Sharon,

The simple question is what is included in your purchase and sales. You would have needed to type into your purchase and sales that the seller will turn on all utilities necessary to complete a home inspection. The reality is if you are buying a bank owned property, in most cases the buyer is responsible for turning on the utilities in their name if they want to test/inspect the water, sewer, plumbing, electrical, septic and heating system. As well if it is oil the buyer will need to put in oil to the tank in order to start the furnace or if gas then turn the gas on in their name. Most listing agents will specify in their listing that the property is sold as is. As well as add the actuall statement buyer is responsible for turning on utilities for any inspections. Your buyer broker should have guided you through this process as sometimes the disclosures are located on the agent only paragraph in mls. You should also note with bank owned properties you need to include any potential items prior to making a bid, as teh house is sold as is the bank will not re-negotiate after you have a home inspection, some banks will not let the contract have teh contingincy and state the home inspection is for your own knowledge.. Good luck with your purchase.

Highest Rated

Hi Sharon,

You ask, "I had a home inspected today and come to find out the inspector could not inspect the water pipes or the heating system because the realtor never turned the water on and there was no oil in the tank what should i do is this legal?"

Your Realtor (Buyer Agent) would have made the appointment with the listing agent to have the home inspection. Generally Realtors are not in charge of turning on water, usually that's handled by the seller. At the time the appointment was made, the lack of services should have been disclosed and discussed and the home inspection delayed until the utilities were activated. But is what happened legal? Yes.

But take heart, you have NOT had a successful/acceptable home inspection at this point. So you will need to ask for more time to complete the inspections.

You have several options right now: You can withdraw from the transaction. You can just forget the issues you have discussed and move forward, or you can request that the home systems be made active and have the inspector come back. (Probably you will pay extra to have the home inspector come back, so I would suggest you ask that the seller pay the additional cost--or maybe take it off the selling price.)

You might want to have an oil company technician come out with a 5 gallon can of oil to start and run the heating system, maybe even do a cleaning.

I would guess that this home (without water or heat) is for sale because the seller is unable to afford the house and is not presently living there. I would further assume the seller is not able or planning to incur any additional expenses to make the sale. If I am right, you are going to have to pay for these inspections--which will seem expensive if everything works as advertised, but will be very cheap if it's found that the house froze during the winter and all the pipes are cracked--because you will either be able to have the seller or bank fix the issues free, or back out with no loss of deposit.

Good luck,

Dane Hahn

Hello Sharon,

The answer would be partly in the conditions of your contract and possibly NH law. I am not familiar with NH law, and hope a RE Agent can help here, but in many other states there is no law for a seller (bank or private seller), nor the listing agent, to turn utilities on for an inspection. If you are working with a RE Agent they can tell you specifically what your state requirements are in that area, and also if your offer contract had a provision requiring that all utilities be active for an inspection.

From an Inspectors view it would be difficult to tell you much about the plumbing or heating systems without these being activated, that is unless there were visible signs of issues. Speak with your RE Agent about your options such as an extension of your option period to have these activated for a proper inspection. At this point you could also speak with a professional plumber and oil heating technicians. They may be able to offer methods to check these without turning on utilities and partly filling an oil tank for the heater checks. Of course there is always the option of walking away if that was in your contract.

Did your Inspector at least view the heating system components and visible plumbing systems, and areas surrounding the plumbing, to note if there were any potential significant issues they could see? Were these noted in your inspection report? Or did your Inspector merely disclaim these because there was no water or oil available? I would also speak with your Inspector if these were disclaimed and see if he/she could at least give you some idea of their conditions.

Good luck and ask more questions and possibly we can help.

Emmanuel J. Scanlan
PS Inspection & Property Services LLC http://www.psinspection.com
214-418-4366 (cell)
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