Home Inspections

Of course nobody's thrilled about yet another fee when buying a home. And a little bit of money spent on a home inspection can be the difference between delight and disaster. As a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, it seemed like a good idea to give you an overview on home inspection before closing the deal. Did you know that some government municipalities actually have a licensing test ?

While neither of us were surprised to find out some bureaucrats would wrap some policy around home inspection, both Gudrun and Tcat were quite surprised to find the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors stated, "Typically, these government adopted exams are horribly inferior to InterNACHI's Online Inspector Examination." However, this trade group is not a solo offering. You also have the American Society of Home Inspectors. It is a large enough business to have its own trade show. It called, appropriately enough, InspectionWorld.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the topic is how much the regulations vary from state to state. For example: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas all carry some sort of insurance requirements for home inspectors, with some the states requiring errors and omissions insurance in addition to injury or damage coverage.

Other states such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming have no insurance requirements.

If you would like to know more about home inspection, our sources recommended The Complete Book of Home Inspection written by Norman Becker and published by McGraw-Hill. We noticed earlier or used versions than the current 2002 offering being sold on the Internet for a whopping cost of a dollar USD, with shipping and handling being about $3.50 USD. So certainly, for fewer than five dollars you can learn what a certified home inspector is looking for and pre-check.

In the United States, it's pretty much impossible to get a mortgage on a home without inspection from a certified home inspector. A typical starting price for inspection is about $500 USD. This is a real bargain when you consider the various ailments your new dream home could actually have lurking about, unseen. Just consider for example, dry wood termites, and/or subterranean termites having been invisibly starting eating away at the home. Suddenly, your dream home may be a hidden worst nightmare.

If you happen to be looking at purchasing in Europe, there is two separate types of inspections available. An inspection from a professional that does not carry errors and omissions insurance starts at about EUR800. A more thorough inspection including structures with somebody having errors and omissions insurance on the line Gudrun states, "you can put a zero" on the end of that estimate.

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