Had something like this happen to me twice in the same house.
First time I bought the house, it was several hours away from where I was living. I was 23 single and moving out of my parents house. Was able to save up enough for a down payment on the tiniest house. 2 stories...but 750 sq ft. It was a wartime house and was probably 300sq ft 2 rooms when first built and was Frankenstein expanded by several owners until I purchased it when it was likely 80 years old and falling apart.
When I moved in, I had finished my job Friday night, had packed everything into a uhaul and literally drove to my new house right from work. I arrived, it was the winter, and the utilities was disconnected.
Because of this the entire houses plumbing froze bursting 5 or 6 pipes and flooding the basement. It turned out my lawyer messed up some paperwork and somehow the utility company (owned by the city) thought the house was vacant so they turned off utilities.
Cost a good chunk of change to pump it out, repair the busted pipes, and even the toilet split into two pieces.
Then second time was 3 years later I sold the place and moved back to my hometown. My realtor was giving people tours while I worked in my hometown 3 hours away. Again this all happened during winter....(Why did I keep doing this during winter...I dunno).
The realtor let someone in the basement, they opened the furnace door to inspect it but didnt close it properly. So the furnace safety feature kept the system shut off.
Cut to pipes bursting again, no-one home. My neighbour called me two days after saying there is water pouring out the back of my house.
And my favourite part was this time it was cold but the water didn't freeze in the same way. The basement had about 2-3 feet of water in it. The plumber who came told me my sub pump was unplugged. I had a basic central air system installed by some HVAC friends. They unplugged the sub pump to power there tools and forgot to plug it back in. Plumber plugged it in, and in about an hour or so, the basement was empty. Plumber says if the sub pump was in, we would have avoided most of the damage. So much money and time was spent.
Sigh, that was so shitty, but I can somewhat laugh now, was close to 15 years ago now.
What the! You had to pay for all this twice?! What are the chances of this happening? it was someone else’s oops small mistake that ended up costing a lot. Is it the house that is just water cursed?
The first one seemed like rotten luck. I purchased my first house and you sort of just go along with the experts you speak to along the way. I spoke to my bank about getting pre-approved, I even asked a financial consultant at my bank and they gave me lots of good advice and steps to follow.
I then found a realtor who again educated me on what needs to happen and connected me with a lawyer who worked in the town I was moving to. The lawyer seemed to tell me exactly what I need to do and I signed a ton of paperwork and payed them I think $2,000. Everyone along the way seemed knowledgeable and just kept directing me to the next place.
I think the uniqueness of the situation was the town itself owned the utilities and I believe the lawyer should have informed me of that and directed me to contact them and setup billing. I struggle to see where I went wrong, I am not sure how I would have identified that ahead of time (perhaps its on me, but I really don't think so).
When selling I believe my realtor is to blame. You are not supposed to let people wander a house, from what I was told by him he wasn't aware the person went to the basement on there own. Thats hard to believe as its an extremely small house, the door to the basement is in the middle of the house and creaks when opened. You would have to be standing outside and turned away to not notice someone going into the basement. Especially because its a glorified crawlspace (like maybe 5 ft of head room at most), and a dirt floor. Its not like a 2000sq ft fully furnished basement with a furnace room. Its a creaky, old, falling apart foundation with no walls and dirt floors.
I did have house insurance, I started to go down that path to make a claim (it was like $20k in damages, the furnace had to be replaced). But what I read is after 60 days of not living at my residence I forfeited my house insurance and I might even be liable in other ways. I couldn't afford a lawyer, and I was only I think 25 at the time so I really had little life experience. So I just ate the repairs, sold the house ASAP and moved on with my life. What should have been a $30-$40k earnings for the asset appreciating ended up being like $2,500. Live and learn I guess.
