Home Inspection Failing

Unless the roof is actively leaking most sellers will not pay for it. This will be several thousand dollars. There are plenty of houses out there and unless this has the potential to be your dream home I would keep looking.

 

As a new homeowner, I know how tough is the home buying process here and it takes a real lot of time to find "The One" we like. Sorry to know that you have having stressful situation right now.

We recently brought an 20 year old home. We had the house inspected by a person who had great reviews on Angie's list and BBB. If one thing we learnt from him was that having Water Leakage in the house is a very bad thing because we would not be able to estimate how deep the problem is and how much will it take to get it rectified. After our inspection we found few issues which would cost us around 2K or something and decided to take it up with the Sellers through our Agent. We agreed to bring in a contractor to get an estimate and correct them all at their expense.

In your case, it's better to bring in an independent contractor to just provide an estimate and then see if you could go with bargain or move on to a different house. Sometimes Sellers won't accept the results of home inspection and could deny the requests from buyer side thinking it might be a bargaining act by the end of deal. Also a tip, we got from our contractor, if you decide to go with buying the house. It's better to get the estimated money for repair as a separate transaction than having it repaired by the seller since sometimes they just don't rectify the problem and rather cover it up for time being or if they insist that they would do the service , do get the house inspected again and include this in your contingency clause so you will be covered.

About Permit Issues, Check with the county office to see if you will have legal issues.

On Topic of New House Vs Old Houses, We shopped around for 8 months and have seen both and decided to go for the old one because of the established neighborhood and diverse community range. The place I live in had few new construction and nearly 80% were Indians and nearly looked like Indian Community and we are not looking to settle abroad so to sell in future will be a little tough as targeted buyer audience will be low. So went for diverse and well maintained neighborhood and chose an old home. Also the setup of home, like hardware for all the rooms didn't take up lot of room in budget for us.

This is our take on the home buying process. Hope it helps you in some way.

 

You mentioned there are safety/ hazard concerns and also permit issues in this house.
IF you are going for a home loan, Bank will anyway not give you a better deal to purchase the house as-is with the safety issue. The loan is always contingent upon some factors- safety ( insurance etc being a major part of it).

Did you sign the contract for as-is sale without any contingency after inspection? if yes, how much money have you put for a deposit before downpayment? IF you can, get out of the contract before the last date and save some money.

Also, banks do 203k loans ( loan for the house+ remodeling it - basically for the houses that need total TLC/ gut job). Do enquire about it if you think fixing it will add to the equity faster and the location is super good for you all.
There is no point in being emotionally attached to the house which will soon become a money pit. Do also figure out the time it requires to make any fixes, where will you stay in between and how much will that temporary location will cost you?