Selling a House During Divorce In North Miami? We Can Buy Your House For Cash.

A new roof, laid straight on top of the old one

The contractor they hired laid the new roof directly on top of the old one instead of tearing the old one off. He did the same thing with the patio. No permit was pulled for any of it.

They paid for that roof. They believed it had been done properly. And they now hold a violation for unpermitted work they commissioned in good faith and had no way of knowing was wrong.

What happens next is worth following carefully, because it is the same chain for a great many Florida owners and almost nobody lays it out:

The roof leaks, because it was never really a new roof. The insurer finds out and starts writing letters asking for proof the work is being put right. Putting it right means permits, an engineer, and doing the roof properly this time — real money, which they did not have between them. While that stalls, mold starts growing inside the house. The property taxes come due. And if the insurer drops them, which was exactly where this was heading, the mortgage itself is in trouble, because a lender requires the house to be insured.

On top of all of it, the couple were going through a divorce.

Any one of those things is manageable. All of them at once, with no money and no agreement between the two of you, is not. It is not a failure of character. It is a chain reaction that started with one contractor cutting one corner.

We bought the house. They got their money and thirty days to leave, and we started pulling permits to correct the roof.

Not only so that we can sell it. So that it can be insured at all — and so the next family who buys it can actually be approved for a mortgage. A house in that condition cannot be financed by anybody, which is precisely why the chain is so hard to break from the inside.

If any of that sounds familiar, the moment to deal with it is before the insurance company makes the decision for you.