The Home Inspection: For Buyers
Some states require inspections on homes for sale while others do not. Some sellers will provide you with a pre-listing inspection and others will not.
So do you need it? Unless building construction and remodeling is your business, yes you do. Instead of telling you why, let me tell you about Janice.
Janice is a smart lady who has purchased and remodeled many homes. She and her husband know all about houses.
But she fell in love. She had to have this house, and since she knew about houses, she didn’t hire an inspector. She did a very cursory inspection of her own, and paid the full asking price.
Then the fun began. The light fixture over the kitchen stove didn’t work and the seller told her the bulb was burned out. OK… she bought a new bulb. It still didn’t work, so she took the fixture down to repair it…only to find that there was no electrical wire going to that fixture. That’s the same reason why several of the outlets didn’t work.
While crawling around in the attic crawl space trying to get a wire to the light fixture she found a nest of carpenter ants. They were busily demolishing the beams above the second story ceiling.
The carpet was a bit wavy in the living room and master bedroom, so she called in the carpet people to re-stretch it. After they were finished and had been paid they said “By the way, you really need new carpet.” It seems that the previous owner had several small dogs who were not house trained. Thus she had shampooed the carpet so many times that the backing had come loose. Too bad the carpet people didn’t tell her before they stretched it.
Then there was the heating system. The owners had told her they used the alternative stove in the living room because they really didn’t need all the heat the main system put out. Several thousand dollars later she had a heating system that worked.
Janice’s troubles went on from there…and they were probably more extreme than most cases. The fact is she fell in love and at the same time fell prey to a dishonest seller (who seemed very sincere.) Had she gotten a home inspection he might have refused to make the repairs, and he might have refused to lower the price. But at least she would have gone into the purchase of her personal “Money pit” with her eyes wide open.
You’ll probably never fall in love with a house so riddled with problems, but even one of Janice’s troubles is too much. So hire an inspector and know what you’re getting.
Click here to contact me if you have any questions.
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