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You bought a house. You got settled in. Everything was going well, until the first rainfall. Bubbles appeared in the paint. Puddles appeared on the floor. Furniture and other property was damaged by the water intrusion. Having spent so much money on the home, you have a right to be angry. But what do you do next?
Was It Listed In The Disclosure Form Or Purchase Agreement?
In Florida, sellers of real estate have a duty to disclose all known issues that could impact a home’s value or desirability. This includes roof defects. Disclosures may be incorporated into the purchase agreement, but are more likely provided in a separate disclosure form. Check over the disclosure statement to see if any issues with the roof were listed. If not, and there is reason to believe that the seller knew about the roof leak, you may be able to pursue a claim for failure to disclose.
Did The Home Inspector Catch It?
You hired a home inspector to catch anything that may not have been revealed by the seller. Review the home inspection report to see whether the inspector made any comments about the state of the roof or called out any internal water damage or mold that may have been indicative of a roofing problem. If not, in some circumstances, the home inspector may he held accountable for missing the roof defect.
Did The Real Estate Agent Know About It?
While it is not the real estate agent’s job to inspect a home or detect potential defects, he or she does have an obligation to communicate to the buyer any defects that he or she has been made aware of. Unfortunately, there are agents who may make poor choices in order to make a sale. If there is an indication that the seller or another party informed the real estate agent of the roof leak and the agent failed to disclose the defect in the purchase agreement or disclosure statement, the agent may be on the hook.
What If This Is A New Home Or The Roof Was Recently Replaced?
Buying an older home and discovering that the roof leaks is one thing. What if you bought a new home and learned that the roof construction was defective? Maybe you recently hired a contractor to replace or fix your roof, only to learn during a future rainfall that the job was not done properly. Construction companies may be held accountable in these situations, not only for the cost of replacement, but for the cost of repairing any internal damage, including mold abatement. In some situations, there may be warranties that can help you address roof repairs.
You know that you need to move quickly in order to prevent further costly water damage. Perhaps you have already consulted with a roofing contractor and discovered that a fix will likely cost thousands of dollars, money that you might not have sitting around.
Depending on the specifics of your situation, your homeowners insurance policy may not provide coverage. Who do you turn to? A construction law attorney in Jacksonville may be able to help you find the appropriate legal remedy for your leaky roof. At Heekin Law, P.A., we have decades of experience helping homeowners overcome these challenges.
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to