Home Warranties and Inspections - Siding coming off 2 weeks after house purchase

I am trying to find help/ get some ideas here for a family member (old lady).
She recently bought a 1980's townhouse. Closing was 2 weeks ago. She had a home inspection done.
I helped her move some stuff into the house yesterday and she told me the neighbour (townhouse on the left) told her there is an issue with the siding.
It seems on the front left corner the siding is bowing out and not behind the vertical corner strip anymore. (i do not know what they are called)
There also is a whole piece hanging completely lose (maybe held by one nail) - basically the highest piece right under the ridge of the roof.
I doubt this just happened within the past 2 weeks.

I was wondering what a professional would recommend to do ? I see a lot of posts by home inspectors here. Would this be covered under the home inspectors insurance ?

I never bought a house before so my knowledge is limited. She is (as mentioned) an old lady and doesn't use the internet so i thought i try to find some information for her.

Quite possibly not worth the effort to document, file, and sue for insurance. Sounds like vinyl siding, which is very easily corrected with a few nails.

I am a home inspector, so I will try to give you input from that perspective.

First, are you certain that the inspector has insurance? (many do not, unless required by state law).

Second, did this condition exist at the time of inspection? Are there some photos in the report that show this (even if they do not intend to?)

Next, get an estimate for repair so that you have a good idea of how much money you are talking about (perhaps all teh siding is poorly hung and about to fall off).

Then, you can attempt to negotiate with the inspector and call him out for a review of teh current condition (if you fix it first, without allowing him to see it, you may lose out).

It clearly did not just happen overnight, but it also may not have been easily visible at the time of the inspection, in which case, you cannot blame the inspector (he can't report what is not visible at the time).

If it was visible to some extent and missed, ask what the inspector intends to do to help make this right since he missed it. Some guys often pay for smaller repairs that occur if they feel they made an honest minor oversight.

The fact that a neighbor knew of it, may indicate that the seller hid it and then the case would be against the seller.

If you are handy, you might, as suggested previously, attempt to drive the nails in yourself to secure the siding (not difficult). If you have specific questions about Vinyl siding, this is the best site I have found: http://www.vinylsiding.org/

Hope this was helpful, and please feel free to ask questions!! Good luck!

Great reply !!! Thank you so much.
I can only go from what she told me.
She said she paid extra to have the home inspection insured. I don't know if this sounds plausible - again i can only go from what she says.

The way it looks to me - because the top piece is so lose that it actually hangs almost 90 degrees away from the wall plus the way the rest bows away from the wall at the corner looks like it was poorly installed (not enough fasteners??) It's also very easy to spot aslong as you stand on the neighbours front yard. In my opinion it was there 2 weeks ago but the inspector probably didn't bother to look at the house from that angle...

I am very handy for the most part - i do all my home repairs myself (except touching gas lines) BUT because it's a townhouse and the damage is towards the neighbours and above their roof i'd have to climb on their roof to fix it. That just invites too many possible problems ....i don't want to be blamed for damage/ something i didn't do ... you know how that goes.

Again many thanks for the great advice and information. Just out of curiosity... the problem area is about 6x6 feet plus another 2x4 feet above the neighbours roof (just rough numbers - obviously up there its more of a triangle shape). What kind of repair costs would we look at if she tries to hire someone to fix it (assuming the inspector will not be helpful). We are in NY state btw so i recommended to her to have it taken care of ASAP before we get lots of snow.

If it was only loose but not visibly buckling or hanging off, then it is likely that the inspector did not view it from teh angle needed to see the problem. One other question - did he walk on the roof? If so, how did he access the roof (did he pass in front of these loose panels and miss that they were loose? If so, that is a bad job).

I have never heard of an upcharge for an insured inspection, but if I paid for one, you can be darned certain that I would be calling him up saying "About that insurance....I have some loose siding that I think should have been noticed..." See where that gets you.

I think I would call either a trusted handyman, or a siding contractor for the job (a general contractor might give it a shot, but it is a very small job and you may find them hard to get in contact with). The costs vary widely, but I think this sounds like a small job and I would be surprized if it exceeded $150 (or whatever the typical service call charge is in your area) to fix.