Nondisclosure Of Known Adverse Material Facts

Location: Boise, Idaho

My husband and I just purchased our first home (Boise Area). We invested in high quality inspections and mold and radon testing during the inspection process.

The inspection identified a water leak from the master bathroom into the crawl space that left a mold spot in the crawl space. This was negotiated and the sellers fixed the leak and remediated the mold spot. (There were other things fixed and negotiated but this is the one of significance).

5 days after moving in, I noticed a bubble under a tile in the master bathroom. I cut the tile up and uncovered a large amount of moisture and mold. I immediately covered it, sealed it, and contacted a remediation company. I am pregnant and absolutely afraid of exposure to anything harmful.

We spoke to our realtor about this too (knowing it’s not her fault, we did everything as thorough as we could). Since we had such thorough inspections done, she thought it was weird that this mold issue wasn’t identified and went down a rabbit hole of everything that has been done to this house.

She called the original restoration company and they were so happy that she called. They told her that when they came for the initial leak and restoration from the negotiations, they found substantial water damage to the bathroom wall and floors, including photos and documented moisture readings of everything. They informed the sellers, with their real estate team on the email threads, informing them of what they found. The sellers then declined to repair it. The restoration company made them sign a release of liability form stating that they were made aware and are choosing to not move forward with remediating the issue. Their realtors were aware as they were included on all of the email threads with this information. They additionally did not update their disclosures.

We were never informed of this finding (that was found while we were under contract). Neither was our realtor.

We are considering whether or not to pursue legal action since they were aware of this situation and didn’t disclose. With my pregnancy, I would not have moved forward with this purchase had this have been disclosed. We also do not have the funds to repair our bathroom (it has been gutted due to the mold remediation). We are needing to take out a personal loan for this in the meantime.

Is there a real case here, or would we be wasting our time/money pursuing them?