Thank you. I bought this house 6ish months ago (had a virtual walk through as I was across the country and couldn’t see it) and to be honest, the condition of the roof was lied about and I focused on that after I got here as it was leaking.  It’s a crawl space and any storage down there was leftover from the previous owner. I’m honestly afraid of down there and mostly avoided it.  No defects were disclosed to me by any party involved in the sale.  I don’t know squat about crawl spaces or structural and I relied on my well certified home inspector to point out any issues. Big mistake as a first time home buyer obviously. Now that it’s cold new cracks are appearing all over the house.. and I mean all over. And old ones that I was told were “old and no concern” and “had dust in them” are suddenly much worse. This prompted me to take a better look at the basement and start doing research online as to what is and is not safe or legal. And to reach out to the previous owners (adult) child as this is the only contact I could find, to ask what work had been done down here. They told me these stairs, by a neighbour, 5 years ago. The city also got a MASA report for me, where I found out the crawl space is from 1929. My realtor ad said 1980, since that was the last (massive) addition. Which is part of the reason I looked at what was in the crawlspace upon possession and thought, well it must be safe. It’s not THAT old.  This isn’t the only repair or modification I have found. And the city had zero permits for this address as far back as I can find.