I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

The original poster is u/MooseAMZN, who gave permission for this repost. Originally posted 3 years ago in r/legaladvice & r/bestoflegaladvice.

I have taken some liberties in organizing the posts for readability.

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Moved into new house. Previous owner hid HORRENDOUS cat urine problem [July 07 2018]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8wqhov/moved_into_new_house_previous_owner_hid/

Hi,

My wife, newborn baby and I just moved into a house that we closed on at the end of May in Portland Oregon.

As we were moving in, we noticed a cat urine smell that we hadn't noticed during our prior visits. After we got all the boxes in, I began crawling around and found two 8-10' patches of carpet literally soaked in urine.

I rented a carpet shampooer and that didn't work so I had a carpet cleaner come out, and he confirmed the carpet is a goner and that some of the sub floor was rotting/molding. The main issue is the living room and hallway, about 410 square feet of flooring in total. I took tons of pictures.

I immediately got a flooring guy out who ripped everything up and we found that the two long patches of urine soaked areas had recent patches to the subfloor, previous owner is a contractor, so it's clear the he knew how bad the problem was and tried to rather poorly fix it or hide it while the house was for sale. Additionally, when we moved in there were three air fresheners plugged in. All signs pointing to a problem that they knew about.

It's going to be about $3,500 all in with carpet cleaner rental, pro carpet cleaner, repair work and new flooring. There is a chance we will have to do a flood cut to some of the drywall where urine is on the walls.

To me, this 100% qualifies as something that they should have declared as a "material defect affecting the value of the property."

Should I even bother talking to the previous owner or should I go straight to small claims court? Issue is he moved out of state and I don't have his new address, so I'm not sure how I can serve him.

Can I sue for damages beyond the cost to repair in small claims court?

This is a major inconvenience. I'm on my last few days of paternity leave and have spent most of it shampooing carpets, getting bids, etc instead of actually moving into my house and enjoying time with my wife and new baby. Additionally, had we known about the issue, we would have adjusted or rescinded our offer. I'm not one looking for a hand out but we were duped here.

Thanks for any insight you have.

Relevant Comments:

• In the disclosure form, the last question is, "are there any other material defects affecting the value of the property?" The seller marked "no." Cat pee in itself is likely a grey area for whether it applies, but the urine itself is not the sole problem. The rotting/molding subfloor, in my opinion, qualifies as "a material defect affecting the value of the property," not to mention the fact that the odor was so bad you could smell it from outside. Does this sound like a tiny problem you'd be fine with ignoring? Or does it sound like an issue affecting the value of the property? Would you buy a house with these issues or would you want it fixed? Perhaps you are R Kelly. Had the seller disclosed the issue, and not hid it, I would have lowered my offer, asked them to repair it or backed out of the deal. It's not just a little pee in the carpet. It's a major issue.
• OOP is asked if he talked to his real estate agent and if there was an inspection. OOP: We did an inspection but the room was full of furniture conveniently blocking most of the problem areas. The inspector did note the air fresheners but he thought there was moisture in the crawl space and assumed they were hiding a smell there. There was no moisture in the crawl. Spoke to my realtor and she spoke to the seller's agent. They basically said to sue to other guy cuz the transaction is done. Seller's agent wanted nothing to do with it. It was very odd how quickly his realtor wanted nothing to do with it. Who know... Maybe the realtor told them they needed to fix the issue before selling the house and that prompted the sub-floor patches that only hid the issue.

UPDATE: Moved into new house and previous owner hid a HORRENDOUS cat urine problem. [Aug 20 2018]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/98z0gk/update_moved_into_new_house_and_previous_owner/

It's been a while, but I wanted to update my prior post about an undisclosed cat-urine problem in the house I just bought.

Since the first message, I got a consult from a lawyer, and as I described it to him, he agreed it's likely breach of contract, negligence and misrepresentation. Most likely a home run small claims case. I also confirmed that the house contract stipulates we should resolve claims that fall within small claims court (under $10k) in small claims court, so that's where I should be handling this.

The reason so much time passed since the first post is I was trying to discretely get the seller's new address through a relatively unknown post-office method, which didn't work. I also tried simply sending the demand letter to my house addressed to them with the expectation it would be forwarded. It was forwarded but was never delivered according to USPS tracking. (I sent priority mail with signature confirmation.)

After a few weeks of waiting for the address or for the forwarded letter to be delivered, I hired a process server in the state they moved to to get their address. I got it almost instantly and resent the letter, which was delivered in the 17th.

Today, I got a text message from the seller saying they received the letter, that they would be emailing me their response, AND they made sure to include that they "did not fail to disclose and did not hide anything." I debated not responding, but I responded saying that I am expecting a check for the full amount requested by the 22nd (date I gave in the letter) or I'd be filing the small claims lawsuit the day after the due date. The seller was typing something as seen by the magic 3 dots on my iPhone, but after like 30 seconds, they stopped.

I'm currently awaiting the email they said they'd be sending me, simply out of curiosity, and have a draft completed at my county's website to submit the small claims lawsuit on the morning of the 23rd.

UPDATE 2 on BOLA: Moved into new house. Previous owner hid HORRENDOUS cat urine problem [Nov 26 2018]

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/a0oox7/update_moved_into_new_house_previous_owner_hid/

This is a bit long... hop on for a ride if you like.

<recap of previous posts cut for easier mobile reading>

- I send the previous owners a demand letter asking for full payment to cover cost of all the work.

