Looked at fixer in West Seattle yesterday. Sometimes you really do not need Superman's Xray vision or Sherlock Holmes' detective skills to do this job. On one of the furnace service stickers dated January 2008, it clearly says "water in oil, blew out line, need new tank". Water getting into the buried tank means oil getting out. Receipts for subsequent oil purchases were seen, but no new tank. When questioned about this, the owner of the soon-to-be-foreclosed home said she didn't think it was important. Probably not if she wanted to have a mini BP in her backyard! And it may have been leaking for years undetected, like about half of all tanks. Yikes. Except in this case we have written proof of her knowledge of the defect. Of course being foreclosed makes it a bit more difficult to negotiate this, disclosed or not---a blood out of turnip kind of thing. So the prospective buyer was going to check on the PLIA coverage (State Department of Ecology Oil Cleanup Insurance Program) and possibly go for it, since the house was a smokin' deal.
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