Springdale, AR asked in Contracts and Real Estate Law for Arkansas

Q: What are my options about finding out a place has termite damage when the contract says it doesn't.

Bought a house and closed last Friday. Started renovating the master bath and found extensive termite damge and plain as day visible signs that they had termites. It's obvious someone knew about this issue at some point becaust they had the house treated and the termites aren't in the house anymore. I would like to know what my options are because if i had known about the previous or possible termites we might have changed our mind due to cost of the renovation going up. Thank you

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1 Lawyer Answer

A: Although I have not had a chance to review all the documents involved in the purchase and sale referred too it appears to me that you may be miss-interpreting the contract with respect to the existence--vel non--of termites. Unless the

contract(s) specifically say there is no termite damage anywhere in the premises you cannot do anything about the termite damage you found. Why?

Because if you read the controlling documents closely they will (probably) say the house is "free of termites" but not "free of termite damage" caused sometime earlier. I would venture to guess that most houses older than 10 years have some termite damage; but that does NOT mean they all have living termites.


