My original review was removed by yelp about a month after being asked by Linda Craft's team to remove it myself. Coincidence?
It was short and sweet and to the point.
I feel like I got "screwed" into the home I bought. I was misled every step of the way and given misinformation.
So now I will give a much longer reason as to why I am only giving 1 star.
I'm sure Linda knows my situation. She was quite familiar with what happened.
August 2006 I was under contract for a house. The listing said "owner is getting a variance for the sunroom." I was told the reason for this is because he built a sunroom addition over the setback line and would just need to get a variance from the city of Raleigh.
Right before closing, I was told that he didn't have time to get a variance before closing and that he had to close on another house and couldn't change the closing date. I was told that I could easily go down to the city of Raleigh, pay a couple hundred dollar fee, and get a variance myself after closing. For my inconvenience, they knocked some money off of our original contract price, and closing was still scheduled for the original date.
There were also many items that I asked to be fixed prior to closing, but never got to check on, as the owner was still moving during my final walk through and we couldn't actually do a walk through.
So I moved in. Most of the repairs were not done. My first week in the house, the skylights started leaking all over the sunroom. This was on my repairs list. My second week in the house, the master bedroom, kitchen, and laundry closet had no electrical. These were electrical repairs also not done on my repairs list that stemmed from an outside outlet. It was revealed later when I had to hire an electrical contractor that the prior homeowner buried live wires in the front yard, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. Major fire hazard. I found out upon further need for repairs that this was the standard throughout the whole house. I'm surprised it never burned to the ground.
When I was going to put my house on the market in 2007, I finally was going to go to the City of Raleigh to get my variance. At that time, I was told that not only did the previous owner build the sunroom addition over the setback line, BUT, he applied for a permit to build a sunroom, was DENIED by the City of Raleigh, and built it anyway. I then brought it to their attention that there was an illegal sunroom on my property. So not only was my variance not approved, but I was given 30 days to tear it down or be fined $500/day. $8,000 later, the sunroom was removed. During removal, we found more wires duct taped together and wrapped in plastic grocery bags inside the walls, the lattice from the original deck still in tact, as he built the illegal sunroom right on top of the original deck with no additional supports, and wood and support beams under the house were rotted in the crawlspace from improper drainage from the sunroom addition.
Linda Craft was the initial listing agent for this property and I believe she knew that the sunroom was built illegally and therefore, did not encourage the owner to try to get the variance before I closed on the house. She wanted the sale to move along quickly. I was misled by both Linda Craft and my buyer's agent who also worked for Remax.
I was a first time homebuyer. I didn't know any better. And I also didn't know that two Remax agents were probably not looking out for my best interests.
I spoke to a couple of attorneys back in 2007 and 2008. I had a case and I could've pursued legal action; however, the stress, the money, and the amount of time that any court proceedings would've taken were not worth the extra stress for me. It was also not a guarantee that I would recoup the $8,000 from the sunroom repairs along with legal fees. The money had already been spent on the sunroom along with the various other repairs.
Much like many other homeowners during the housing crisis, I lost a substantial amount of value on my house; however, some of mine stemmed from the loss of square footage from removal of a sunroom. I will never recoup the lost money, lost time, lost stress, etc from that nightmare house. During our time there, my husband and I spent over $31,000 on repairs and sunroom removal. I realize standard repairs are typical with any house; however, I would estimate half of our repairs stemmed from the prior homeowner's "do it yourself" sunroom and electrical disasters. We finally sold it at a loss in 2012 before it needed a new roof.
Original purchase price $153,000
Amount for repairs/removal $31,379
Sold for $142,000 in 2012. read more
