When Randy Gravel and his wife, Jean, became first-time home buyers a few years ago, they had the usual concerns about such a considerable investment.

They worried about unexpected repairs, keeping up with their loan payments and the rising cost of property taxes.

What they didn’t count on, however, was spending night after night fearing that the roof over their heads might come crashing down on them as they slept.

It is just one of the many concerns that the couple has now, Randy Gravel said earlier this week, after the house that they bought in Blaine in 2000 started to crumble.

When the couple first noticed problems with their one-story home, they sought help from everyone that they could think of. When those efforts proved fruitless, the Gravels turned to the legal system. The couple filed suit in December 2003 against four parties, including the person who sold them the house and the bank where they got their mortgage. The suit alleges fraud on the part of the seller and contends that the Gravels were denied their choice of attorney by the bank for use in a residential mortgage transaction.

The case is still moving through the court system. Last week, an attorney for Banknorth N.A., one of the parties named in the suit, asked for a summary judgment in the lawsuit that the Gravels filed. The pre-verdict judgment eliminates the need for the matter to go before a jury and usually leads to a prompt disposition of the case.

The couple’s lawyer, Patrick Hunt of Island Falls, is fighting the request, and the couple is seeking an award for damages, court costs, attorney fees and whatever further relief the court may deem reasonable.

“We wanted a home”

“We’re just like any other family,” Randy Gravel said Monday. “We wanted a home.”

Gravel, 46, and his wife, Jean, 51, contracted to purchase the log cabin on U.S. Route 1 more than four years ago for $38,000. They inked a deal for the property with its former owner, Lona Shaw, formerly known as Lona Mullen, of Presque Isle.

The couple secured a loan through Peoples Heritage Bank in Houlton, which is a division of Banknorth N.A. Gravel said Monday that they were assisted in the loan process by Julie Delano, listed in court documents as an agent and officer at the bank.

As a first-time home buyer, Randy Gravel admitted that the whole process daunted him. He was not aware of many of his rights as a consumer and acknowledged that he and his wife were going through the process at a stressful time in their lives.

“My wife really wanted to get her own place,” he said simply. “She had cancer, and she wanted a place where she could rest and recover from her [medical] treatments. And for a while things didn’t look good for her. She wanted the house – just in case.”

According to the Gravels’ lawsuit, they told Delano that they wanted to retain their own attorney for the closing on the home, the title search, and issuance of title insurance.

Delano, according to court documents filed by Hunt, “insisted that the [Gravels] use the bank’s attorney,” indicating that it would make the process faster.

Randy and Jean Gravel agreed and also decided not to purchase title insurance. The insurance protects the purchaser from claims against the home.

Hunt explained that home buyers often are advised to retain an attorney to look over contracts and other documents in order to protect their interests. Because the couple was denied their choice of attorney, Hunt said recently, they went into the deal unaware of many things, including defects in the house.

Everything falls apart

It was only after signing the paperwork and moving into the dwelling that he and his wife first noticed the problems Randy Gravel said Monday.

Walking through the quaint, modestly decorated home, Gravel nods at the defects in the interior of the dwelling that have sprung up all around him.

Pieces of the ceiling tiles are bulging from above, and the molding that lines the walls is splintering. Most of the glass in the doors and windows is bowed outward, the result of pressure from the roof, which is sagging on the doors and window frames.

“We have to beat on some of them [the windows] with a hammer to get them open,” Gravel said. “And then we have to go outside to get them closed. Some of the windows don’t open at all. When summer comes, you wouldn’t believe how hot it gets in here. Even with fans going all summer long, you don’t get much relief if you can’t open your windows.”

Right after moving in, they noticed live electrical wires in the cellar and had to pay an electrician to rewire the home.

After fixing a clogged drain one day, Gravel said, his wife heard water running down into the cellar.

“She went down there and it was flooded,” he said. “My wife pulled on one of the pipes, and the water spilled out onto the floor.”

After that, it got even worse.

They discovered that the furnace was defective, and the well was contaminated by petroleum that seeped out from an ill-repaired tank. Sewage from the septic system was leaking into a nearby brook. The couple also discovered that the structure was infested with dry rot.

As time passed, mice and termites started coming out from everywhere.

On Monday, the 46-year-old walked down a rickety set of steps to point out flaws in the cellar. The flimsy boards that lead to the dirt chamber are worn, and rusty nails jut out from one side of the staircase.

Both the cellar and the garage take on water. One flood damaged most of Gravel’s tools and some paperwork that belonged to his stepson. Their homeowners insurance did not cover what they lost.

Most of Randy Gravel’s tools lay frozen this week beneath a thick sheet of ice on the garage floor.

