That’s the REASON for the concern. They come from a place that they perceive as unsafe so assume everywhere else is too.
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All of the utilities were new except the water heater and we thought it was funny they replaced the furnace and A/C but not the water heater. The water meter had the old gate valves on either side of it. Original.
So right before closing, I called up the city to get the water bill put in my name and they informed me the water valve at the street was bent and couldn’t be shut off. It’d need to be replaced at a cost of $2,000-8,000. It can only be done with city licensed plumbers and the cost depends on how much lead pipe they find. They might have to replace the water line all the way from the street into the house.
So the owner knew it was bent because when he called the city to have them shut it off, they told him it was bent. He tried to shut it off because he couldn’t get the gate valves to close to replace the hot water heater. So that means there was no way to shut off the water in the house. If any pipe burst, the house would flood and there’s no way to stop it without shutting off the water main for the block.
The owner tried to slide me $2,000 literally under the table at closing and it didn’t feel right so I told him no. I looked into it further and he was committing tax fraud by claiming multiple homstead’s. I found 3 under 3 different names. Just slight variations in the spelling. I reported him to the appropriate tax authority for fraud. Obviously he costed me some money because I had to pay for an inspection etc anyway. Huge waste of time and money all for him trying to push a small cost off onto the next owner.
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Wow! There certainly are all types!
I tried to by a foreclosed double wide modular home with a wraparound pool deck (pool had been removed) and 3 acres of pasture. Turns out the well was on the next door neighboring property and would require at least $4k to take care of. Otherwise the owner of that property was unwilling to grant access (understandably). I refused to offer over $X even after several rounds of offers for the place and when they kept coming back with very high offers for a place with no legal access to water, I offered $1 and then refused to continue responding to their counteroffers. More than a year later they finally sold it but for MUCH less than all but my $1 offer.
In the end though I was very glad I had not gotten the place as I ended up finding a better one that worked out very well. I lived in it and had my brother in it while I was deployed once and have been Airbnbing it for over 3 years now. And the neighbors are great!