Defrauded By Scummy Flipper During Home Purchase, He Violated Repair Addendum And Tried To Conceal It.

Location: Omaha, NE, USA

I purchased a home a couple months ago that had been recently flipped by a rather prolific flipper in my city. I believe he's a lawyer, and runs a little LLC where he purchases homes and then pays to have cosmetic things fixed to jack up the price. And then sells them at a profit.

When we had the home inspected, one of the things we requested was to have the breaker panel replaced- it was an older one that is known to start fires, so we demanded that it be replaced before we take the home.

The exact verbage of the purchase addendum was:

"Seller to have licensed electrician replace breaker panel with new panel."

They didn't argue with us. They signed the repair addendum and just had the work done.

I even checked with the city, and saw that there was a permit pulled for the breaker panel install by a licensed electrician.

When we took possession of the home, I started seeing all these little things that showed me that this guy was a really scummy flipper, little things that intentionally hid issues that wouldn't be caught during inspection.

One thing I noticed, is that anywhere new electrical work was done, three-way switches and switched outlets that had new switch plates just didn't work correctly- basically any new electrical that was done after the house was built in the '80s was done wrong. We also had city inspectors come and fail the panel replacement on a couple issues.

We had possession of the home when the first inspection failed, so I reached out to the real estate agents, and a guy came to correct the listed inspection issues after we had taken possession of the home. Another inspector came and it failed again. At this point I had the The guy who did the electrical work's contact info, so I just texted him and said "hey. There's a couple more things you have to fix." We had some back and forth and he said he would come fix them and then I never heard from him again. I didn't want to have to keep chasing him down to get this permit closed,

So last night I found the name of the electrician on the permit and emailed him. I assumed that he was the boss of the guy who I had met. I was tired of being ghosted so I went to the man whose name was on the permit.

The real electrician told me that he came in, did an estimate, pulled the permit, and the seller didn't want to pay him what he said it would cost. Accused him of trying to drive up the price, and then the seller had some handyman who I'm assuming is unlicensed come and do the actual panel replacement.

So now I have a home with dubious electrical work that I am concerned is not safe, and an open permit. I don't want Mr. Handyman to come back to fix it because now I don't trust any work that he does. If he's the one who did the switches and outlets, then it's very clear that he wasn't licensed because it's all wrong.

So, there's a statute in Nebraska that says that It's a class 4 felony to direct another person to make a false statement on an electrical form or permit. It's also a pretty clear violation of our agreement that a licensed electrician would perform the work.

The real electrician told me his estimate was 5 to 7K. I basically have to have somebody come in and do this work over again. I want to get the seller to pay for this. This guy freaking boned me on a lot of things with this house. I'm sure he does this a lot, It's very clear that he knew exactly what needed to be done to jack the price up and hide things that people would not notice during the inspection process. I thought that I would just have to bite the bullet on all these things, that I just got suckered. I would really love to make him think twice before he tries to screw the next guy over.

Do you guys think that I have a case?

How much is it going to cost me to try to get this money out of this guy?

Am I going to spend more in legal fees than I would just paying someone to do the electrical work?

Could I possibly recoup the legal fees as part of this if I sue him?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

EDIT: just to be clear, I am absolutely going to consult with a lawyer on this, just trying to get some input from you guys, I'd love to get any tips you have on what I need to do in the meantime or any other suggestions you have.