Eventually, we found our little abode. It had everything we were looking for. Great area, close to the freeway for work, great school district, big lot. It was freshly remodeled and looked great. Granted, there were some issues. The attic was covered in mold due to poor ventilation, which was taken care of prior to closing, there had been some foundation work done in the family room and basement which we received receipts and warranties for, okay, a little off-putting, but the work was guaranteed right? There had been evidence of a little bit of water in the basement, but definitely not a swimming pool's worth of water, we weren't overly concerned.
The problems didn't become apparent until the first Spring that we lived there. We began to notice a horizontal crack in the drywall in the family room, right at the ground line, strange, right? This is a wall that had formally been worked on. I contacted the contractor who worked on it and he deduced in time that there was some movement happening and that fix would be under warranty. Great! We wouldn't have to worry about a huge fix we couldn't afford.
To make a extremely long and boring story short, it took a year and half of nagging and legal involvement to get said contractor back over to complete the warranty work. These "C" channels and tie-backs are the fix and we currently get to look at these until we get this wall re-built. Merry Christmas. However, this wall shouldn't be doing much moving in the foreseeable future. This fix, if we were responsible would have cost in the ball park of $21,000. Nice, right?
Moving on to the basement. We knew we had to find the source of the little stream of water flowing into the basement every time it rained even remotely hard. J knocked out all the drywall and found it covered in mold. Hooray! It took only a moment to realize why we had water coming into the house. "Step cracks" are typically not a huge deal, they are in fact, pretty common, but do you know what's not common? When your shit is vertically cracking and you can see the road from your basement! Uncovering this little gem created a sea of "Holy shit!" responses. 
But did we try to contact our insurance company to see if they could help? Yes, of course. Guess what, they won't help. They can not do anything for foundation issues. Thanks Bro, I'm glad you're getting our hard earned money every year to not protect our house from this shit. Well, what about the legal route? Did you try to sue the seller? Absolutely, but sadly, being an investor, their ass is covered, so we got to bend over and look at this...
The good news is... if you can see it through this hot mess is, my boss knows people, who know people. So, after having several contractors and builders over, we settled on someone we were very happy with to tear this shit down and rebuild a brand new wall. So, after a week of hiring said contractor, we do have a beautiful new wall that should be as strong as a bomb shelter.
We got to have the front part of the house ripped off, a giant hole dug to rip out the old wall, our porch and walkway needed to be ripped out because water was just flowing underneath the porch. The sump pump was not connected under ground which allowed water to just sit there and freeze and melt year after year. Luckily now, we have a working sump pipe, we'll have a new porch which is properly waterproofed, and in the Spring, we'll take advantage of having the walkway ripped out to install a lovely brick paver walkway. Silver Lining?
Finally, we long suspected our garage was sinking as well. We had it tuck pointed when we moved in. A year later, there were giant step cracks about an inch wide right where the tuck pointing was completed, just at this front corner. However, after having the brick stripped, our contractor found that there were no wall ties (which are required) so the weight of the brick was pulling on the wall and pushing down on itself creating the broken bricks. Good news? Maybe... or maybe this shit really is sinking, though upon putting a level on the foundation, it's as level as can be. Initially we were planning on having the garage underpinned, which upon conversations with an engineer and our contractor, it was ultimately decided underpinning would be a waste of money that we don't have.
The place is coming along. We'll have most of the brick back on the house today, possibly a new porch poured. The mess will work itself out. It supposed to rain for the entirety of Christmas week, but at least I won't have to worry about making G wait to open presents while I get down in the basement and mop up rain water.
After this wonderful experience, we're hoping this place will be worth it in the end. One of our neighbors pretty pointedly said, "Well, this just shows your commitment to staying in the neighborhood for the next 50 years!" Yeah, pretty much, because who the hell wants to deal with this again?
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