u/urdogemeannothing

I (36F) and my partner (38M) recently purchased our first house in Austin, TX (yay!). During the options period, we had a home inspection which indicated some issues with the electrical wiring and advised to have a licensed and certified electrician assess everything further. Our realtor offered to have an electrician he had worked with previously come out and inspect the electrical for the house as we were in a position of being able to negotiation concessions with the seller. We agreed and the realtor came back to us saying the only work that needed done was replacing the electrical outlets/plates as they were all loose but otherwise wiring was “in good condition”. Realtor also said the electrician our realtor claimed he worked with would be able to do the work after we closed. Realtor estimated total concessions to be around $2k which we agreed to and closed shortly afterward.

After closing, our realtor stopped responding to us at all for a week after we attempted to contact him several times to schedule the electrician to come out and do the work quoted. He finally responded with a flimsy apology over text saying he had COVID and was sick all week (last I checked you can still send a text message from bed but I digress). Since we hadn’t heard from him for several days, we ended up calling a different electrician to do the work however after this electrician checked everything, he informed us that our main panel and utility meter can had been hot swapped and was entirely unpermitted, nor up to city code. Plus several other issues with the grounding for the entire house. He estimated the cost to fix everything with the correct permits would be around $10k. We told our realtor about this to see why we weren’t made aware of the unpermitted electrical work before closing and why there was such a discrepancy between his electrician and the one we had quote. After much prodding, realtor finally admitted he never had an electrician come out to the property to assess the electrical and he just based our concessions on what our home inspection report indicated needing fixed.

We have since gotten several other quotes from electricians and it looks like the final cost will be around $7k. My question is, knowing that our realtor made false representations that we relied on, in order to what appears to have been an effort to have us close faster, what recourse do we have? We are attempting to contact the seller as this unpermitted electrical was never disclosed either but the fault really seems to lie with our realtor not doing his job. We’re contacting a real estate attorney to help us navigate next steps but while we wait for that, is there any chance we can hold the realtor responsible aside from filing a civil claim? Should we contact our title or mortgage broker for assistance? Or are we pretty much SOL since we took the realtor at his word?

I (36F) and my partner (38M) recently purchased a house in Austin, TX. During the options period, our realtor offered to have an electrician he had worked with previously come out and inspect the electrical for the house as we were in a position of being able to negotiation concessions with the seller. We agreed and the realtor came back to us saying the only work that needed done was replacing the electrical outlets/plates as they were all loose but otherwise wiring was “in good condition”. The electrician our realtor said he worked with would be able to do the work after we closed. Realtor estimated total concessions to be around $2k which we agreed to and closed shortly afterward.

After closing, our realtor stopped responding to us at all for a week after we attempted to contact him several times to schedule the electrician to come out and do that work quoted. He finally responded with a flimsy apology over text saying he had COVID and was sick all week. Since we hadn’t heard from him for several days, we ended up calling a different electrician to do the work however after he checked everything, he informed us that our main panel and utility meter can had been hot swapped and was entirely unpermitted, nor up to city code. Plus several other issues with the grounding for the entire house. He estimated the cost to fix everything with the correct permits would be around $10k. We told our realtor about this to see why we weren’t made aware of the unpermitted electrical work before closing and why there was such a discrepancy between his electrician and the one we had quote. After much prodding, realtor finally admitted he never had an electrician come out to the property to assess the electrical and he just based our concessions on what our home inspection report indicated needing fixed.

We have since gotten several other quotes from electricians and it looks like the final cost will be around $7k. My question is, knowing that our realtor made false representations that we relied on, in order to what appears to have been an effort to have us close faster, what recourse do we have? We are attempting to contact the seller as this unpermitted electrical was never disclosed either but the fault really seems to lie with our realtor not doing his job. We’re contacting a real estate attorney to help us navigate next steps but while we wait for that, is there any chance we can hold the realtor responsible aside from filing a civil claim? Should we contact our title or mortgage broker for assistance? Or are we pretty much SOL since we took the realtor at his word?

Location: Austin, TX