Dear Barry: We bought our home less then a week ago. After moving in, we found the water pressure to be unacceptable. It takes forever to fill the bathtub, but the previous owners had said that they used it all the time. Why did our home inspector say nothing about low water pressure?  Lori

Dear Lori: People often mistake low water volume for low pressure. For example, it is possible to have normal or even high pressure and yet have weak flow at the faucets. This often occurs in older homes where corrosion in old galvanized steel pipes restricts the flow, regardless of pressure. Low flow can also be caused by a faulty valve or by water-saving devices in the faucets.

According to the Plumbing Code, water pressure must be at least 15 pounds per square inch (psi) and no more than 80 psi. You should ask your home inspector to come back and review this condition. He should take a pressure reading and evaluate the flow rate at the tub. You should also get an opinion from a licensed plumber.

Dear Barry: As a real estate instructor, I teach many programs on ethics and disclosure to agents and people preparing to become agents. These same subjects are often addressed in your column. From your perspective, what can we Realtors do to enhance our ethical approach to real estate disclosure?  Janice

Dear Janice: Realtors are often advised, in seminars and trade journals, to disclose defects and recommend home inspections to clients. The reason given for this advice is to reduce liability and avoid lawsuits. That recommendation has merit, but it offers a narrow view of the issue. Reduced liability is a fringe benefit of disclosure. It is not the primary motive to disclose.

The best reason to disclose property defects is simple: It is the right thing to do. It is the way each of us wants to be treated in business. The focus, instead of liability, should be promoting the best interests of clients. Agents who pursue that approach, rather than a legalistic one, enjoy three primary rewards: They build a lifetime reputation for honest, ethical business practice; they receive the repeat business and referrals engendered by a solid gold reputation; and they reduce the likelihood of claims and lawsuits for undisclosed defects. From that perspective, here are some simple ways to put this into practice.

Agents should determine which home inspectors are the most experienced and most thorough, and they should provide a list of those inspectors to all of their clients. Articles and seminars often advise agents to provide inspector lists as a way to avoid liability, but the competence of the inspectors who appear on such lists is rarely mentioned. The problem here is obvious. If the list contains mediocre inspectors, then it fails on the ethics scale, while increasing the agent’s liability. If the client chooses an inexperienced home inspector from the agent’s list, disclosure will be incomplete, and disputes may occur after the sale.

Real estate brokers should be proactive about disclosure, even when they are not directly involved in transactions. Many brokers are laissez faire in their approach, uninvolved in the home inspector choices made by agents. This lack of oversight increases a broker’s liability. When a lawsuit for a faulty home inspection is filed against an agent, the broker is usually named in the suit. To avoid this liability, brokers should influence the inspector referrals made by their agents. The message should be, “This brokerage cannot afford disclosure related lawsuits. If you work for this company, you must recommend only the most thorough home inspectors available. Here is the list of inspectors we have found to be the most qualified.”

Brokers who wish to maximize this approach can test local inspectors to see who qualifies for the referral list. Inspectors can be hired to inspect a representative home, and the findings can be compared to see which inspectors provide the most complete disclosure.

Real estate professionals are in a service business. Success in any service business comes from treating customers the way you want to be treated. Homebuyers want to know what they are buying before they buy it, not after the sale is closed. Agents and brokers who approach their profession from this perspective will build reservoirs of repeat business for years to come and will simultaneously reduce their liability.

Dear Barry: Last winter, we had a house fire. The burn damage inside was relatively small, but the smoke damage was extreme.  It was so bad that we had to move out for several months, and the drywall, insulation, and floor coverings had to be removed from every room. While the house was unoccupied, the winter was unusually harsh, with ice on the inside and outside of the building. During this time, most of the windowpanes cracked, and the window frames no longer slide normally. The insurance company does not consider this to be part of the fire damage and are unwilling to pay for new windows. How can we convince them that the windows would not have broken if there hadn’t been a fire?  Rebecca

Dear Rebecca: The insurance company is avoiding payment for window damage on the basis of a slim technicality. They claim that the fire did not directly damage the windows. That may be true, but the window damage is an outcome of the overall situation.

While the house was stripped and unoccupied, the heating system was apparently not in use. Exposure to extreme cold and moisture altered the shape of the window frames and sash. The glass cracked due to stresses at the edges of the panes, and the frames became warped so that they no longer function properly.

When a home is occupied, the winter cold on the exterior of the building is offset by heat on the interior. The internal warmth prevents damage to the window glass and frames. While your home was unoccupied, the heat was turned off, as evidenced by ice on the interior. If a heat source had been maintained in the building, the window damage might have been avoided. Therefore, the window damage was an indirect consequence of the fire and should be covered by the insurance company. In fact, the insurance company should have known from experience that winter exposure to an abandoned building can cause further damage.

Dear Barry: The contractor who built my home won’t fix damages caused by flooding in our basement. We bought the house about a year ago, and the warranty covers one year of workmanship. We don’t trust the builder and want to hire a contractor to fix the problem and then have the builder pay for all of the repairs. We are preparing the case for court. What do you advise?  Marcos

Dear Marcos: If flooding occurs in the basement of a new home, this means the builder did not adequately provide for ground water drainage and waterproofing of the foundation walls. These are significant construction defects, and the builder is responsible for corrective work, which is likely to be very costly. In preparing your case, you’ll need professional evaluations for evidence. First, you need a report from a geotechnical engineer. In this case, that would be the fancy name for a drainage specialist.

Next, you should have the entire home evaluated by the most qualified and experienced home inspector you can find. A good inspector will find more construction defects than you are currently aware of, and the added list of defects will strengthen your case against the builder.

The entire matter should be handled by an attorney who specializes in construction defect law. And finally, you should file a complaint with the state agency that licenses contractors.

The House Detective:  by Barry Stone, Certified Home Inspector

Dear Barry: : We recently purchased a home and hired a home inspector to find all the defects. During the inspection, I noticed that the wallpaper in the master bedroom was discolored and was peeling at the edges. When I asked the inspector about this, he dismissed it as insignificant, but I continued to feel uncomfortable about it. Last week, I peeked behind a peeled edge of the wallpaper and found green mold. If I’d known about this, I’d have asked the sellers to have it removed. Shouldn’t this have been disclosed by our home inspector?  Jeri

Dear Jeri: When you asked the home inspector about the loose and discolored wallpaper, he should not have dismissed the issue. His answer should have been something on the order of, “I don’t know for sure if there is a problem, but the condition of the wallpaper indicates that there could be a moisture related issue below the surface. Therefore I recommend that the wallpaper be removed prior to close of escrow to determine whether there is a problem in that area.” That kind of disclosure would have led to discovery of the mold and would have saved you the cost of mold remediation and wall repairs.

You should contact the home inspector about your new findings and ask that he take a second look at the wall. A common response from many home inspectors in this kind of situation is to claim that the mold was concealed from view and that mold is not within the scope of a home inspection. Both defenses are true and valid. However, competent home inspectors never dismiss evidence of possible moisture damage. That was your home inspector’s primary error.