House #21: Pre-Purchase Repair

We’ve never asked a seller to do this before, but because The Leak House closing has been pushed out a couple weeks (to mid-February) and because we believe it’s a roof leak that’s causing the interior damage, we’ve asked for permission to do roof repairs prior to actually purchasing the house…

Surprisingly, the seller was fine with the request, though they needed some guarantees that our contractor was licensed and insured, that we’d pay for the work (whether or not we ever closed on the property) and that the repairs would be done in a professional manner. All of these are perfectly reasonable requests — if I were the seller, I’d want to be sure that the house was being improved (not patched) and that there was no risk of the contractor putting a lien on the house for non-payment.

Ultimately, it will cost us about $200 to have all the pipe boots replaced, the gutters repaired and some stray shingles to be properly secured; this should fix the leak, and ensure that no additional damage is done to the property before we close on it. Of course, if for some reason we don’t close on the property, we’ll lose that $200, but it’s a relatively small amount, so I’m certainly willing to take the risk.