Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois

You should have an attorney review your sales contract including whatever rider obligated you to have the chimney cleaned and a valve replaced. Unless there is some language in the contract, or an argument such as fraud, the seller's obligation ends with the deed. Since tuckpointing is an issue that should be visible to a buyer and his home inspection professional prior to the closing, it is hard to see how the buyer could hold the seller responsible for those costs in the absence of any contractual obligation to the contrary.

While I would speak with your closing attorney to go back through the documents, it sounds like you are on fairly firm ground here. Short of there being some obligation arising out of the documents that would survive the closing, it sounds like it would be difficult for the buyers in this situation to suggest you hid something from them (such as you having problems that you did not reveal). There was specific discovery of issues with chimney and an agreement was reached on what would be addressed. The buyers could have insisted on more to be done at the time and were certainly on notice and could have had a contractor conduct a more thorough assessment. If need be, hire an attorney in a position to defend this to fire back concerning the insufficiency of the claims and the likely assessment of attorney's fees going the other way.