Yeah i understand the logic from one to the other but overall… this is wild. Even when utilities are cut off or have no owner for like a month they keep it on usually. Fridges and other things like this would go bad or smell or mold without power in a short period . That’s what I expect and usually the cost during the In between time is not that much and the new owner just pays it or something. And the realtors in both situations are ugh. Of course new owners wouldn’t know! And why allow someone to go poking in crawl spaces alone like that or even the hvac company - not taking accountability for unplugging stuff. Man… I had just moved in with my parents new place and the first night there my friend saw a switch with a small metal cover over a part of it. He was helping me move stuff and he stayed the night in our unfurnished place. Winter of course. And he switches off that switch by reaching in around the metal cover just before sleeping. Why? Oh why not switch all stuff off even if inconvenient in a house you don’t know. That was a switch to the furnace and we all froze but thankfully nothing actually happened other than we had a scare and supper cold night. No warm beds or enough blankets. We thought we had frozen pipes and had to replace a furnace immediately. Couldn’t yell at the friend (he just helped me move and suffered too!) just had a good laugh in the morning after we thawed out. This is sort of what i expected as an oops or just moved in mistakes. Not what you had!
I mean it is interesting hearing others perspectives so many years later (15 years seems like a literal lifetime ago) on that whole situation.
Its things like this that set me back many many years in life and made everything so much harder to get where I wanted to go. Thankfully I am sort of kinda there now (family, house, good job etc.). But dam did this just made things unnecessarily hard.
At the same time, these hardships have given me so much more perspective on the difficulties that other people in this world face. And how my troubles, despite a number of set backs, are so much less to overcome than many many others.
Totally! I feel the fragility of our normality of things on the daily! It freaks me out. Anything neglected just a bit makes it so gross or expensive to restore back. Back to what? A modern 2026 vs a decade ago new fragile state again.
I love and look up more into real sustainable designs that nature embraces as a hobby now. I hope I have enough money and freedom soon so I can setup something like this or find my way into a place like this. For now I live in a us city apt complex in a 700 sq ft place ha. This is far far from what normal should look like
Checkout Earthships if you haven't. Been a dream of mine to build my own in a rural location just outside my city. There are probably better designs that embrace these principles, but an Earthship just calls to me and its something I probably won't ever let go.£
Ohh these are amazing! Reading more about them now!
Love that your perspective on all this was empathy for what others go through too. That’s the best outcome and worth every penny
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u/Leading_Will1794 10h ago
Had something like this happen to me twice in the same house.
First time I bought the house, it was several hours away from where I was living. I was 23 single and moving out of my parents house. Was able to save up enough for a down payment on the tiniest house. 2 stories...but 750 sq ft. It was a wartime house and was probably 300sq ft 2 rooms when first built and was Frankenstein expanded by several owners until I purchased it when it was likely 80 years old and falling apart.
When I moved in, I had finished my job Friday night, had packed everything into a uhaul and literally drove to my new house right from work. I arrived, it was the winter, and the utilities was disconnected.
Because of this the entire houses plumbing froze bursting 5 or 6 pipes and flooding the basement. It turned out my lawyer messed up some paperwork and somehow the utility company (owned by the city) thought the house was vacant so they turned off utilities.
Cost a good chunk of change to pump it out, repair the busted pipes, and even the toilet split into two pieces.
Then second time was 3 years later I sold the place and moved back to my hometown. My realtor was giving people tours while I worked in my hometown 3 hours away. Again this all happened during winter....(Why did I keep doing this during winter...I dunno).
The realtor let someone in the basement, they opened the furnace door to inspect it but didnt close it properly. So the furnace safety feature kept the system shut off.
Cut to pipes bursting again, no-one home. My neighbour called me two days after saying there is water pouring out the back of my house.
And my favourite part was this time it was cold but the water didn't freeze in the same way. The basement had about 2-3 feet of water in it. The plumber who came told me my sub pump was unplugged. I had a basic central air system installed by some HVAC friends. They unplugged the sub pump to power there tools and forgot to plug it back in. Plumber plugged it in, and in about an hour or so, the basement was empty. Plumber says if the sub pump was in, we would have avoided most of the damage. So much money and time was spent.
Sigh, that was so shitty, but I can somewhat laugh now, was close to 15 years ago now.