Home Inspections
I was recently interviewed for a small real estate publication in Oakville and was asked to share my opinions about home inspections and their value in today’s market. Does having a pre-inspection along with the pre-inspection report available for buyers give buyers confidence to make an offer? And what were my thoughts on forgoing the inspection altogether in order to be able to purchase the property?
I work with several reputable home inspectors and continue to recommend their services to my clients. I have always suggested three top inspectors in the Niagara Region for my clients to contact and then make the selection on their own. The ones I recommend are ones that have proven to be thorough inspectors. They encourage buyers to be present at the inspection and to ask questions as they go through the house. I’ve watched one inspector don a full hazmat suit and squeeze into a crawl-space basement of a home to make sure he could view the condition of the house from the bottom up! That was impressive. Although there is no set time frame for a formal inspection, they generally run from 1-3 hours. Yet I have been present for one inspection once at a home from the 1800’s that ran well-past five hours!
Home inspections tell us a story about a home. Their purpose is to inform buyers as much as an inspector is able to tell them. It is up to the inspector and the buyers to communicate and understand what the various issues flagged are pertaining to.
Several years ago, a homeowner interviewed me to list their home. It was an extensive waterfront property and very impressive! This homeowner had already listed once with another Realtor and was not able to successfully sell his home. He asked me what my opinion was regarding getting a pre-inspection done. And in that market, I encouraged him to go forward with one! The positive thing about this situation was that the homeowner actually read the inspection report and rectified issues that he thought were noteworthy. The report was made available to anyone viewing the property along with evidence showing the issues that had been rectified. There was an immediate respect and comfort for clients viewing the home and being able to see the report. In this case, the pre-inspection report was a stellar idea! Keep in mind, home inspections have a shelf-life. It is recommended that they be as recent as possible. An inspection can be conducted but there are things out of everyone’s control that may drastically change in a home from day to day. There could be a massive windstorm blowing off shingles or torrential rains that cause flooding the day after an inspection was done. Things change. The inspection is really only good for the day that it was completed. If you are viewing a pre-inspection report, check the date on which it was conducted. A report that is past 3 months old is not necessarily accurate anymore.
In this market, when sellers do not generally view an offer with an inspection clause when they have several offers to choose from that have no conditions in them at all, buyers are at a disadvantage. But a realtor has the responsibility to represent his/her buyers to the best of their ability. When showing a house, I am as thorough as I can be. I notice subtle stains on ceilings or musty smells in basements. I look at the tag on a furnace and check dates on windows. I walk around the exterior of the property with clients and view the roof, as best as I can. In competitive offer situations, I have suggested to my buyers to get a home inspector for a mini walk-through so that he can at least look at the major things in the house and give his opinion. These walk-throughs occur before pre-offer time and although they are not as thorough as a true home inspection, they do give my clients peace of mind on whether they would like to proceed with offering on a property or not.
There are stories about buyers who have submitted bid upon bid on countless homes and not had an offer accepted. For those buyers, I would recommend the walk-through with the inspector if they can get one to work with them before offer presentation time. Talk to the neighbours outside. They will know if there have been major issues with the property such as flooding, leaks or roof issues.
It is my opinion that home inspections are a valuable tool. It is the inspector’s job to show the good and the bad. It is also noteworthy that inspectors work for the buyer, not the realtor. If there are major deficiencies, home inspections allow the buyer to make an educated decision on whether to proceed with the purchase, get it remedied or walk away. But at the end of the day, these inspections show us things that a buyer viewing a house for 15-30 minute slots in today’s market, cannot discover on their own! Inspections are worth every penny!