NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Last spring, NewsChannel 5 Investigates exposed the dangers of buying a flipped house.
Now, state regulators have taken disciplinary action against the men responsible for the problems we first exposed.
NewsChannel 5 showed how the kitchen ceiling of a home in Madison completely collapsed, just months after Maria Stapleton moved in.
"Just one fell swoop, it was done," Stapleton said last May.
"Just fell down?" we asked.
"Just fell."
"The whole ceiling?"
"The whole ceiling," Stapleton said.
She had bought it from a house flipper who had purchased the home in foreclosure and then renovated it. The caved-in ceiling was just one of several major problems she told us she found in the house.
The state contractors board has now found that the house flipper and the company that actually did the renovation work all failed to have a required state contractor's license.
That board issued fines of $3,000 each against house flipper Keith Speer and his company, Innovative Re Solutions, as well as Dan Zumwalt and his company, Capital Construction.
NewsChannel 5 also showed you a house in Goodlettsville where the new homeowners discovered that major foundation problems had been simply covered up with drywall.
Homeowner Natasha Buttrey told NewsChannel 5 Investigates then that "we had no idea when we bought this house that it was going to have all of the problems that it does."
Paul Kazanofski, the man who flipped this house, claimed to be a licensed contractor.
But NewsChannel 5 found that he, in fact, wasn't.
Now, the contractors board has sent Kazanofski a warning letter, telling him that if he's caught doing this sort of work without a license, he could be fined up to $5,000 per violation.
Kazanofski, meanwhile, has reportedly agreed to buy back the house from the homeowner.
The sale is expected to go through next week.
Related story:
House Flippers' Dream Homes Turn Into Nightmares
