Why hire a home inspector.
A home inspection is a crucial step all home buyers should include in their home buying process. A home inspector can ensure your new home will be a sound investment and a safe place to live. Check out these home inspection tips:
Make sure to have new construction inspected – Even experienced homebuyers sometimes make this rookie mistake. They assume that because a home has passed all local codes and ordinances, it must be in good shape.
Don’t assume your builder — or the contractors — did everything right just because the home passed code. A home inspector is your last line of defense against major defects that could quite literally sink your financial future.
Choose a home inspector for the right reasons – When you choose home inspector, you’re selecting the professional who will give one of your biggest investments a full physical checkup. You want to choose someone you know who is competent, thorough and trustworthy. Unfortunately, too many buyers just go with the cheapest inspection company or the one recommended by their Realtor.
The lease expensive may mean the least experience. Ask for two or three different names from your realtor and interview each one. Go with the home inspector you feel most comfortable with.
Always ask about licensing, professional affiliations and credentials, and whether the inspector carries errors and omissions insurance.
Don’t skip out on having a written report from the inspection – The written report you get from the home inspector doesn’t give you nearly as clear a picture of the condition of the house as you might think. Buyers who don’t go along on the inspection can overemphasize minor problems, or worse, not realize how serious a defect is.
Make sure to follow up on the home inspectors recommendations – Sometimes, buyers don’t follow up on items discovered in the inspection before they close. Like the man who didn’t grasp that the carbon monoxide coming from his water heater was a big problem, you may not realize how much it will cost to fix a given defect. Often home inspector will recommend buyers get an issue evaluated further, but the buyers wait to do it until after closing.Don’t expect your home inspector to be a psychic – No matter how experienced or skilled your home inspector is, he can’t see the future. Home inspectors don’t have crystal balls, so they can’t specifically predict when an aging system will fail. Sometimes, optimistic homebuyers think a system still has a few good years just because there aren’t visible signs of malfunction at the time of inspection.
A home inspector can tell you that an air conditioning system like the one in the home you’re buying usually only lasts 10 years, and yours is 11 years old. But he can’t tell you when it will fail. That’s when you need to follow up with people who know more about each specific system about which you have questions.
And remember, the home inspector is hired by you. He’s there to give you an honest, straight opinion about the house.
