Home Inspections

First off, for all of those whom do not know, a Home Inspection is where a person or persons hire a Professional Inspector to inspect a property in which they have interest in no matter if they are on the buying side or selling side of the transaction. The majority of the times Home Inspections are ordered by the Buyers of a property but over the last couple of years Sellers have been getting inspections to help market their property for a quick sale.

Buying a home is a decision which is probably the most expensive decision most people will make in their lifetime. Unless one is familiar with all of the different phases of what is involved in the entire construction process, that decision to buy a home could be a very costly mistake. We are talking thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just because the home was bought on emotion. That is why the Home Inspection is so very important.

Lets briefly run through the entire real estate transaction of a young couple buying their first home and they don't get their new home inspected.

Young Couple meets Real Estate Agent and tells the agent the size and type of property they would like to purchase. They go out looking over the next couple of weekends and they look at a dozen properties and then they see the one, the home of their dreams. They can't wait to get back to the Agents office so they can write up an offer and get things moving. They get to the negotiation part of deal and they are overwhelmed because the sellers have trimmed $5000 from the original asking price. The young couple thinks they are getting the house of their dreams at a great price and accept the seller's final asking price. In most cases their completed contract starts a 10 day inspection period (although that is negotiable); however the couple has looked at the house and didn't see any problems of any kind so they decided to not pay the $250 for a Home Inspection although the Real Estate Agent explained to young couple of the importance and value of an Inspection. The Agent got them to sign a waiver on the Buyers Inspection Sellers Response and life was good for the young couple.

They moved in and after a couple of weeks they discovered a water stain on the living room ceiling. They run to the window and looked out and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and their first thoughts were it was raining. The couple had no idea what to do so they started looking for and calling plumbers from the internet and yellow pages only to find out because it was a holiday they were hard to locate all the while the stain continued to grow and the drywall began to bulge. They located a plumber and summoned them on their way but he was a couple of hours away. The drywall ceiling continued to bulge until it just could not hold any more water. At last it burst and water fell from the ceiling, along with drywall and insulation, down into the living room onto their brand new LCD TV and caused several thousand dollars in water damage by the time the plumber got there to shut the water off. The poor couple was now faced with thousands of dollars in repairs because they did not know a few things that a Home Inspection would have found.
If the couple would have spent $250 on a Home Inspection they would have known a few things that could have saved them the thousands of dollars they now face with repairs and damages.
The first thing they would have known, is where the main shutoff valve was for the water so they could have limited their repair cost to the leak repair and the ceiling drywall repair which would have probably been a couple of hundred dollars.

The next and probably the most important part thing they would have know if they had an inspection, would have been that the house was plumbed with Polybutylene piping which is known for its many problems and there were thousands of lawsuits from homes that had the piping installed. There were rebates offered and assistance was given for people to re-pipe their homes because this piping had so many problems. The Home Inspector would have most likely caught that and informed the young couple of the piping and would have probably recommended that it be re-piped and they could have made a more informed decision on purchasing the house. If they still wanted the house, they could have renegotiated the price with the seller to have the re-piping done.

Now their $5000 off of the list price which the seller dropped during their negotiations is not looking so good because now they have the cost of the re-piping and repairs which far outweighs that.

That is just a small example of what would have been found in the Plumbing phase of the inspection and a full Home Inspection covers all phases of the construction process such as Electrical, Heating and Air Conditioning, Structural, Foundation, Roofing, Attic, Fireplaces, and so much more.

Please don't let this happen to you if you are buying a home, or to someone you know, and Real Estate Agents, please print this article out and let your clients read it if they are thinking of foregoing an Inspection.

Have your Home Inspection done by a Certified Home Inspector in your State.