Bought a house with a leak
We recently purchased a house and, as soon as we got the keys, we photographed every room before moving anything in. At the time we didn’t notice it, but looking back at the photos there was already staining on the downstairs toilet ceiling.
Three days later we started moving our stuff in. We turned the water on, didn’t notice any obvious leaks, and carried on with the move. About 12 hours later the house alarm started going off randomly. After eventually finding the alarm box, we discovered the downstairs toilet was flooded and water had got into the electrics and alarm system.
We then went upstairs and found a puddle behind the middle bathroom toilet. It turns out water was pouring out of a waste pipe behind the wall and leaking through into the downstairs toilet. We then find rags stuffed behind the toilet aswell (perhaps left by the old sellers to keep moping up the floor- regardless its a little odd).
At that point we noticed the downstairs ceiling was heavily stained and there was water everywhere. It’s now pretty obvious this leak existed before we bought the house and the sellers must have known about it.
Just wondering where we stand legally and whether anyone has dealt with something similar?
The amount of water that has come through has cost us around £4,000 in damages - the alarm was totalled, the carpets in the room next door are drenched,all the ceilings need ripping out as they have dropped a lot!
i know people will say "its your problem now" - but its quite obvious the sellers knew about this - more so they smell of fresh paint in the room below was quite obvious too! either to mask the issue as much as they could to keep repainting the ceiling over and over.
Yes we have insurance - but they have said we cant do anything about it if you are suggesting the leak existed prior to you owning the policy (Which is a valid point)