On Jan 27, 12:20*am, "Mac" wrote:
Hello everyone,
My wife and I bought our first house. *A bit of a long story but suffice it
to say that we had very little time to make our decision and were burnt out
when we finally did.
We got the boot from our seven year rental house because the landlords
wanted to move back in. *We used up 40 of our sixty days on a house that
didn't pass inspection (and the sellers rejected the inspection). *When we
were finally released from the first house we had about a week to choose a
place (we could afford), make the offer, negotiate, close, and move. *We
knew we should rent and try to slow things down but couldn't find anything
that would take our four cats.
So, during the final walk through we noticed a couple of cracks in the block
foundation. *Our realtor told us we could simply fill the cracks with a
specially formulated epoxy (and gun) and told me where to buy it.
After the closing, we went straight to the place she told up to go and they
looked at me kind of sad like and said, "she doesn't know what she's talking
about, you can't use epoxy for block walls. *I felt the dark clouds forming
over my head at that moment. *The epoxy supplier gave us a name of a
contractor and he came to the house. *He told us not to move in (which was
to happen the very next day), and that we got hosed. *Every wall (that we
can see) has several cracks in it (initially hidden by boxes shoved into
closets that were built over the cracked walls). *In hind site, we should
have walked away from the place after the final walkthrough but we were lead
to believe that the walkthrough was just a formality and that we were pretty
much locked in to the purchase at that point.
Okay, so the seller's disclosure form claims there are no cracks in the
basement walls, that there are no leakage problems (which there are), and no
material or plumbing defects that would cause leaking water (I had to
completely regrout the tile shower stall to make it usable.
We found the home buying process to be very dishonest and ugly. *I thought I
did my homework (my wife said I was obsessed with not getting screwed, which
I was) but here we are.
These folks made a huge profit (enough to retire on) from us and we're
paycheck to paycheck people stuck with a house we would have to lie about to
resell (which we won't do).
So, short of spending 20-30 grand to have the foundation fixed, what can we
do? *We don't have (and never will have) that kind of money.
Some folks have told me that many buyers don't really care about cracks in
foundation walls (in a house this age, built in the early sixties), but I
find this hard to believe.
After all we've been through, we would like to sell the place for the price
of the loan and get another rental (at least for a while). *I am an educator
and spend my days trying to teach honesty and integrity and this whole
experience affected me deeply. *It's not a bad place (other than the
problems described), it's in a good neighborhood, close to a church, and
pretty quiet with very nice neighbors. *But still, I want out in a year or
so.
Are there any consumer protection agencies for this sort of thing? *There
are plenty of books out there on how to screw people over but nothing for
the person that gets screwed.
Any advice? *Should we just chisel out the cracks (steps, horizontal, and
vertical) and fill them with mortar as best we can? *I'm a handy guy but
know next to nothing about masonry.
Sorry for the long post and thanks for listening.

S you ripped out closets on every wall, why, to find cracks you did
not know were there, only a troll does that. Epoxy is used by pros,
mortar mix is also used, the cracks may have occured within the first
year, you dont know. Document it, fix it and move on maybe it will be
fine.