Yes, time for a short update to yesterday’s post on Following the Evidence.

Two things happened today. First, I went down to the “new” house and did some more digging in preparation for meeting with a different attorney. My suspicions were confirmed about the door that the seller added in:

My picture was crooked, BUT you can see the bubble in the center shows that the threshold for the door IS level. BUT… when you put it on the floor near the threshold:

We’ve got some seriously uneven floor there. The ONLY way to get that door assembly level was to compensate for the uneven floor / foundation. Ergo, the seller HAD TO know that the house is sinking.
Side note; that MAY be asbestos flooring that was underneath the carpet also. Yet another thing to have checked.
We bought a tripod to put our laser level on, and assuming all was done correctly, I got some interesting readings from the various rooms of the house. The den is by far the worst area for foundation issues. There are other problem areas however. The other end of the house SEEMS to have the front corner rising and the back corner sinking. Both by just an inch or so. The entire center 1/3 of the house seems to be pretty level.
Notice I’m hedging my words here a little. The reason being is that I re-checked the wall which was in yesterday’s post, and this time it read as level. My best guess for the difference in readings is that yesterday the laser MAY have had it’s switch stuck in the ‘lock’ position, which would have kept it from self leveling.
I can’t help but wonder though, if that whole portion of the house is sinking, why is it only showing on two walls running North – South and NOT on the East – West running wall that connects to both of them? The sinking extends beyond the East-West wall by at least 15 feet, so something should be showing with it as well.

And THEN There Was The Lawyer:

Without going into a ton of particulars, this lawyer was a good deal more optimistic regarding our chances. There couldn’t be any commitments just yet, as we’d forgotten our paperwork, and he said he’d want to have a contractor that he uses look at the house to determine what he can offer expert testimony on.
So, what the case is going to come down to is what can shown that the seller at least SHOULD have had reasonable knowledge of, and therefore an obligation to disclose.
He MIGHT be able to play dumb about the termites for example. They were inside the wall. HOWEVER, a neighbor says he was warned about termites, and the seller had the carpeting up to do work, so an argument could be made that he might have seen a crack in the slab and termites.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the side door and the windows. I’ve already proven in this post that he had to make corrections for the foundation sinking in order to install those doors and windows correctly.
Things are also looking pretty good for building a case against the realtors and the inspectors as well.
Reality is we’re not going to know anything until Monday on the paperwork end of things. I’m delivering that in the morning. Regarding the physical condition of the house, that won’t be until Friday.
So, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The primary question is what kind of light.
