Whether you’re buying or selling, there’s no doubt that you need a home inspection. If you own a new or established home, we’re sure you’ll also benefit from a regularly scheduled home inspection.
You’re Buying A Home
You’re Selling A Home
Ask your agent, selling a home is a challenge. You’re working closely with your agent to put forward your best listing. You’re also interested in required repairs or upgrades that can help to expedite the sale of your home. But you’re not just selling your home, you’re competing with other home sellers. Even in a market with rising prices, buyers still have the advantage: if they don’t buy your home, there are more homes available down the street or across town.
A professional home inspection helps you to address issues prior to selling your home, prepare your home for its best showing, and ensure a successful home sale.
If you intend to put your house on the market, consider a pre-listing home inspection, which identifies items that inevitably will be identified by a homebuyer’s inspection. And if you’re listing your house, a listing with a home inspection signals to buyers that you’ve developed an effective negotiation position because you’ve already proactively inspected the property and have considered and priced required repairs.
You Own An Established Home
If your home is beginning to age and has reached the five year mark, you’ve probably noticed that the house is changing in ways that perhaps you couldn’t have expected.
A home maintenance inspection is an independent, unbiased evalation which helps you understand your home’s condition, identify and address potential concerns before they become larger issues, and budget for future repairs and replacements.
Even if some of us can maintain pace with the “honey do” list or enjoy more substantial home improvement projects, most of us are not experts in understanding the overall condition of our homes. Plus, finding a good contractor is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. It’s not because contractors inherently are duplicitous; in fact, we expect that most contractors are honest and ethical. It’s just that contractors aren’t unbiased, particularly if finding a marginal defect at your home could lead to more business.
It probably won’t shock you to learn that you’re not alone in trying to find good contractors – witness the many web sites which purport to provide contractor ratings. It probably will shock you that contractors typically pay to be represented on the web sites. The point is that if you’re relying on contractors or ratings web sites to help you assess the condition of your home, you’re probably not dealing with unbiased opinions.
You’re New Home Is Approaching Its First Year Anniversary
New homes typically carry a one-year builder’s warranty. But have you have ever received a reminder from your homebuilder that the new home’s warranty is about to expire? We didn’t think so—after the first year expires, repairs are no longer covered by the builder’s warranty.
Before the first year warranty expires, homeowners should consider a first year anniversary inspection, a detailed, visual evaluation of the home which can help identify how the home’s condition has changed and aged during its critical first year and as importantly, to document any defects and required repairs that should be funded by the builder.
You’re Building A New Home Or Addition
If you’ve ever worked with a builder to design and construct a new home, whether from the builder’s design portfolio or an architect’s custom plans, you can appreciate the stress, from excavation to foundation to electric to plumbing to drywall to finish to delivery. You probably aren’t surprised to learn that a builder occasionally deploys shortcuts and tricks of the trade to finish a task more quickly and at lower cost which also may affect the long-term quality of the home. For customers who aren’t building experts, it’s quite a challenge to identify the shortcuts.
A professional home inspection for new homes during construction provides unbiased and independent review of a builder’s adherence to industry norms regarding construction quality. An inspection of the house before the drywall is installed, otherwise known as a “pre close-in” inspection, provides a level of quality assurance for the buyer that most builders don’t apply to their own contractors. A new home inspection provides an opportunity to identify and correct potential problems while the issues are easier and less expensive to fix and before the issues become physically or financially prohibitive (e.g., moving a wall frame because kitchen cabinets protrude into a doorway opening, moving electrical receptacles to conform to plan, etc.).