<p>awgee, correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you can prove the seller knew of the problem, even a cracked foundation would be you issue to fix and not the seller.</p>
<p>More importantly, anything that is material will end up being fought, so to be safe, basically assume all transactions are "as-is". The only difference with a REO is the REO won't give any disclaimers. A private party, you'll get the boiler plate disclaimers. Anything that is written on the disclaimers should be checked extremely diligently as it wil likely be Realtorspeak and euphemistic. </p>