Been there, done that.

You're being penny wise and pound foolish.

You don't want a house with a lot problems and you can't force the seller do
to anything that they don't want to do, nor are you being forced to buy this
house.

Move on now while your only expense has been the inspection.


"Tony" wrote in message
...
I am buying a house here on Long Island. It is a cape with a full finished
basement. It is in a
good, average neighborhood and has a good school district. They asked
$399,000. I offered $350,000.
They said no. They had a few more open houses and didnt get what they
wanted so they finally agreed
on $368,000. The house was built in 1960 or so. Most of the rooms have
paneling from the 70's. The
basement and the 2nd floor have paint (maroon and tan, respectively) over
the paneling. Most rooms
have no moldings where the paneling meets the ceiling. In other words,
this house has many cosmetic
flaws but I am not concerned with that. A house in this area usually goes
for higher than this these
days so I am getting a decent deal.

I had an engineer come in and he found some things out. My main concerns
are that there is no ground
wire in the house, therefore, every room has a 2 prong outlet. No outlets
in any of the 3 bathrooms.
The roof will be gone in a year (there are two now so I am going to have
to go down to the
sheathing. There is 100 amp electric service, which is ok, even though
most houses have 200. There
is very low water pressure despite the fact that this house is 2 blocks
from the water tower. When
you run the kitchen sink and flush the first floor toilet, the sink water
goes below 50% of it's
original pressure. The house has all 1/2" pipe (no 3/4").

SInce I will be pretty strapped after buying this house, I am not going to
have the money to fix all
of the above problems. The engineer is figuring on $8000 or so to re-wire
the house with a ground
wire and installing 3 prong outlets. I do not want the house reduced by
any amount. I would rather
have the house in good order.

Also, the main bathroom needs a new shower body installed (tiles ripped
out, new shower, re-tile)
and there is a leak in the lead bend.

In the end, structurally, the house is great. But the electric and
plumbing need some work. The
seller has no legal obligation to upgrade the electric or the plumbing but
can I expect him to
address the pressure problem? He said he and his son are plumbers. Hmm. I
heard that the water
company will come down and do pressure test for free. My friend said that
a lot times, the water
meter gets clogged on both sides (in, out) and sometimes that causes
pressure problems.

Any ideas of what to do here? I do want the house but I based my house on
there being no problems
that need to be fixed right away. I can live with the cosmetic
deficiencies and the roof, but is it
too much to expect to have normal outlets in the house? I have many
computers and I will have to buy
a bunch of adapters and have no grounding.

Thanks for any suggestions. What would some of you do?

Tony