DIYbanter - View Single Post - Who's responsible for hail damage occurring between inspection and closing?

Jonathan Kamens

(D. Gerasimatos) writes:
Imagine instead that the engine blew on its own - the seller did nothing
at all. You have to prove that the seller knew about the damage.

Can you cite any written law, common law or court precedent to
support this assertion? Can you prove that your understanding
of the law is correct everywhere, which would be necessary for
your argument to hold any weight in this discussion, given
that we don't know the jurisdiction in which the OP's house is
located?

It is just as logical to assert that the seller of an item
contracts to deliver the item in the condition it was in when
the buyer agreed to buy it. Several of the P&S agreements I
posted for residential home sales state this explicitly.

If, indeed, that is the principle which prevails in a
particular jurisdiction for a particular sale, then if the
item's condition is significantly damaged for whatever reason
before it is delivered to the buyer, then it doesn't matter
whether the seller knew about the damage. The relevant fact
is not whether the seller knew about the damage but rather
whether the buyer can prove that it happened before the
delivery of the item to the buyer.

In the case of something like cars or other items that are
less expensive and whose sales are less complicated than
houses, the outcome of such a dispute would probably be the
nullification of the sale and the requirement for the seller
to take the item back and refund the buyer's money. In the
case of a very expensive, complicated sale like a house, it
would be more likely that the seller would reimburse the
buyer for the cost of repairing the damage.

The crux of this argument is whether "as-is" kicks in when the
buyer agrees to purchase or when the property changes hands.
The answer to this question depends on the jurisdiction and/or
the terms of the agreement between the buyer and seller. For
people in this newsgroup to continue to assert that one answer
is right and the other wrong, when they have no idea where the
house in question is located or what the terms of the P&S
agreement were, is simply ridiculous.

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