u/adamjon92

My wife and I bought a house in Northbrook and during our inspection, we had a sewer scope done, but the inspector wasn’t able to get the camera through one part of the pipe because it was clogged, so he told us to have a plumber go clean it out and get a video of it before attorney review period was done. We asked the sellers if we could come back one more time with a plumber and they refused to let us come back because it’s an inconvenience for the them to leave the house. They said they just got the pipes cleaned last year and everything was fine, but they’d give us an $800 credit so we could do rodding after the house closed. We pushed back, but they made it clear they would go to the next best offer that they had, and we didn’t want to lose the house.

We just moved into the house on Monday, so we had the plumber come out, and he found a few major issues that are going to be big ticket items. There’s a huge 2” gap with an offset on a pipe underneath the sidewalk, so we were quoted $7k to repair the pipes and rip apart the sidewalk, then another $7k to put liners in the pipe. I asked if the pipes look like they’ve been maintained and he said that there’s no chance that these have been cleaned in years due to the grease buildup and branches in the pipes.

Do I have any ground to stand on with getting any of this paid for by the previous buyers? I’m assuming I would have to figure out if they knew that this was an issue because they said they were unaware of any water or sewage issues in their disclosures. I’m thinking we’ll need to see their invoice from a year ago when they got their pipes cleaned and “everything was fine.”

It was a great welcome to home ownership!

I finally was able to buy a house in Northbrook after seeing 40+ houses and 10 offers, which felt like a HUGE win! I had always planned on listing my Lincoln Park as soon as my offer got accepted because I figured it’d be a quick sell. I talked to my neighbor this past weekend to tell them I was leaving and was putting my house on the market on Wednesday (2 days ago), and they said that they were planning on listing their house Thursday (yesterday). They asked what we were listing our house for, and they said that they were planning on listing theirs for $140k more than ours.

We both have 2 bed 2 bath units on the 2nd floor of a 3 flat, but they have a huge entertaining deck above their garage. Their unit looks a little nicer and is a bit newer, but I wouldn’t say it’s $140k nicer. They’re pissed at us because they think we’re going to kill their value, but we’re looking for competitive offers so we can get into a bit of a bidding war and their strategy is to go higher than market to hopefully get one person to bite. I don’t know what the correct strategy is, but we’re going at it different ways.

I’ve seen them a couple of times since our conversation and they’ve ignored me and they had their agent reach out to me and ask if I wanted him to represent us because he thinks we’re doing it all wrong.

I know that Zillow estimates aren’t trustworthy, but for comparison, we’re $10k under our estimate and they’re $45k over their estimate.

AITA for how we’re handling this?