s4.1 - 4 month listing delay - A Strategy for Fraud agreed to by the Seller and Seller's Agent?
During negotiations in March 2021, the Seller complained of carrying costs when countering our 60 day escrow request with 45. From documents provided on or after Day 15 of our escrow process, we were able to determine that all work we suspected as having been done to prepare the home for sale had in fact been completed between July and November 2020 yet the house was not listed until March 2021.
These two facts combined left us wondering why the home was not listed in November 2020. Both of the Pre Sale Home Inspection and Pre Sale Termite Inspection could have and seemingly should have been done in late October and/or early November had minimizing carrying costs been important.
The rainy season in this area is from November through February. The volume of actual defects existing at the property related to rain water management and runoff were numerous and uber evident easily when rain existed, as we discovered in the rainy season of 2021 and 2022. We believe this listing delay was a strategy the Seller and Seller's Agent mutually decided they needed to pursue given the actual condition of the home. We did formally question them about this during the escrow period. No formal response as should be required by brokerage rules was provided. An informal response from the Agent intimated work was transpiring to prepare the home for sale, yet he had already presented all receipts in his possession which contradicted his own informal statement.
Conspiracy Concerns - 4 Month Listing Delay
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s4.2 - Pre-Sale Home Inspection performed 2021-01-28 - A Conspiracy to misdirect and obfuscate defects? A Strategy for Fraud?
The Seller hired a pre-sale Home Inspector so he could provide a report as part of his Marketing Process and Disclosure documents. The Inspector chosen was a referral from the Seller's Agent and the Seller's Agent was the only person at the inspection with the inspector and the Inspector's son. Gross Omissions related to flaws and defects were made in this Home Inspection report. The nature in which those gross omissions align with the Seller's gross Disclosure Omissions would indicated conspiracy or collusion to obfuscate and/or omit transpired. The odds of the alignment of omissions existing to the extent that they do given the nature, quantity and value of the omissions would seem to be next to nil.
Conspiracy Concerns - Pre-Sale Home Inspection Collusion
Pvt Docs: Seller's 2015 Home Insp. report | Seller's 2021 Home Insp. report | Buyer's 2021 Home Insp. report
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s4.3 - Pre-Sale Termite Inspection performed 2021-02-05 - Conspiracy to misdirect and obfuscate defects?
The Seller hired a pre-sale Termite Inspector so he could provide a report as part of his Marketing Process and Disclosure documents. The Inspector chosen was a referral from the Seller's Agent. The Seller's Agent may or may not have been present at the inspection. The report was marked as a "complete" report, yet it did not have any price estimates for repairs for existing damage on the home, which is a critical feature of such a report for marketing, disclosure and pricing purposes. Pricing the damage to the Facia would have taken just a minute or two for an experienced inspector and not doing so helped the Seller obfuscate and under disclose about $8,000 in damage to that one item alone.
Conspiracy Concerns - Pre Sale Termite Inspection Collusion
Pvt Docs: Seller's Pre-Sale Termite Inspection Report | Buyer's Termite Inspection Report
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s4.4 - Pre-sale Septic Inspection "accidentally" forgotten, then "mis-ordered", then the report was not turned over in a timely manner? Did the Seller and Seller's Agent plan a Shallow Attempt to provide an older inspection in place of a current one to mislead? Did they pursue an intentional strategy of incompetence and confusion to obfuscate known and expensive defects with the Septic System and the main line between the home and the Septic System)?
During a meeting at our request prior to writing an offer, the Seller's Agent had indicated they had "forgotten" to do a Septic Inspection. When selling an old home in the country that's like saying we were going for a test drive without any gas in the car. We included the inspection requirement in our contract and moved forward. When we got the SPQ the day after Ratification, the seller indicated he would be including a septic report and he had included a 2015 report? How could the Seller's Agent have forgotten about the need for a new Septic Inspection if he had handled a 6 year old one just a few weeks prior when processing seller disclosure documents? We believe this was intended to be a shallow attempt to get a careless Buyer and/or Buyers Agent who might not look at the document date to believe a recent septic inspection had been done on the property. We ignored it anyway and moved forward, and everything that could go wrong with the process did go wrong for the Seller and his Agent, including our discovery of a 10-25k defect.
Conspiracy Concerns - The "missing" Septic Inspection