Now I have a question for you. We just had the home inspection done - as I feared, the garage is going to be a real problem. The home inspector explained that the wall between the garage and the house is considered a fire wall, so it has to be fire-resistant. And that means the windows looking into the garage will need to be sealed off. And other stuff in the garage-to-be has problems, like there needs to be a support beam in the middle, which is why the roof is sagging, and water is collecting. The owner just put a lally-beam(?) but the inspector thinks if a car hits it, even just dings it, that would make it fall down, because it's just resting on the concrete. And the guy didn't have a permit pulled, so I am going to ask that the county come out and inspect it, and sign off on everything. I don't think there's any way in hell it can be done by 7/23/99. And the owner really wants to close.
So, there are three realistic alternatives - we can establish an escrow account for the work to be completed after closing - we can back out of the contract - or we can say, give us a rebate and leave it a carport.
My question to you is - what's a realistic rebate? The owner told us he already paid for the work, so that may not be an option, but the contractors told me that he didn't.
There's an awful lot of nickle-and-dime shit, loose wires, and fixtures that don't work, we are going to require all that be done, and the furnace and water heater were not operable, so that's got to be taken care of, so he may just balk before we get to the garage, but I can ball-park the cost of everything but the garage.
Putting in a beam to support and put a pitch in the roof (flat, wood beams covered by tarpaper and roll shingle-type material), doing something to the windows so they are no longer windows, and the wall is a fire wall, closing the sides, putting a garage door and opener, rough price within a very loose order of magnitude? |
