We couldn’t close the purchase without insurance. But getting workable insurance meant replacing a furnace, and that work needed to happen after the buyers owned the house.
That was the problem I found myself working through this spring on a rural property just north of Bradford.
It became one of those transactions that teaches you something new, even after years in real estate. The challenge was finding a sequence of steps that the buyers, sellers, insurer, and professionals involved could all accept.
An Older Furnace Became the Biggest Obstacle
When I’m helping buyers consider a rural property, there are some additional questions to work through. Property boundaries, the septic system, and the well all deserve attention alongside the usual home inspection.
On this property, however, the biggest obstacle turned out to be the heating system.
The house had an older oil furnace that had been refurbished, with a single-wall oil tank in the basement. The tank appeared to be in good condition, with no obvious rust, but its age and construction became concerns when the buyers tried to arrange insurance.
We encountered repeated refusals. The options that did come back carried conditions and premiums approaching twice what we would otherwise have expected for the house.
Meanwhile, the mortgage lender required acceptable insurance before the purchase could close.
We had a heating system the buyers intended to replace, but its presence was preventing them from completing the purchase.
Why Replacing It Before Closing Wasn’t a Simple Answer
One suggestion was to have the buyers install the new furnace before taking ownership.
At first glance, that might sound practical. Replace the equipment, resolve the insurance concern, and move ahead.
But it would also mean the buyers were paying to improve a property they did not yet own. If the transaction failed to close, they could have paid for a new furnace in someone else’s house.
That was a risk we needed to avoid.
Instead, we had to find a way to bridge the period between the change in ownership and the replacement of the heating system.
Negotiating Money for the Work
I negotiated a $30,000 allowance from the sellers toward the work that needed to be done.
The arrangement addressed the replacement furnace, removal of the oil tank, and any necessary remediation associated with that removal. It also included money toward issues identified with the property’s water and drainage systems.
That mattered because solving the insurance problem was only part of the job. The buyers also needed a financial plan for addressing the equipment and property concerns after closing.
Having that allowance negotiated gave us something concrete to work with when we returned to the insurance discussion.
Getting the Insurer to Accept a Plan
The eventual solution involved arranging a short extension of the existing insurance coverage, prepaid at the buyers’ expense, to bridge the transition while the heating work was completed.
It took several approaches to get there.
Simply explaining that the buyers intended to replace the furnace wasn’t enough. We had to provide documentation showing that the replacement, oil tank removal, and necessary remediation were part of a concrete plan.
The intended result was a home heated by propane, with the old oil equipment removed.
Once we secured an arrangement that allowed the purchase to proceed, the buyers could take ownership and move forward with the work.
That temporary insurance solution was specific to this transaction. Getting it accepted required persistence and a clear explanation of what would happen next.
The Well and Drainage Issues Needed Attention, Too
There were also two separate water-related concerns.
The property had a pond and an outdoor drainage structure that operated much like a sump pump, returning water to the pond. It was something the buyers did not want to retain, and decommissioning and filling it became part of the work we needed to account for.
The water supply well had a different issue. Its intake pipe sat low enough that it was drawing sediment from the bottom. Raising the pipe was identified as the proposed fix.
These concerns reinforced why rural purchases deserve a careful look at the systems serving the property. A house can appeal to a buyer while still having equipment or infrastructure that needs attention.
What This Transaction Taught Me
The propane tanks were subsequently installed, and by the time I recorded this story, the buyer had received the new furnace a few weeks earlier. The heating conversion appeared to be taken care of.
For me, the biggest lesson was about how the different parts of a purchase depend on one another.
A repair allowance alone would not have solved this transaction. The lender still needed insurance. The insurer still needed a plan it could accept. And the buyers needed to complete the purchase before committing to substantial work on the property.
My role was to keep working through those connections, negotiate money toward the repairs, and help find a practical order in which everything could happen.
Every rural property brings a slightly different set of questions. This one reminded me that experience includes continuing to learn, asking more questions when the first answer doesn’t resolve the problem, and staying with the process until there is a workable path forward.
That’s the kind of lesson I want to share here on Sold on Bradford: a real situation, the challenge it presented, and what I took away from helping my clients through it.
