Reconsideration

“Consideration” is a legal term that refers to something valuable that is offered in exchange for something else, a property perhaps.

A purchase offer for a house often includes a contingency on a house inspection.  The buyer may rescind the offer if the inspection uncovers defects.  Or ask to modify the purchase agreement.  The inspection for this house was quite comprehensive.  Fifty pages of evaluation and photographic documentation revealed many defects– defects that were unmentioned in the city inspector’s truth-in-housing report.

Fortunately, most of the problems are rather minor, like a backlog of incomplete home maintenance projects.  Ungrounded ground-fault outlets, leaking faucets, defective bathroom fans,  I’m quite familiar with them.  A few others concerned me.  The age and condition of the flat roof was uncertain, and a support beam was starting to show structural weakness.

In light of this information, I asked for a price decrease and a roof certification.  I did not get the roof certification, but I got an even larger price decrease, “reconsideration”, if that is a legal term.

I have a feeling a new roof is in my near future.