Home Inspections

As an informed home seller, you already know that the buyer is usually responsible for getting a home inspection on your house before closing. What we're about to reveal to you is an important secret that can deliver a higher price to you, faster, and with much less stress, than if you go the traditional route of waiting for a buyer to perform your home inspection!

Yes, we are a home inspection company, and yes, we have a vested interest in whether you, the seller, decide to get us to inspect your home before listing it. But this is the very reason you should listen to us: we perform home inspections for the BUYER all the time, and believe us, we do see all the heartache, all the surprises, and all the deal collapses at the end of the process when the two parties are trying to negotiate the "surprise" repairs on the home. This is no small deal; both parties are emotionally and financially invested in the property, and we see tears, anger, disappointment, fist banging, and depression follow our discoveries. Why not turn these emotions into happiness and excited anticipation?

Much has been written about seller inspections. But most of these articles or the short listings you see on inspection websites do not really get at the heart of the matter: that as home inspectors we see severe problems over the "surprises" we find at least 50% of the time and deals that fall through when things could have gone very differently! The factor that has been touched on in many discussions about the seller's perspective - the emotional attachment to the home - is central to the advice here. The emotional strings get pulled during the buyer's inspection and appear as big surprises to the homeowner who thought they already knew their home completely. When they see the results of the report - even when the repair list is tiny - they become upset because it is their home and these items may be a big surprise to them. Or they may under-react and try to "sweep them under the carpet", telling the buyer that the home is really perfect and anything the inspector found cannot really be important.

So instead of listing out the things that you already know about sellers' inspections (allows more time, seller can help inspector, issues in the report can be verified, makes the home show better, the report becomes a marketing tool, etc,), we will talk about 4 additional reasons that fully address the anguish that we routinely see on buyer's inspections. Here is why you, the seller, should get a pre-listing inspection:

1. Get the SURPRISES over with and out of the way! Deal with the sensitive emotions early and give them time to dissipate. By the time home buyers begin looking at your house, you have replaced emotion with confidence and logic. And even if the buyer decides to get his/her own inspection, which is not uncommon, you will be far ahead on the reality curve and in a position to carry out delicate negotiations with poise and a winning attitude.

2. Because you just got rid of the surprises, you can now price your home fairly and come to grips with the issues you found. This in turn leads to much better marketing of the home because buyers now realize that you are a realist and that what they are looking at is a well cared for house without the last minute inspection surprises. And what everyone says is true: use the pre-listing inspection as a marketing tool and a demonstration of good faith to your potential buyers.

3. Reap the financial rewards of a pre-listing inspection by reducing, if not eliminating, the last minute repair negotiations from surprises you didn't know about. Stressful, time pressured discussions about repair responsibilities and possible embarrassment over large repair items lower your own cash reserves and may even kill the sale.

4. Take care of your legal responsibilities early on so they do not come back to bite you. A pre-listing inspection will supplement the legal requirement to disclose ("Seller's Disclosure") all known defects in the home. You say you'd rather not know? Well, back to point number 1: Get the surprises over with and out of the way! Certainly you would rather not know what other defects lurk in your home in addition to the ones you already know about - but the pay me now or pay me later adage will be true in this case and we're advising you to get this important bit of emotional upset out of the way also. The fact is that 99.9% of all homes do have defects - some big, some small. Find out up front with a pre-listing inspection.

Now that you've read this, you are in the Catbird Seat. You know you are going to get the emotional pressures of the condition of your home out of the way before any of your buyers show up. Now you are in a position to enjoy the selling process, have confidence in the negotiation phase, and not be shocked when the buyers order an inspection of their own. Your poise and positive attitude will be infectious to your potential buyers, and the deal will go much more smoothly. You have just replaced the "surprise" ingredient with the "profit" ingredient. Congratulations!

Copyright 2010 Lisa Turner