mrron2u
09-20-2007, 01:03 PM
Here is the situation.
We bought a house about 9 months ago and the sellers did not disclose that there were tiles under the carpet of an entire floor of the house that contained asbestos.
We were doing a little remodeling and decided to pull up the carpet to discover these tiles. My wife went up to the Home Depot to purchase scrapers so we could remove the tiles when a helpful employee asked her what we were doing. Long story short we discovered that these tiles probably were old enough to contain asbestos and that we should talk to professionals about testing and removal.
We came home, and pulled up the disclosure statement. Nothing was mentioned. We called the previous owner and at first the owner acted like she did not know what asbestos was. Within the same conversation she then admitted that she saw the tiles when they replaced the carpet and she took one in to have it tested. She stated that the results were positive for 3% asbestos. So within 10 minutes she went from being unsure what asbestos was to admitting she knew about it's presense in the house. They just carpeted over it and never disclosed it.
Well, we asked to see the test results and she never would give us these results so we took a tile in and had it tested and verified that there was asbestos in the tiles at a level of 5%. We realized that we had to either remove the tiles or plan to disclose them to our future buyers and obviously this would probably make selling the house more difficult. We looked for estimates to remove the tile and found that it can be very costly to do this and you must dispose of the tiles in the right manner. Had we taken it upon ourselves to remove this stuff and dispose of it through our curbside trash pickup we could have faced a $10,000 fine.
Our argument to the sellers has been that had they disclosed the presence of these tiles we would have had the opportunity to negotiate how to proceed with the sale. But as they chose to keep this information to themselves we were denied the right to decide what we wanted to do.
We talked this over with them at great length through e-mails and have all kinds of "evidence" that they knew of the tiles and decided not to disclose them. We asked them to pay the cost of removal and disposal of the tiles, replacement of the carpet in the room that we were otherwise not going to resurface, and the cost of testing (since they would not provide their results). The total was $820 for the bill. They refuse to pay all of it stating that they only knew about the tiles in one room and should only have to pay for that room. But the carpet, which they had laid was the same throughout the entire level of the house and was all laid at the same time. Again we stated that had they disclosed the existance of the tiles, it would have been discovered that they covered the entire level (while they still owned the home) and they would have had to handle removal completely on their dime, or they would have lost us as buyers.
We didn't even ask for reimbursment for the flooring for the main room as we had planned to replace that anyway. In our eyes we are being very fair, but the sellers certainly do not think so.
We are wondering if we have any kind of a case and whether or not it is worth fighting it out in court. I thought the sellers disclosure was very serious and failure to fill it out truthfully was in some way punishable. Has anyone got any thoughts about this or past experience that might be helpful?
We bought a house about 9 months ago and the sellers did not disclose that there were tiles under the carpet of an entire floor of the house that contained asbestos.
We were doing a little remodeling and decided to pull up the carpet to discover these tiles. My wife went up to the Home Depot to purchase scrapers so we could remove the tiles when a helpful employee asked her what we were doing. Long story short we discovered that these tiles probably were old enough to contain asbestos and that we should talk to professionals about testing and removal.
We came home, and pulled up the disclosure statement. Nothing was mentioned. We called the previous owner and at first the owner acted like she did not know what asbestos was. Within the same conversation she then admitted that she saw the tiles when they replaced the carpet and she took one in to have it tested. She stated that the results were positive for 3% asbestos. So within 10 minutes she went from being unsure what asbestos was to admitting she knew about it's presense in the house. They just carpeted over it and never disclosed it.
Well, we asked to see the test results and she never would give us these results so we took a tile in and had it tested and verified that there was asbestos in the tiles at a level of 5%. We realized that we had to either remove the tiles or plan to disclose them to our future buyers and obviously this would probably make selling the house more difficult. We looked for estimates to remove the tile and found that it can be very costly to do this and you must dispose of the tiles in the right manner. Had we taken it upon ourselves to remove this stuff and dispose of it through our curbside trash pickup we could have faced a $10,000 fine.
Our argument to the sellers has been that had they disclosed the presence of these tiles we would have had the opportunity to negotiate how to proceed with the sale. But as they chose to keep this information to themselves we were denied the right to decide what we wanted to do.
We talked this over with them at great length through e-mails and have all kinds of "evidence" that they knew of the tiles and decided not to disclose them. We asked them to pay the cost of removal and disposal of the tiles, replacement of the carpet in the room that we were otherwise not going to resurface, and the cost of testing (since they would not provide their results). The total was $820 for the bill. They refuse to pay all of it stating that they only knew about the tiles in one room and should only have to pay for that room. But the carpet, which they had laid was the same throughout the entire level of the house and was all laid at the same time. Again we stated that had they disclosed the existance of the tiles, it would have been discovered that they covered the entire level (while they still owned the home) and they would have had to handle removal completely on their dime, or they would have lost us as buyers.
We didn't even ask for reimbursment for the flooring for the main room as we had planned to replace that anyway. In our eyes we are being very fair, but the sellers certainly do not think so.
We are wondering if we have any kind of a case and whether or not it is worth fighting it out in court. I thought the sellers disclosure was very serious and failure to fill it out truthfully was in some way punishable. Has anyone got any thoughts about this or past experience that might be helpful?
