Insurance claim prior to buying home with VA loan drug year past moving in
Hey guys, this might be a bit long and winding but definitely need some advice. TLDR at the bottom.
Some quick background: I’m 27, male, currently living in a house I closed on Dec 16, 2024 in Louisiana. I had got back from Al Assad, Iraq, November 2021 (yes, I’ll admit it was a Nasty Girl deployment, but am under disability due to mild PTSD from 6 months of pretty constant IDF and suicide drone attacks), then rented and worked on finishing my Physics degree until the point I decided to quit tossing money and use my benefits to finally get my first house.
As I said, I closed Dec 16th, 2024 with the help of the VA loan. When we (my girlfriend of 2 years and I lived together and she was moving in as well) were sold the house, we had a walkthrough with the inspector and real estate agent and was informed of nothing substantially wrong with the house except hail damage from 6/2/2024 on the roof, but that it was getting taken care of through insurance. Since we were informed that the roof was sound enough and in the process of being replaced, we put an addendum into our contract that the insurance claim on the roof be pursued after the sale in order to get it fixed. We moved in happy, and of course with the giddiness of actually owning a home combined with my Junior semester, the insurance claim slipped my mind for a while. Even if I did think about it, I’d reassure myself that it had to be the insurance company dragging it out and to give them the time they needed.
But after a couple months of living in the house, on 2/5/2025 we noticed a water stain forming on the master bedroom ceiling, indicating some kind of water leak. I searched the attic multiple times when we noticed it and more when we saw it growing, and never found anything from the HVAC pipes, water lines, rot/moisture on the plywood, or anything of the sort as I’d have thought would be the culprit, and simply waited for an update on the claim.
Fast forward some time, the stain has grown and I’ve failed every time to locate anything. Spring/Summer 2026 is coming around and I come home one day to find my house at 80 degrees while it’s set at 72. I spend the week searching options and 8 thousand bucks to replace the attic and outdoor unit. I have pictures from the work of a completely blown capacitor fuse on the outside unit, meaning the outside hadn’t been on or working for an unknown amount of time, and the coils the technician told me were approximately 50% clogged upon replacement and were some of the worst he’s ever seen. Oh, also? It was 18 years old, so it shouldn’t be a surprise, right? Yet neither my girlfriend nor I remember them saying anything about it. The only thing the inspector pointed out during the walkthrough was the electric box up there that we got the seller to fix. (Agent told us to show up a couple hours after the inspection started so the inspector could deep dive, then just summarize/walk it back through to us.)
Obviously this raised all sorts of flags in hindsight, so I went back through my binder of paperwork (which I had access to none of until after closing of course) and re-read every single paper. There was the full inspection from it and we found they had fully omitted some pretty serious findings. Such as: the leak had been documented and recorded by the inspector before closing. It quite literally reads “Ongoing water penetration detected. Water leak has rotted firestop.” The HVAC being 17 years old and needing to be replaced and cleaned was in there too. Neither me nor my girlfriend, who was with us during every step, remember a single mention of this.
With that in mind, during some particularly heavy rain not long ago, I waited in the attic to find the source. Sure enough, there are multiple leaks in the roof itself seeping through the plywood and also from the chimney portion of the attic.
I have been under the impression the insurance case on the roof would be properly pursued/has been being properly pursued as per our contract for the past year since we bought the place. Yet now, after spending 8 thousand dollars to replace the HVAC and noticing the actual leak in the attic, I reached out to the previous seller for an update on everything, just to be forwarded the half-ass rejection email from their insurance company riddled with inaccuracies and bullshit that they received on 02/10/2025, not 5 days after we moved in. Not once mentioned by our agent nor seller, it was rejected then essentially abandoned over a year ago. The seller and agent both haven’t answered my text messages since I reached out for an update, received the denial email from the seller, then questioned them on why I wasn’t notified/why they didn’t push the claim further, and finally asked for the evidence they gave or a copy of their initial two filings, not just the denials.
Saying that, I read the denial thoroughly and have plenty of reason to believe it’s bullshit (1.25in hail storm well documented in the area on 6/2/2024 with more than 40mph gusts, plus the literal leak and report from a public auditor and licensed roof tech recommending full replacement and blaming the same referenced storm), so this also seems insanely sketchy to me.
I wanted to know if I screwed myself because I didn’t ask for the physical inspection report/physically walk through with him, and should chalk it up to being an idiot 11B first-time homebuyer… or if this is as shady as it seems and violates any VA loan guidelines.
The addendum’s wording for the insurance claim was “continue to pursue the claim,” and I also wanted to know if the actions by the previous seller — not updating us, not supplying proper proof of filing/evidence, and not escalating an obvious and obviously important insurance claim — would be a breach of that contract. I truly cannot afford a roof directly after a new HVAC, only a year after moving into my very first home, and in college, lol.
I’ve been collecting and filing everything that may be helpful, have pictures and videos of the HVAC job, the leaks, possible hail marks i found myself to use to argue the insurance denial (1.5+ years after the storm to be fair), am trying to get a full report from the roofing company and public auditor’s inspection where they recommended full repairs, and have submitted a VA ticket with pretty much this post attached as well. If i’m wrong or over reacting just tell me be to kick rocks and that they fuckin got me, I’d much rather that than just being angry for the foreseeable future. Any further advice or direction would be incredibly appreciated.
TLDR: 11B dummy buys house, isn’t given physical inspection report but is walked through verbally instead, and finds out HVAC being 17 years old and leaky roof/rotting firestop was documented but omitted by inspector and agent, over a year after moving in.
Side plot of the insurance claim that was written in the contract — that the seller be required to continue pursuing — being denied 5 days after I moved in, then not updated until I reached out and asked for an update a year later. Ignored after asking for a copy of the initial filings/evidence that was given to the insurance company, since their denial was bullshit.