April 2021 by Karen
My husband and I bought our first house with Ron Leonard. What a mess! As we walked through the house we were ultimately buying, I checked to make sure faucets and showers worked. In the master bathroom (second bathroom I checked) he hurried me along, saying "yes, yes, the water works, come on look over here." As it turns out, that particular shower didn't drain very well. The bottom wasn't sloped correctly toward the drain, so water pooled and mold grew there if we didn't clean it frequently. Hmm. Later, in the basement, we observed some discoloration on the baseboards and asked about potential flooding but he insisted it was fine. As it turns out, that basement flooded all the time. Neighbors told us later that the previous owners had endless issues with the basement flooding. Hmm. When we were asking our questions and trying to be as informed as possible prior to purchasing our first home he got impatient and said if it would make us feel better he'd buy us a home warranty just so we could get on with it. He actually did not follow through though. On moving day, we arrived with a truck full of boxes, only to find the basement flooded. At that time we began investigating solutions and found a company that would fix it for about 15k, which was not covered by the home warranty since he didn't actually set that up for us. The furnace had no oil in the tank. Ron told us to just buy some kerosene to get through until we could fill the tank and we'd be fine. Wasn't fine though. Turned out the transformer on the furnace was broken and had been for a while, according to the tech who fixed it. He said it had to have been failing for months, and somebody kept pushing the reset button just to make it turn on for shorter and shorter times. It had gotten quite cold in the house (since we bought in February and the furnace was broken), and some water that had leaked into the threads of the water pipes froze, breaking the joints. The leaks were discovered upon running the dishwasher during our housewarming party. Ron actually laughed at us for thinking the pipes froze because it doesn't get cold enough here for that to happen. Turns out, maybe not cold enough to freeze the whole pipe full of water, but some drops in the threads, absolutely. "House got too cold and pipes froze" was exactly the plumber's diagnosis. NONE OF THESE FAILURES WERE DISCLOSED PRIOR TO SALE. Yes, we did hire an inspector. Understand it's the inspectors job to catch these things. Jarboe home inspections was the top recommendation from Ron Leonard and that's who we hired. He "inspected" the house for hours, but somehow concluded everything was in good shape. As the first year went by, we found more and more. Every toilet needed to be fixed. The drain pipe for the master shower randomly broke at a joint, just like the one for the dishwasher. The pipes under the kitchen sink had been repaired with mobile home parts. Those are a different size btw. One of them was cracked and had been sealed with what appeared to be super glue and a wad of chewed gum. Within the first 6 month of buying that disaster we must have spent at least 50k fixing it so it was what we thought we were buying in the first place. One of our friends that was around during some of the flooding drama met Ron Leonard and described him as a snake oil salesman. He always referred to him in that way ever since. Honestly, the very best part of our first home buying experience was actually our mortgage company, which Ron Leonard railed against every step of the way. He said "don't trust them, fly by night online bank, will take your money and run!" Lol! One could probably infer some things about that. We even received a random bill months after closing for (not kidding) "services rendered" from the closing attorney that Ron Leonard most highly recommended as the best in the area. What a racket! Sure felt like he was working for everybody but us. My re