First-time homebuyers buy a house INFESTED by MIGRATORY BATS. What would YOU do?

A young couple from Washington state were thrilled to buy their dream home but it quickly turned into nightmare. Tired of living in a tiny trailer, they thought they found a great place in a beautiful Victorian mansion on a hill near North Puget Sound.

As weeks passed, the couple faced health concerns, legal battles, and financial difficulties. Now, standing at a crossroads, they have tough decisions to make that could shape their future.

Here's the whole story, in their own words:

"My wife and I live in Washington state. We are young parents (born last Nov) and were very desperate to buy a home and get setup to raise our child. The place we were living in had a half acre but was a trailer, so small and full of problems.

Most of the houses in our area are above 800K for a postage stamp lot where you can lean out your window and touch your neighbors house, so we looked outside our area. I have a fully remote job, so we picked a spot close to our favorite state park in North Puget Sound. The home we bought for ~870K, 20% down. It is a huge Victorian mansion on top of a hill with a big turret and a view of the water.

The inspection showed a LOT of projects, but nothing we couldn't handle over the course of a decade or more. Once my wife returns to work, it would be possible to burn down the equity and finance improvements. Possibly refi to a lower rate if the Fed ever comes down again (but not betting on it). One thing in the report was "evidence of rodents" in the attic. We have dealt with rats and mice before by setting traps and thought very little of the problem. My mom talked about having squirrels in her attic that they had to shut out. Not a big deal.

So, despite some hesitation about the repairs and fixes that might lie ahead, we bought the place. We closed on April 1st and moved in by mid-month. It was amazing, the location is incredible.

We have guests in May, no problems. Then, towards the end of the month, we get a bat in our room at night. I quickly catch it in a bucket and get it out through the window while wife and baby get out. (I learn later I should have kept it.) We think, we are close to the woods, this is just what happens sometimes if the window is open a crack.

Then, we have a guest staying in the bedroom in the furnished attic. They hear scrawling in the walls. We start hearing it while we are up there (where we put the TV and a futon - its a carpeted living room type space up there). So we stake out the house, and we see a hoard of bats fly out from a tiny tiny gap in the corner of our attic window dormer.

We immediately call as many pest companies as we can and reach out to our insurance agent. I have work travel and come back. We have friends come to visit. We all get incredibly incredibly sick. Probably not associated to the bats, but histoplasmosis isn't impossible. At first we are very concerned about the bats, but we think this might be addressable. Then it started getting even crazier.

Early July, after a week of being super ill, the first bat company comes. They review the house, tell us its one of the worst infestations they've ever seen. There are likely thousands of bats. Which means chances are high that a few of them do carry rabies. Also that much fecal matter will definitely become a human health hazard even if its above the drywall, because it will fester, mold, get wet and drip through.

The next day, another bat gets into the kitchen in the middle of the day while we are cooking. I catch it with my fishing net and squash it. The bat pest person told us to take it to the health department, so I did, but it ended up being too far gone to tell if it had rabies. Live bats are required. My wife is too concerned to keep staying there. She packs up baby and goes to live at my sisters.

Our original house we had intended to either rent or sell to a developer, but everything happens in slow motion with a baby under 1. Now we had to relocate back into it. I stay up in the house to deal with contractors and the health department. I'm still extremely sick, cough and sore throat. My wife and baby start their rabies exposure series per the health department. We are set to max out our insurance coverage costs. Even with coverage, we will end up paying $14,000+ in medical expenses.

So we start talking with the neighbors. Some of them even stake out the house with me while I take video of thousands of bats flying out. The health department comes to try and capture a live one. They can't get to one though, none are loose inside the house, they are stuck behind drywall and plyboard panels and enmeshed into the insulation. I open up all the crawlspace doors and seal the attic shut, then I come out and there are 6 in the attic. I catch one and bring it to the health department.

Now, here we are, evacuated, living on 1/4 of our personal goods, back to our trailer. During this time, we've been coordinating with lawyers, insurance, pest control, various contractors. The assessment is as such:

• We bought the house from an estate. In WA State, an estate does not need to disclose anything wrong about the house, it is buyer beware. (no form 17)
• However, from neighbors and facebook digging, we know that the estate had a son-in-law who stayed at the house nearly 2 years working on the home to make it more sellable and auctioning off antiques.
• There are panels and flimsy boards, and lights in weird places in the crawlspace above the attic. We also noticed fly larva coming out of the boards that the inspector missed. Likely this was work done by the seller.
• The inspection report identifies the pests as rodents but only as a problem in one area. Now the entire attic and all the storage crawl areas have insulation and bat poop. The gutters and roof seams are completely coated in insulation and poop.
• Insurance denied our claim, they say the problem is pre-existing because of the evidence of pests in inspection, despite the severity and scale of the problem now.
• Other neighbors confirmed that the original couple that lived there knew about the bats and showed them how many there were, like 10 years ago.
• Lawyers we've talked to say its very unlikely we would win a case. The sellers knew all their legal loopholes (son-in-law was a house flipper) - they may have hidden the problem but that isn't illegal, even though it led to very hazardous conditions for our infant. If we lose the case, we owe tens of thousands in legal fees.
• The cost to fix is exceedingly high. $20-40k just to get the bats out, possibly reroofing the entire house (likely above $60k - its a complex roof.) Then redoing all the interior insulation and flooring in the attic (more than $20k). Possibly with enough haggling and putting in some labor myself, I could get costs close to $60K, but that may be wishful thinking.
• HELOC loans, home equity loans, and equity agreements, all seem to be inaccessible, we are just too improperly leveraged, we've only made a handful of payments so far. Maybe we could cover part of repairs, but likely not all of them.

So - now I put you in our shoes:

1. Risky lawsuit against the sellers and the seller's realtor.

• 2) Risky lawsuit against insurance
• 3) Risky concoction of overleveraging (HELOC/HEA) to pay for repairs
• 4) Strategic default, we loose $200K immediately and locked out of real estate for years
• 5) Try to convince a few insane investors to pay off our equity, take out business loans to fix, remodel, and turn the place into a BNB (very unlikely and also risky)
• 6) Cash out my 401K, sell a kidney, get a 2nd job, or enlist in the military
• 7) Sell our smaller property (maybe can get $450K for it) and rent somewhere while we fix the new place, but then we lose our last vestige of security

I say this all in the context of not wanting to live in that home any more. We love the neighborhood, but feel that the place is going to be a complete and absolute money pit. With enough love, attention and improvement, and changes to the Fed's rates, we could probably sell for $1.1M or higher if it was proven bat free, repainted, and some other aesthetic work was done. But it would take $150-200k to get there, so it would virtually be a wash.

With the market teetering in a million stupid directions, and the scale of severity of this problem, we are losing our minds. At least we have good Halloween costumes picked out this year...."

‍

What would YOU do???

‍