knowingly allow ourselves to get taken advantage of.

Don’t buy.

Nyx said:
Don’t buy.

We’re leaning that way. We still love the place, but this is just making it really hard to justify moving forward.

That would be too many red flags for me.

You haven’t mentioned what state you’re in. Roughly half the states are disclosure states with mandatory disclosures. The other half are Caveat Emptor, buyer beware states, and require no disclosure at all.

Depending on the state, sellers don’t see buyers’ inspections. When I sold my previous house, I didn’t want to know anything about the inspection from my buyer because if they backed out, I’d have to relist and disclose everything they found. With that said, they may be shady and have known. You could pull up discrepancies and negotiate to get your earnest money back and be let out. Otherwise, you probably need a lawyer, and it would still possibly be difficult and costly to prove their knowledge.

Lastly, this is why you don’t waive contingencies.

The SELLER didn’t disclose termites, HVAC, or anything else. Agents don’t decide what sellers disclose and they legally can’t discover problems with a house. If the seller chose to hide information from their agent, it’s not the agent’s fault.

@Kingsley
Don’t buy and report the agent to the real estate board. Demand or sue the agent and seller for all costs for failing to disclose a known issue.

Asa said:
@Kingsley
Don’t buy and report the agent to the real estate board. Demand or sue the agent and seller for all costs for failing to disclose a known issue.

Nonsense. Sellers choose what to disclose, not agents. SMH.

@Kingsley
This guy sounds like an agent. Just report the agent and let the pieces fall as they will. If the agent didn’t do anything wrong, they’ll be fine.

Agent - It is not the agent’s responsibility to disclose; it is on the seller(s). The MLS changes are trackable, so that this has been changed is… odd. You know what you are buying, so you can attempt to negotiate a lower price. But that the seller was FSBO, had a sale fail, knew they had a problem, didn’t fix or disclose it, raised the sales price (which I assume is to compensate their agent), and claimed they had a new HVAC?

This person is not willing to reduce the price from what was uncovered on inspections. It should be, but you know what you are dealing with here.

It’s what is in the seller’s disclosure that matters. Use your inspection time and counter offer or don’t buy.

If they did know there were issues and they were hiding them, who is to say what else they are hiding. Maybe it’s time to consider walking away—once you get that key, you’re stuck with that house.