Scammed Into Buying House w flooding & black mold
Donation protected
Hello,
5 days ago I posted a video on my YouTube channel(http://www.youtube.com/kyeluh) laying out every detail to what my fiancé and I have been going through for the past year and a half. This has resulted in numerous people asking for us to start a gofundme to donate to our situation, and as awkward and uncomfortable as it is to do so, we decided to make one.
This video I made( https://youtu.be/SNbHcNqFPQQ ) lays out every last detail to what we’ve been going through, with photos and video. Please watch it if you have time, but for for those of you that want to skip the video, I will try and sum up our situation to you.
In August of 2018, my fiancé and I purchased our first house. We had hired an inspector recommended by our realtor and, in short, we feel as though they potentially hid things from us to make the sale.
The sellers of the home lied on the property disclose forms of there being black mold all over the house, and also lied about a major flooding problem that has become our nightmare. From day one of moving in we found black mold in the house from a roof leak, within a couple months the kitchen had flooded during rain, and continued to several times in the coming months. And then in May of 2019, I was babysitting my 3 nieces all under the age of 8 and our ENTIRE house flooded. This was beyond traumatizing for not only myself and my fiancé, but for my nieces.
This prompted us to look deeper into what the sellers had remodeled over the top of, so we began to remove some of the remodeling they had done to see what was underneath it. We found that not only did they repair over black mold in the bathrooms, but they also covered up black mold with new trim in our dining room. We removed the floor in the master bedroom to find muddy water from years of flooding underneath it, and rotten water damaged tack strips. We have found numerous rotten holes leading into the house from outside, and we even found weeds growing up under our carpet. We also found black mold covering our attic, coming from a leak in our roof. The inspector not only didn’t take photos of any of the damages on the roof, but he neglected to tell us of the water damage in the house or of the black mold in our attic. We have felt absolutely disgusting living in here, completely unable to stop the water from coming in and the mold from spreading.
*trigger warning* Since moving in, we have lost two of our four cats. One of them was an older cat who was more immune compromised, she died within 2 weeks of being in the home. The other died of a heart attack 9 months later. She suffered from acute kidney failure after having teeth removed from stomatitis, with no other health issues. She had no heart issues at the time, but when they removed her breathing tube from her lungs trying to save her, she had blood in her lungs. This is a symptom of black mold exposure in cats.
We are horrified feeling as though moving ourselves and our pets into this home potentially killed them. This is the fault of everyone that was concerned with making a sale than our livelihood.
I cannot express the amount of stress and hurt that moving into this home has caused in our lives. We have experienced so much loss from not only our pets but from our belongings. We have lost a year and a half of our lives.
My fiancé and I have been doing everything we can to get out of this house, as not only are we having black mold symptoms but so are our pets that we currently have. We have no where to go at the moment, but are currently packing up everything in our house to put into a storage unit while doing everything we can to get out of here.
We have asked for help from our insurance, lawyers, our mortgage company, the city... every step we’ve taken and many more things I just don’t have time to write are all detailed in my video(https://youtu.be/SNbHcNqFPQQ)
Everything has been a dead end with this situation until a couple days ago after my video went live. Thousands of people started listening to our situation, and sharing all over social media to spread the word. This finally got the attention of our city, and the administrator of the city knocked on our door. He saw our video and is finally sending people out to fix our yard to prevent further flooding of the house.
However, this doesn’t change the fact that the house was at $35,000 in damages, a THIRD of what we paid for the house, the last time we had it inspected. This estimate wasn’t including the damages to the outside of the home, the cost of fixing the yard, or our roof. The home is unlivable conditions, ANYONE who lives in here is being exposed to the black mold and I’m worried every day of lasting effects being on our health from this. We had a realtor get a market analysis done of our home... we bought it for $115,000 but with the truth out and what the sellers hid from us, they are expecting to receive offers as low as $50,000. We bought a 50k house for 115k because we were lied to.
I’m not going to ask for donations to fix the damages done to this house, as our main concern is getting us and our cats OUT OF HERE. It’s becoming incredibly difficult to get out of this situation, and we have been asking for everyone to share our video to the public to help bring exposure to our unique and horrifying case. Everything is showing up as a dead end at the moment, but we are currently making phone call after phone call every single day hoping that someone will help us.
Even after we finally get out of here and can put this nightmare behind us, I will continue to do whatever I can in my power to get laws changed to protect buyers from home buying scams. I’ve been receiving comment after comment from so many people who have been in a situation similar to ours, and I am DISGUSTED that so many of us are at a loss when nothing is our fault. Realtors, inspectors, and seller scams happen all the time... and it seems as though law after law is in place to protect the scammers, not the scammed. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. People should not be able to get away with doing this to others, and we need to spread the word that THEY WILL NOT get away with it.
We’re not starting this gofundme to put any more money into this nightmare house, it’s completely unsafe to live in and all we want is to get out. However, as we have had many of our furniture and belongings ruined during this, I decided to start a gofundme for those of you asking to help. All donations will go into replacing furniture we’ve lost and to help with moving expenses. I’m terrified to bring ANY black mold spores into a new environment, so most of our furniture we have left needs to be replaced.
This situation were in has been a financial strain in itself, but I wanted to put any donations that were given to us into our new life. A complete fresh start.
Thank you to everyone who has felt it in your heart to help in any way. Please know that we are not the people to ask for handouts, and we understand everyone has their own struggles especially in today’s time. We just want to be able to go back to living our lives again.
Thank you for taking the time to read, and even if you don’t want to donate, please share my video! I still have hope that maybe a pro bono lawyer will see it and want to help us with a lawsuit against the sellers for what they have done to our lives.
