Home Inspections

People often think of home inspections as a service that is to be used immediately before someone buys a home. After the home is purchased then the home inspection and home inspector is seen as no longer needed. This is a mistaken thought. Home inspections can serve every single home owner at least every few years.

A good analogy to a home is a car. You expect a car to receive wear and tear and to need regular maintenance. Car owners are expected to inspect the oil level and to change the oil on a regular basis. Car owners are expected to check the air filter and change it when needed. Owners also check the car tires to make sure they are properly inflated so as to get better gas mileage and to save money. The home should get the same treatment. However like cars some owners take better care of them then others do.

If you are not completely familiar with all areas of a home and physically capable of climbing ladders and crawling though attic and crawl spaces then perhaps you should consider hiring a home inspector. You can locate a home inspector through several means. Some of them being internet search, real estate agent referral, referral from a friend or coworker, or perhaps you still have the contact information of the inspector that inspected your home as you were buying it.

When you are looking at hiring a person to do a maintenance inspection of your home you do not need to have the person inspect your home as fully as it would be done if you were about to buy the home. It is perfectly acceptable to ask the inspector to take a look at only your roof, attic and crawl space. These are the areas that are often the most difficult to gain access to. These same areas can be a bit dirty and risky to inspect.

Inspecting these few areas will not take a long time and will likely take less than an hour for the inspector to do. By looking at these areas the report will provide valuable information to you. Small issues can be discovered and the taken care of before the issue becomes a large costly problem to deal with. Small roof leaks are a good example. When I do inspections I often find energy saving concerns and provide the tips to improve them and save the homeowner money in the long run.

Another benefit of having a home inspector do the inspections is that the home inspector typically does not provide any repair services. This helps ensure that the report you are getting is honest and not motivated by a desire to earn money by doing repair work. So if you want to maintain the value of you home then hire a home inspector to inspect areas of your home at least once each year or two.