Perhaps most astonishingly, the couple found out after they’d closed the deal that they didn’t even own much of the land that their house was on. The property that they thought they’d purchased wasn’t really theirs after all.

“We only own a tiny section of this,” Gravel explained this week, gesturing toward a small parcel of snow-covered land behind the home. “The state and the town own the rest of it. We’ll most likely never own it.”

The couple does own a piece of land that is just up the hill. An engineer suggested that they move their home to that property and be done with the water and sewer problems.

“I asked him, who is going to pay for that?” Gravel said comically.

The case

When the Gravels received the loan, the bank sent an appraiser to look at the property. As was the case with the Gravels, the couple paid for the appraiser as part of the loan fees. The rest of the money that was set aside for investigation as part of the loan, Gravel said, went to pay for a series of water tests. An appraiser, who estimates the market value of the property, is not the same as a home inspector, who looks at the structural and mechanical condition of the home.

A low appraisal on a house, however, can reflect structural problems that need repairs.

The couple did not have the money to hire a home inspector, and the Blaine resident admitted that he knew very little about what prospective buyers should look for in a home or the questions that they should ask.

“I’m not a contractor,” he said. “We saw the house before the sale, but I didn’t know what to look for. We asked [the seller] if there were any defects in the home, and she said ‘no.’ We only started noticing all of this stuff after we’d signed the papers and moved in.”

Gravel is frustrated with what he feels was a substandard job by the appraiser. He maintains that the representative only peeked down into the couple’s cellar, which is accessible by an outside door that is built into the foundation of the house.

“If she had gone down there, she would have noticed the plumbing pipes that were hung up with boards,” he said. “She also said that the house didn’t have mice or termites. If the house didn’t appraise well, maybe I would have known something was up.”

These issues, Patrick Hunt said, were all something that an attorney working on the couple’s behalf could have helped them discover and rectify.

The Gravels also are pointing a finger at the home’s seller, Lona Shaw.

The Gravels’ suit alleges that Shaw “made false representations” which were of a material fact about the property and “made said representations with knowledge of their falsity, or with a reckless disregard for the truth.”

Gravel contended this week that Shaw told him that the entire house had been remodeled before he purchased it with the exception of one bedroom. Subsequent investigation, according to court documents, revealed that it had not.

During the court hearing late last week, Shaw told Justice E. Allen Hunter that she didn’t feel that she should be a party in the case.

“I did what the bank told me to do,” she said. “I painted the house and put in new receptacles … and now I’m being sued.”

She also told Hunter that the Gravels had the home listed for sale in a local newspaper for $20,000 more than the price that they paid for it.

David McConnell, an attorney representing both Banknorth and Delano, argued before Hunter that both parties satisfied their obligations to the Gravels regarding their right to use their own attorney and to purchase title insurance. He also maintained that Delano was not registered with the Maine Office of Consumer Credit Regulation as a “supervised lender” and therefore should not be held liable in the case.

According to court documents, a “supervised lender” is defined as “a person authorized to make or take assignments of supervised loans, either under a license issued by the administrator [of the Office of Consumer Credit Regulation] or as a supervised financial organization.”

Court documents filed by the attorneys for Bank North also contend that Delano informed the couple of their right to choose their own lawyer and that she provided them with a written notice of those rights, which they signed. The documents also state that the Gravels did get to choose their own attorney and signed a document stating that.

In a recent interview, Hunt said that the Gravels did not pick their own attorney; they just went along with a suggestion by Delano on the premise that it would expedite the process.

At last week’s court hearing, Hunt argued that Delano should not be able to escape liability because she is not registered as a supervised lender. He also maintained that the Gravels felt duress during the loan process.

“You are sitting in a bank office begging for money to buy your dream home,” Hunt told the judge. “And the message is clear – the loan might be procured if you do it our way, or the loan might not be procured if you do it another way.”

McConnell referred further questions about the case to a representative for Banknorth, Jeff Nathanson, who said Wednesday he could not comment on pending litigation.

Today, the Gravels are waiting to find out the judge’s decision on the bank’s request for summary judgment. While Jean’s cancer is in remission, Randy Gravel was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease nine months ago. The couple has sunk more than $15,000 into repairs for the home and were given an estimate that it would cost more than $100,000 to fix all of the defects in the dwelling.

Many of the couple’s friends have donated labor and supplies to help them repair what they can.

Gravel acknowledged that the house is listed for sale at more than they purchased it for, but only because of the amount of money for repairs that they have put into the place.

As he waits to hear the future of his case, Randy Gravel is adamant in his belief that officials should do more to assist first-time homeowners.

“You know, my wife and I are just like everybody else,” he said. “We’ve got worries, and we’ve got bills to pay. We just want the problem rectified. We also want people to know that this happens … You know how people say ‘buyer beware?’ They mean it.”