if you dont want to pay an electrician to figure it out you need to invest in some tools that will help you get a handle on whats going on. for 100$ you can get a handy little tone generator whic when hooked up to the wire in question will allow you to follow it throught the walls and determine where it goes. its kind of like a metal detedtor for the signal. if you a cheper option is to ohm it out get tone in the panel its connected all the way and your looking a bad breaker. thats probably not it though. any way the way its done is to just research it and build knowledge one thing at a time till..... you got involved and the mystery is solved know what i mean shaggy

I hope you either previously agreed in writing to let him take the fixtures or you sue him for the illegal theft of them.

Good point re the fixtures (reminds me of the Richard Pryor movie "Moving out) - it is illegal for a place to have bare wires or no fixture in place, so the place was probably sold not in compliance with local code. That may raise all sorts of legal and insurance ramifications.

I agree with Shaggy if it's wired right, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out, however, I don't think the toner is the right way to go unless you're very confident and knowledgeable, most cheaper toners are signal-only so you would have to disconnect or at the least turn off the power, there are some toners that will work with mains electricity but they are more expensive. I would buy a voltmeter and test each set of wires for voltage. You may have to separate some wires to work out what's going on (you want to work out which wire supplies the power from the panel, there may be other wires attached that feed another fixture downstream. It's important to label what you take apart meaningfully, and even though it will work to have the black wire from the supply and the white wire from a different set of wires go to the fitting, you must not do so, the supply must be set up to come from the same set of wires if you know what I mean.

If you are at all unsure, call an electrician. If you had a realtor working for you, you should discuss how this affects you. I can't see how it's legal if they did not leave replacement fittings, even if they were bare bulbs. If not talk to the vendor's realtor (politely and calmly)

Code and legal issues aside, it's just good manners to leave things in a safe, workmanlike fashion.

i wonder if this was a fixer upper or foreclosed home. either situation would be a valid reason for the fixtures to not be there. many foreclosed homes peopel take as much as they can before leaving. not necessarily right to do it, but they do. the bank sells AS-IS, so no recourse to get the fixtures.

on the other hand, if the fixtures were present when you entered into contract, then you may have recourse against whoever took them.

i don't know of a law that says it is illegal not to have fixtures at all boxes.

most likely the ceilign box is where the original fixture was and they ran the wall box off that. should be fairly simple to figure out, but requires some basic knowledge of wiring to do it.

it could also be a tripped GFCI or breaker somewhere, or evne jsut a bad switch.