All Forum Posts by: Dale Porter

Thank you for your input! We decided to move on (unless the seller counters with some amazing offer). The house could also need a new roof in the first 5 years (with a couple of other "minor" issues) and has not grown in value that much over time (2-3% annually). Our concern is that we could be looking at a loss over the next 5 or 7 years...... that doesn't seem ideal b/c we would like to move eventually and might not be ready to invest that much time into this particular location. 

Thank you for your input!  The seller decided not to repair the roof damage besides the boots. With some other potential issues and low growth in the area, we have decided to search for a different property. Our concern is that the increase in home value (just over 2% annually for the past ten years) will not be enough to offset the potential maintenance costs, closing costs, and eventual realtor fees -- we could be in the hole for the first five (or maybe even ten) years. Perhaps, I am over-thinking this :)  Cheers! 

This will be our primary residence. We are first time home buyers. The house is in very good condition overall.

 It's a 15 y/o house with architectural shingles. The inspector noted repair/replace hail damage to the shingles and some cracked boots on the plumbing vents. Sellers had estimates and all said the roof has 5-10 yrs left. Sellers offered to replace boots and replace the damaged shingles.  We are getting the place a tad below appraised value (<1%) and about half of our closing costs paid by the seller.   

Is it better to replace some shingles or will that make the roof look (or perform) wonky? 

Is it a bad idea to buy a house knowing it has "hail damage" and 5-10 years left on the roof? (we like the house and location)

We are first time buyers. We put in an offer on house after our agent showed us disclosures and didn't highlight any areas of concern. We attended the inspection and our agent didn't . Inspector told us HVAC needed replacing due to age, but it's working fine. We asked for compensation or replacement from the seller, seller refused - which makes sense. 

We later realized that the age was disclosed up front and that inspectors often highlight HVAC age on the report.  Is this common knowledge to real estate agents? Then we could have asked for closing costs paid by the seller, lower price, or something else up front to ease our worried minds.

After talking to other folks we realized that we had asked for "unreasonable" repairs. 

Now we are in a pickle and feel like it's not fair to the sellers if we back out for this reason. So, is this something that we should have been educated about by our agent at the time of putting in an offer? Is it our fault for not researching the average lifespan of these systems? Are we bad buyers if we back out?