I am in the process of purchasing a townhouse, and completed a pre-contract inspection which, among other things, found an activitely leaking roof. The roof is slightly sloping "flat" roof with motified bitumen material. The roof has a non-insignificant leak at the seam around the washer/dryer vent which has caused probably over a square foot of paint to separate from the ceiling and hang down.... [more]
I am in the process of purchasing a townhouse, and completed a pre-contract inspection which, among other things, found an activitely leaking roof. The roof is slightly sloping "flat" roof with motified bitumen material.
The roof has a non-insignificant leak at the seam around the washer/dryer vent which has caused probably over a square foot of paint to separate from the ceiling and hang down. Moreover, despite the fact that it had not rained in a full week before the inspection, there was a significant amount of water sitting inside the roof underneath the top layer of roof material (squishing around like a thin water bed). There is also a slight leak around the skylights, which were apparently not off-the-shelf skylights but were created in ad hoc way by the individuals who renovated the townhouse six years ago. It's fairly clear that the previous owners did not do a good job caring for the townhouse and probably did zero maintenance on the roof, which was renovated about 8 years ago, before they purchased the townhouse about six years ago.
In and of itself, this might not be an overwhelming repair (I've been quoted $20k to redo the roof and install real skylights, which seems low to me), but it is somewhat unclear how long this leak has been going on. It seems to me that it is impossible to determine how severe the damage is (and check for the presence of mold) until the roof comes apart. Also, I'm not inclined to allow this state to continue for months until I close and get a chance to do the repair, which could be further delayed by winter weather. So even if we assume that it's a recent leak and the damage is manageable now, it might be a mess by the time that I close, and just sitting around and hoping for no rain is not a viable option.
How concerned should I be with this situation? What should I ask the sellers to do to remedy the situation? Is there anything that they can do to truly remedy the situation?
I am not in contract yet, so nothing is binding and I can walk. Conceivably, I could ask the seller to do repairs but it seems obvious that they will do a shoddy job. Also, I find the way that the sellers (who no longer live in the townhouse) have allowed the place to decay a very bad sign for other potential problems. On the other hand, the sellers should probably hope that I stick around, since this situation is only going to get worse this winter.
I'm new the real estate purchase process, so any thoughts/advice/rotten tomatoes would be helpful. Thank you.
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