Thank you for listening and for caring about us,
Mark and Kyla
5 days ago I posted a video on my YouTube channel(http://www.youtube.com/kyeluh) laying out every detail to what my fiancé and I have been going through for the past year and a half. This has resulted in numerous people asking for us to start a gofundme to donate to our situation, and as awkward and uncomfortable as it is to do so, we decided to make one.
This video I made( https://youtu.be/SNbHcNqFPQQ ) lays out every last detail to what we’ve been going through, with photos and video. Please watch it if you have time, but for for those of you that want to skip the video, I will try and sum up our situation to you.
In August of 2018, my fiancé and I purchased our first house. We had hired an inspector recommended by our realtor and, in short, we feel as though they potentially hid things from us to make the sale.
The sellers of the home lied on the property disclose forms of there being black mold all over the house, and also lied about a major flooding problem that has become our nightmare. From day one of moving in we found black mold in the house from a roof leak, within a couple months the kitchen had flooded during rain, and continued to several times in the coming months. And then in May of 2019, I was babysitting my 3 nieces all under the age of 8 and our ENTIRE house flooded. This was beyond traumatizing for not only myself and my fiancé, but for my nieces.
This prompted us to look deeper into what the sellers had remodeled over the top of, so we began to remove some of the remodeling they had done to see what was underneath it. We found that not only did they repair over black mold in the bathrooms, but they also covered up black mold with new trim in our dining room. We removed the floor in the master bedroom to find muddy water from years of flooding underneath it, and rotten water damaged tack strips. We have found numerous rotten holes leading into the house from outside, and we even found weeds growing up under our carpet. We also found black mold covering our attic, coming from a leak in our roof. The inspector not only didn’t take photos of any of the damages on the roof, but he neglected to tell us of the water damage in the house or of the black mold in our attic. We have felt absolutely disgusting living in here, completely unable to stop the water from coming in and the mold from spreading.
*trigger warning* Since moving in, we have lost two of our four cats. One of them was an older cat who was more immune compromised, she died within 2 weeks of being in the home. The other died of a heart attack 9 months later. She suffered from acute kidney failure after having teeth removed from stomatitis, with no other health issues. She had no heart issues at the time, but when they removed her breathing tube from her lungs trying to save her, she had blood in her lungs. This is a symptom of black mold exposure in cats.
We are horrified feeling as though moving ourselves and our pets into this home potentially killed them. This is the fault of everyone that was concerned with making a sale than our livelihood.
I cannot express the amount of stress and hurt that moving into this home has caused in our lives. We have experienced so much loss from not only our pets but from our belongings. We have lost a year and a half of our lives.
My fiancé and I have been doing everything we can to get out of this house, as not only are we having black mold symptoms but so are our pets that we currently have. We have no where to go at the moment, but are currently packing up everything in our house to put into a storage unit while doing everything we can to get out of here.
We have asked for help from our insurance, lawyers, our mortgage company, the city... every step we’ve taken and many more things I just don’t have time to write are all detailed in my video(https://youtu.be/SNbHcNqFPQQ)
Everything has been a dead end with this situation until a couple days ago after my video went live. Thousands of people started listening to our situation, and sharing all over social media to spread the word. This finally got the attention of our city, and the administrator of the city knocked on our door. He saw our video and is finally sending people out to fix our yard to prevent further flooding of the house.
However, this doesn’t change the fact that the house was at $35,000 in damages, a THIRD of what we paid for the house, the last time we had it inspected. This estimate wasn’t including the damages to the outside of the home, the cost of fixing the yard, or our roof. The home is unlivable conditions, ANYONE who lives in here is being exposed to the black mold and I’m worried every day of lasting effects being on our health from this. We had a realtor get a market analysis done of our home... we bought it for $115,000 but with the truth out and what the sellers hid from us, they are expecting to receive offers as low as $50,000. We bought a 50k house for 115k because we were lied to.
I’m not going to ask for donations to fix the damages done to this house, as our main concern is getting us and our cats OUT OF HERE. It’s becoming incredibly difficult to get out of this situation, and we have been asking for everyone to share our video to the public to help bring exposure to our unique and horrifying case. Everything is showing up as a dead end at the moment, but we are currently making phone call after phone call every single day hoping that someone will help us.
Even after we finally get out of here and can put this nightmare behind us, I will continue to do whatever I can in my power to get laws changed to protect buyers from home buying scams. I’ve been receiving comment after comment from so many people who have been in a situation similar to ours, and I am DISGUSTED that so many of us are at a loss when nothing is our fault. Realtors, inspectors, and seller scams happen all the time... and it seems as though law after law is in place to protect the scammers, not the scammed. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. People should not be able to get away with doing this to others, and we need to spread the word that THEY WILL NOT get away with it.
We’re not starting this gofundme to put any more money into this nightmare house, it’s completely unsafe to live in and all we want is to get out. However, as we have had many of our furniture and belongings ruined during this, I decided to start a gofundme for those of you asking to help. All donations will go into replacing furniture we’ve lost and to help with moving expenses. I’m terrified to bring ANY black mold spores into a new environment, so most of our furniture we have left needs to be replaced.
This situation were in has been a financial strain in itself, but I wanted to put any donations that were given to us into our new life. A complete fresh start.
Thank you to everyone who has felt it in your heart to help in any way. Please know that we are not the people to ask for handouts, and we understand everyone has their own struggles especially in today’s time. We just want to be able to go back to living our lives again.
Thank you for taking the time to read, and even if you don’t want to donate, please share my video! I still have hope that maybe a pro bono lawyer will see it and want to help us with a lawsuit against the sellers for what they have done to our lives.
Thank you for listening and for caring about us,
Mark and Kyla
Organizer
Kyla Reb
Organizer
Siloam Springs, AR