Defects (deliberately kept from us) when new property was purchased

We bought a new house in March 2007. My husband was not keen as it is a flat
roof. We were given a (verbal) guarantee by the agent that the roof does not
leak. (her son is a contracter and fixed it for the previous owner). When we
moved in the sealing in the flatlet was loose and falling out - they (the
agents son) fixed it up free of charge. As soon as summer rains started the
main house\'s roof started leaking really bad, even running down the sealing
fans, pouring, tripping lights etc. and obviously damaged the newly painted
sealings. As summer progressed more damage stared showing - water leaking of
all walls and discolouring skirtings, cornaces etc I walked into the shower on suite
in the main bedroom one morning , finding the bathroom carpet soaked -
thinking that a toilet pipe is leaking - just to find that the wall is wet -
obviously water running down the wall. I contacted the agent and after 2 or
three attempts were advise that she will give me the name of people who I can contact to fix
this. As we do not use the flatlet often - we only discovered a week or two
ago that the sealing in the flatlet is also damp again and coming out again.
As if this is not enough - the walls in the flatlet are damp and
\"bubbling\" the paint away. We have spent close on R22000 to paint the
house before we moved in. Another problem is the electricity in the
flatlet - as soon as two appliances are put on ,the power trips (and it has
an electrical compliance certificate...)
When we sold our property we had to complete a lists of \"defects\" of our
property. We never received a \"defect list\" for the new property. We
guarantee that we would not have bought the property was the severe leakages
etc known to us. And the agent clearly knew how my husband felt about this -
hence her giving us \"a guarantee\" that the house does not leak.

When we bought we set out a price as to what we can afford and discussed
this with the agent. Knowing that we buy to \"move in and live and not
having to fix up.

Needless to say - we are very unhappy about this and felt that we have been
deceived and \"conned\" into buying the property, because defects etc were
not showed to us or simply just kept from us.And we also did not budget for
maintenance to this extent.

Could you please advise how we can handle this problem and if we have a leg
to stand on should this require legal action.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require additional
information.

(South Africa)

Based on what you say here, you could file suit against them (or at least threaten to do so) in small claims court or in regular court; filing in small claims court is easier and requires no attorney but amountsare limited of course...you could try to collect all of the costs and damages that you suffered due to their behavior... You can argue they purposely withheld material information and in fact were fraudulent in what they represented to you.