We need a real estate lawyer

[Kali Pagan-Willms]

Hi all. I'm new here so I hope I'm doing this right. We're looking for a lawyer. My husband and I recently bought a house and moved us and our two young boys in. We had the house inspected and everything. Two nights ago we found black mold under two of our bedroom carpets. I called the inspector back to the house and he came out right away (at night) to check. He claimed there was no mold when he inspected and that the problem must've been recently due to flooding caused by us not putting in a drainage system. Last night we had a contractor come in, assess the damage and then work on cleaning it all up, drying it out and spraying. Now we have dehumidifiers and fans going in the bedrooms to dry it all up. Not only did the contractor have to take out the carpets, padding and 2 feet of drywall in both rooms, he also found colonies of ants in the walls. We're looking at structural damage on that side of the house which will cost yours of $6,000. That's not including what we've already put into the house to put in the drainage system and floor in the living room. We've taken pictures of the process from start to where it is now and the contractor is going to type up a report. According to him, there's no way this much mold and damage happened in just two weeks. He said this was years of water damage and neglect. Plus the ants were everywhere. We did tell him we've noticed a lot of ants but thought it was normal since we AND our children were only sleeping in one of the bedrooms since we moved in. The two colonies were in the wall of the other room, what was going to be our children's room. I contacted our realtor for the disclosure agreement which we never got and she said she's not sure if the sellers were required to give us one since they were renting out the property to tenants. To top it all off the sellers agreed, in writing, to have a professional look at the electric and circuit breakers and baseboards in every room and fix/replace anything that needed repairs and provide a report stating it was all done and cleared. We never received that report and according to the realtor, she hasn't either although we do have it in a signed statement that it would be done. According to our contractor the baseboards are garbage and when we looked at them, they weren't connected and wires we're sticking out of it. Making matters worse, because of the fans and dehumidifiers running to dry everything up, the power in the house shuts off every time we turn on an appliance or certain lights. Both of my children and I have asthma and I've of my little guys is autistic with an anxiety disorder. This is a lot of stress for grown ups, he's stressing big time. As of three days ago we've all been sleeping in our living room. What furniture and possessions we could for into the way in kitchen, we did and everything else we had to throw away due to mold damage. We've decided to contact a lawyer and sue both our realtor, the inspector she recommended, the sellers (for not disclosing any of this health hazardous mess) and their realtor. We're hoping to find a pro-bono lawyer asap. We have documentation from the contractor, inspector and realtors as well as pictures of everything. Thank you for any help you can offer.