My "new" condo.
 

Well, I bought a condo. I looked at this place & said "wow... I can actually kinda afford this! Even though I had an incompetent idiot for a realtor who gave me bad info throughout the process and cost me several hundred extra dollars, I got it!

Then...

The plumbing inspection shows two deficiencies. Both easily seen. Broken pipe under the kitchen sink & out the water heater. No big deal, right? Turns out the pipes had frozen and nearly every single pipe in my place is bad. It's all CPVC. A plumber gave me a rough estimate of $1000 to just do a new install of PEX under my floor in the ceiling of the place under me (which is vacant & the heat is not on) that would just tie in to the pipes that exist.

I decided to go a bit of a different route & tear out all the CPVC other than that going to my upstairs bathroom, replacing with PEX that doesn't even touch a common wall or floor with the unheated condo. Good thing I did, because as I am in the middle of tearing out pieces of walls & ceilings I am finding even more bad plumbing lines.

Been here since 11/10 & the only water I have is from a temporary line I set up in the basement area that I can open to fill a bucket or other container to carry upstairs.

I'l post some pics soon. Oh, what fun...

I haven't bought a home before, but I thought the idea was to have the inspection done before you bought the place

SI

Ah, the joys of home ownership

Fixer upper!

Yup.

I'm still waiting for the seller's lender on my offer a couple months ago..

I was confused as well. Before we bought our place we almost bought another one and had an inspection done. Turns out there was 50K worth of plumbing issues. The owner supposedly didn't know about them but they were caught by the inspector.

Both of the initial problems aren't really a big deal. Probably easily fixed in a few hours. I'm guessing that the pipes werent frozen and jacked up at that time.

Soldier on M. The god of plumbing is a real cunt.

The plumbing issues were there from a year ago. The inspector only looked in my place... not in the place below me where all the damage was. In mine, it looked simple.

Well, I'm in here now & have a hell of a lot of plumbing work. Not much else I can do about it.

I'm not clear on what the scope of the inspectors responsibility was, but if that was something he should have caught, might be worth a call to the licensing authority (assuming they have to be licensed in your state).

Gonna buy me a condo
Gonna buy me a Cuisinart
Get a wall-to-wall carpeting
Get a wallet full 'o credit cards
I gonna buy me a condo, never have to mow de lawn
I gonna get me da T-shirt wit' de alligator on

If its truly a "condo" isn't the association/building mgr responsible for fixing things "inside the walls"?

Their stance is that the plumbing problems were caused by the owners at the time (banks, as both condos were foreclosed at the same time) so they are not responsible. As they informed me, if a problem in a common area is the direct result of an issue caused by one condo, insurance would handle it & sue the other owner. Neither condo was insured at the time.

Talking to another condo owner in this complex, the association is complete shit. There was a leak in the plumbing of the condo next to his, so since he wasn't home they kicked in his door trying to find if the leak was in his. It wasn't. When he told them they had to pay the repair bill for his door they informed him that securing your property is your own responsibility.

I need to meet with the condo owners board. (Need to meet them first.) I found the condo under mine has a door that is unlocked, so by ladder to the balcony I can gain access. I did so to attempt some plumbing repairs before I knew how bad it was. In doing so, I ended up cutting away a few feet of what was left of the ceiling (only the bathroom & kitchen remain with a ceiling, which is odd considering that's where all the bad pipes are at.)

In the bathroom I found mold in the ceiling. I left what I cut down in the tub. Told the association what I did & how I found mold in the ceiling and how it needed to come down. They told me how serious they took this, blah blah blah. They said they would take care of it the next day. Three days later I entered & found all that had been done was what I left in the tub had been removed. The rest of the ceiling was still there.

The mold is a serious issue. IICRC regulations must be adhered to. If not, the liability for anyone involved can be high. The costs for the mold could be extremely high depending on how much there is. If this was caused by the condo below yours, the bank who owned it should be responsible.

Push the HOA and it may not be a bad idea to get some legal advice because everyone involved is going to try to pin this on you.

This. Mold is bad bad news and left alone can utterly destroy your home. Find yourself a good lawyer and hunker down for the long haul, as it sounds like the HOA is not taking responsibility for anything at all.

Is there a way to check for mold in your home without tearing open walls? I had an incident with the washing machine where it sort of leaked through the walls (pipe had a hole in it) and I'm worried about how that would effect things long term.

Inspection camera.

What about those tests where you lay out on counters and they capture mold spores? I'm more worried about the health aspect than anything.

A vast majority of the time, there really isn't a health scare. Not that you don't want to get it checked out to be sure, but there are only a few types that are really dangerous to a normal, healthy individual.

There are a few ways to check for mold. The best is to hire a mold specialist to take a look. (it may cost more, but once they clear the house they have the liability if there is a long term condition) There are at home test kits as well.

Is it to late for you to back out? This seems like way more trouble that it is worth

One quick thing, please don't misinerpret the last post by thinking it's ok to let mold go. It isn't. The liability you face if someone gets sick is high. The fines for not handling mold in the right way are staggering. Mold is also a sign of a long term leak and insurance will usually not cover it because of that. (you want a nightmare, check your insurance policies for water loss, there are a lot of "outs" for the insurance companies)

When you see mold, you need to address it ASAP and if it's a situations like M GO here, you need to try to push that liability off somewhere else as quickly as you can.

I'm still surprised that your condo association didn't cover it. Usually common areas are always covered and for good reason.

But I would go after the banks now. Not sure the recourse there, but they are the rightful owners and sold you the property. The closest issue I had was when I bought a condo, the company that was hired to manage the building stole all the money (like $500k) and no one found out till a month after I bought the place. So they had to do a bunch of special assesments and I went after the previous owner and eventually got the money from his insurance company.

I agree with the lawyer aspect of it targeting both banks and possibly the HOA. The behavior of the HOA is pretty crappy (but seems to be par for the course in Michigan).

HOA behavior EVERYWHERE. Many HOA's are struggling financially right now, they can't afford a gigantic mold loss. The HOA will try to push this back on a homeowner 95% of the time.

Yep. Bought it from HUD. The place does have potential though...