Sinkholes, snakes and other weird homeowner headaches
It's every homeowner's worst nightmare: You find the home of your dreams, get a home inspection and move in only to find a lot of problems you didn't expect. Now you're out more time and money trying to fix these problems, and if you'd known about them you probably wouldn't have bought the house in the first place.
This scenario is more common than you might think. The parents of one of my colleagues bought a house, had it inspected and found out after moving in that the master bathroom shower was caving in and all the tile and subflooring had to be replaced.
A family in Tennessee reported they fell terribly ill multiple times after moving into their new home, requiring hospitalization in each instance, with no explanation. Further inspections of the house revealed it was formerly a meth house and traces of the drug were strong enough to sicken the entire family.
Homeowner horror stories number into the thousands and, unfortunately, home inspections can't catch everything. According to examples on Zillow's real estate blog, some of these terrible tales are more bizarre than you can imagine.
Snake Infestation
Nearly everyone who's lived with roommates has bad experiences to share, ranging from loud parties at all hours to complete refusal to clean anything. These roomies are difficult to deal with, but they pale in comparison to the tenants Ben and Amber Sessions had to share a home with.
The couple purchased their home in Rexburg, Idaho, for a price of $179,000 -- a great deal on a five bedroom home that seemed too good to be true.
It was. The couple moved in only to find the home infested with hundreds of Garter snakes. At the height of the infestation there were so many snakes the ground appeared to move, and the couple killed 42 snakes in one day. The snakes produce a very mild venom that isn't usually considered lethal to humans, but it's probable that bites from multiple snakes could do some serious damage.
Getting rid of a few Garter snakes isn't too difficult -- recommendations include everything from pest control (because the snakes love to eat bugs) and mothballs to chemical products and cats -- but it's likely these remedies wouldn't work on hundreds of snakes at once.
Scary Sinkholes
Imagine leaving for work in the morning, locking up the house and coming home that night to find your house had disappeared. It's a scary prospect, but it could happen if you buy in a karst region.
"Karst refers to landforms that develop due to the dissolving away, over geologic time, of geologic materials near the surface," says Nicol Garcia, Public Information Officer for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. This results in a sinkhole, and the result can be catastrophic.
Last year, a family in Quebec was killed when a sinkhole opened up under their home, swallowing it and trapping the family inside. Earlier this year, a family in Ocala, Fla., fled their home when a sinkhole opened up in their driveway, swallowing their car and threatening to engulf their entire house.
While there's no way to know for sure whether or not a sinkhole will develop near your home, there are warning signs to look for: Cracks in the floors, walls and ceilings that "grow," un-level floors, wall separation or neighbors with sinkholes in their yards.
Backyard Dump
It's easy to see a backyard has been used as a dumping ground when the items are strewn all over the lawn, but it gets much harder when everything's buried below. That was the discovery the Dyer family made when they decided to put a pool in their yard. Underneath their house they found tires, electronics and old appliances -- enough that removing the trash caused a truck-sized sinkhole to open up in their backyard.
Buried trash is a big problem, especially if the disposed-of items are leaking fuel or fluid. If you're looking for signs of garbage under the ground, look for lots of rubbish above-ground, developing sink holes or strange objects sticking out of the ground that shouldn't be there. It's hard to say for sure what's underground, but if you suspect the home you want to purchase has a mini-landfill on-site, consult an attorney before going forward with an offer. A complete soil assessment, which includes groundwater and soil sampling, can get very expensive very fast.
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