A roof over our heads?
We just got the report from our home inspector for the place we’re supposedly buying and it’s not exactly great news. Overall, the place is in great shape considering it was built in 1930 or thereabouts. However, sometime between 1980 and 1999 (probably w/in the last 10 years) someone thought it would be a good idea to cover the roof w/a fancy synthetic material called “Woodruf” that’s supposed to look like cedar shakes. Unfortunately, the stuff was crap and has since been the subject of a class action lawsuit. The inspector said the roof has several bad shingles and the ridge cap is cracked. There are currently no obvious leaks, but when the leaks do come our only option will be to rip off the entire roof and replace itââ¬âafter the lawsuit there’s no way to get replacement shingles or anything like that to make repairs.1
So now we’re waiting on an estimate for the cost of a new roof so we can negotiate w/the seller for some resolution to this problem. At least one online calculator says that if we did the roof ourselves it would cost roughly $3,000 (and a couple of weeks of hard labor, of course). I bet if we paid someone to do it the cost would nearly double. I also bet the seller isn’t going to want to negotiate over this, but I could be wrong. I’ll update when I learn more. [tags]homebuying, real estate, roofing[/tags]
- Although, it seems you could probably just use the real cedar shakes these synthetic pieces were designed to simulate. I wonder if that would work…↩
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May 23rd, 2006 at 9:25 am
You could get real cedar shakes, but it’ll cost more to have that done than for plain ol’ shingles. You might be able to negotiate the cost of a new roof off the selling price, if the seller isn’t willing to pay to have the work done before closing (which, if the roof isn’t currently leaking, I wouldn’t bet on). Of course, if it’s not currently leaking, that’s also good, because if you have to pay for it, at least you probably won’t have to do it immediately.
This is rather timely–thanks to a giant hail storm in early April, new roofs are sprouting all over our neighborhood. Ours is only a few years old, and things looked okay from our admittedly amateur self-inspection (dented gutters, mostly–I’m more worried about the holes punched in the vinyl siding on our garage, since that lets water in, and our one broken storm window), but the more we hear about damage around us, the more we’re thinking we might need to have it looked at. No way we’d replace it ourselves, though. I can’t stand heights and even normally brave E. about fainted when he climbed up to take a look at our roof vents!
Yeah, and you should see my dent-resistant Saturn, too…
May 23rd, 2006 at 9:52 am
I think you should at least try to negotiate the cost of the new roof off of the purchase price. I mean, what are they going to say? They can’t fairly say that they had already accounted for the cost of a new roof in their asking price, because they didn’t tell you about that problem. If they’re really resistant and you really want the place, you could always do a partial reduction.Also, I missed you at grad. But my father has been making noises about a motorcycle trip to Montana. I hope you don’t mind if I invite myself over sometime in the next three years.
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:07 pm
What’s your contract say about this? Does this roof stuff give you an out? If so, you can use that as a bargaining tool with the seller.
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Hey T — I tried emailing you back and gmail returned with an error message. What gives? Can you give me alternative email to reach you? Thanks!
May 27th, 2006 at 7:23 am
[...] Oh, and that whole roof imbroglio? It remains completely unresolved except that we have an estimate for a new roof at $5,000-$6,000 (which is what I thought), and confirmation from a professional roofer that roofs made of this strange “woodruf” stuff are nothing but trouble. So we’re still waiting to hear whether the seller will deal on that. If not, we’ll have to start our home search over again. Awesome. [...]