- They respond by email and basically said "We sold the house "as is," the carpet was old, our cat died years ago, we like air fresheners and weren't trying to hide anything and that the previous patches to the sub floor were done about 7 years ago "due to pet urine." I should add that the subfloor was damaged so badly by cat urine, they had to patch it, BUT they left the carpet that urine had to pass through to do that damage.

- So… I sue them in small claims court.

With my initial post and a follow up post which I think I deleted, I got a mixed bag of some support and some people pointing out that I should have noticed the issue, and if it were so bad, why didn't I smell it before or why wasn't it discovered during the inspection that I had. Well, I have a pretty solid theory as to why we didn't notice it.

Here's where my brain went, and it proves pretty solidly that the previous owners knew how bad the problem was and did their best to hide it from me while I was buying the house.

- My wife and I toured their house literally 2-3 hours after it was listed on a Thursday. We offered Friday morning and they accepted Monday. We had the inspection done literally the next day, so from the time they listed it to the time we had the inspection done, only 5 days passed.

- While I can't prove it, I have had carpets professionally shampooed many times in my life and it gives the carpet a certain look. It was clear they had the carpets shampooed before they listed the house because the carpets had that look. This look is visible in the pictures from the listing.

- Thinking back to what my carpet shampooer said, he told me the carpet was so bad, he'd only be able to mask the odor for a bit, but that it would come back. Moisture and heat actually crystalize one of the chemical components in cat urine (the one that doesn't come out of carpet and the one that smells,) so while the carpet shampooing will mask it for a short period, it may in fact make it worse due to the crystallization from the heat/moisture of the shampooing.

- The recent carpet shampooing was likely done right before they listed it. That, combined with the three air fresheners did a great job masking the smell. Remember, only 5-6 days passed from the time it was listed to the time the inspection was complete. 5-6 days of shampoo smell mixed with air fresheners.

- Ok, I am now expecting some of you to say, "well… you can't prove they shampooed the carpets. Your case is weak and if they deny it, your whole 'masking theory' goes out the window."

- At this point, I was feeling pretty defeated. It's clear they knew about it and were hiding it, but how could I prove it if they simply denied it?

- I then began thinking about the mold. Ok, the previous owners told me their cat died years ago, so why was there black mold on the sub floor? By the way, the mold was ONLY located in the most egregious smelling spots of the subfloor. I have pictures of this. The mold was not everywhere in that room.

- A light went off in my head. MOISTURE CAUSES MOLD. Where did this moisture come from? In their response to my demand letter, they admitted to me that their cat died years ago and the subfloor patches were done 7-10 years ago.

- THE ONLY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION - THEY SHAMPOOED THE ABSOLUTE FUCK OUT OF THE WORST SPOTS SO SEVERELY THAT IT SATURATED THE SUBFLOOR IN WATER AND CAUSED THE BLACK MOLD TO GROW. There is literally no other explanation. They had no pets in the house and the mold ONLY appeared in the spots where the subfloor was patched. This proves they knew how bad the smell was, they knew where it was located and they spent so much time shampooing it to try to get rid of the problem that the subfloor began to mold/rot.

As a summary, I sued them because they failed to disclose this when selling the house. The last question on the disclosures was, "Are there any other material defects that affect the value of the house?" They said no. I have proved they knew about the issue, and I have proved how severe it was. The repair work and replacement of the floor, shampooing, etc was just under $4,000. $4,000 is a lot of money. This 100% qualifies as a "material defect" that affected the value of the house. The smell was so bad when we moved it, it could be detected from outside the house. I have a newborn and it was a health risk to have her on this carpet. Had we known about this issue we absolutely would have rather A) revised our offer to cover costs to repair. B) Asked for the sellers to repair properly. C) Rescinded our offer. It was that bad. It was not inhabitable it was so bad.

On 10/29, we went to mediation at our county courthouse because my county mandates you try mediation before you go in front of a judge. I came with about 30 pictures of the damage, receipts, a copy of their response to my demand letter, pix of the air fresheners only in the one room from the real estate listing and a statement explaining the situation as I did here.

I also had the flooring guy write a letter explaining what he found upon accepting the bid. He's been in that business for 16 years. Not only was he a flooring contractor, he previously spent time working at a restoration company and was certified for mold abatement and removal. In his expert opinion, he said it's the worst pet urine issue he'd ever seen. The letter was notarized.

Mediation was pointless. They offered to pay the $160 for carpet cleaning. That's it. I told them I'd settle for $3,000. They said no. I then told them I looked forward to winning when we present everything in front of a judge. They hung up the phone at that point.

I just got back from small claims court. After I presented all the info to the judge, the previous owners didn't really have any sort of logical defense. They tried to say that the house sale was "as is" and that they told me the carpet needed to be replaced due to pet damage. That was in fact a complete lie. They never said that. The judge basically said it's clear the damage was severe and what could be proved was they didn't disclose it and that when selling a house you have certain "obligations to be honest" and he ruled in my favor for the full amount.

TLDR: Moved into house. Previous owner's had a cat named R. Kelly who pee peed all over the living room. It was not disclosed and it was bad. I sued them and won.

Very Final Update: Per OOP in the comments below, yes, they paid in full, no bouncing checks, to difficulties.

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I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

The original poster is u/MooseAMZN, who gave permission for this repost. Originally posted 3 years ago in r/legaladvice & r/bestoflegaladvice.