Ms House Buyer Sent Demand Letter

Location: Mississippi

At the end of June we sold our house in MS to move out of state. Today we received a demand letter from an attorney in MS for 20K+ saying we concealed material defects.

The new owner is saying that the primary tub requires manually draining, isn’t level, and requires replacement. We used this same bathroom until the sale and never had a problem with it not draining. It might not have been level, but I never checked.

They are also saying that the HVAC system has multiple code violations visible in plain sight. As evidence they are citing that we left behind CO detectors (we thought we were required to like the window blinds), and that one CO detector was labeled “furnace breaker.”

We had CO detectors in every bedroom and near the gas fireplace and HVAC system and one extra near the front door/living room. The one labeled oddly was because in my experience, whenever a breaker trips, it’s usually in the kitchen (which is where this detector was plugged in) and I wanted to make it easier to remember which breaker to check. The kitchen outlet breakers were labeled furnace on the breaker panel.

To be clear, the buyer had the house inspected prior to purchase and neither myself nor my spouse had any knowledge of any issues with the HVAC system other than its age, which we did not even attempt to conceal. We didn’t fail to disclose any defects that we were aware of, and I thought the buyer had to prove we knowingly concealed defects?

What should our next steps be? We are not in MS. We’ve always heard that you shouldn’t respond to a lawyer without legal advice but we don’t have a lawyer in MS.