Now that it’s time for your home inspection, it’s time to pick your home inspector. This is a part of the homebuying process that shouldn’t be taken lightly, considering how important it is. As we discussed in this blog, it’s very important to vet potential home inspectors to ensure that you’re getting a reliable one. You should make sure that they’re certified and that those certifications are up-to-date. It’s also a good idea to ask them how long they’ve been in the business (more on that later). Of course, checking reviews online — not just the ones they put on their own website — is also a fairly reliable way of finding the right house inspector.
While you’ll get a lot of information from a house inspector in the detailed report, there are some things that you don’t want to hear from them. Let’s take a look at a few of the statements that might make you second-guess the home inspector you’ve hired (or are considering hiring).
“I’m New At This”
Don’t get us wrong, everyone has to start somewhere. We were young and inexperienced at one time, even though we had been through training and received certification. Still, as many classes as we attended and tests we passed, we look back now and realize that experience is the most important part of being a home inspector.
The fact is, you’re spending a lot of money on your house. This isn’t the same as trusting what a mattress salesman tells you, because that’s “only” $800 and you can always get a new mattress down the line. But when it comes to a house, you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and don’t want to get stuck with decades or problems just because the home inspector was a little green.
Total House Inspection has been performing home inspections in Rochester Hills, Troy, and Sterling Heights for a decade, so we know what to look for when inspecting a home. We will catch things that more inexperienced inspectors might miss, thanks to the hundreds of houses we’ve walked through, crawled under, and been on top of!
“Yeah, I Can’t Do It Then”
Looking for a home you’d like to purchase can take weeks or months, since most people don’t have a deadline they have to adhere to. Sure, the process takes a lot of time and you want to get it over with as soon as possible, but you don’t want to rush it considering how much is at stake.
Once things get moving, they tend to move quickly! Before you know it you’re putting in an offer, the owner counteroffers, you accept, the loan gets approved, and you’re signing paperwork. Of course, right in the middle of that is a house inspection, and, with so much going on at such a fast clip, you don’t want to hear, “Sorry, I don’t work weekends” from a property inspector. You need someone — like us — who can take care of your home inspection seven days a week. With so much happening, we want to make sure we’re not the bottleneck.
Beware If Your Inspector Says 'I'm New at This'
Most people are surprised about what home inspectors do and do not do. There are certain tasks that are simply not included in a home inspection, such as lead paint testing and asbestos testing. And while we’ll take a look at the foundation, you’ll need a specialist to test the ground underneath the home. If you hear that a home inspector doesn’t perform any of these, don’t be surprised…they’re pretty standard exclusions.
What we are talking about are the extras that inspectors can offer that can save you time. For instance, you might need a sewer line inspection performed. Yes, that’s an additional cost because of the effort involved, but having it done at the same time as a home inspection can save you the hassle of having to hire yet another person to inspect the house you’re interested in. And if you need radon testing or mold testing, it just makes sense to hire your home inspector to do it so that it can all be taken care of at the same time.
“Your House Is Perfect”
While it might be what you secretly want, this really isn’t something you want to hear.
How many houses are perfect? Zero, that’s how many. No matter how old — a few days or a few centuries — every house has something wrong with it. Maybe it’s due to age, maybe it’s due to problems associated with the builder; no house is perfect.
If a property inspector says your house (or the house you want to buy) is perfect, that probably means that they haven’t done a thorough-enough inspection. In a case like that, you might want to question them or even get a second opinion from another inspector.
Now that’s not to say that you might not get an inspection report that’s a glowing report. You might, in fact, get a report back that says the house has very minor problems and that it’s holding up quite well. If so, great! You found yourself an excellent home. But perfection? That’s not really something that exists in the house inspection world.
Ready To Work With An Experienced Home Inspector?
The most important thing you can get from a house inspection is the truth. While you might think that you’ve found the perfect house and can’t bear to hear anything bad about it, it’s vital that you listen to a home inspector and read the report carefully. You might not like what you hear, but it could give you excellent leverage when it comes time to negotiate the price of the house…or, in a worst-case scenario, back out of the deal entirely.
Total House Inspection is ready to help. If you need a home inspection for any reason, be sure to call us and get the experience you deserve. Trust us, finding the right property inspector is one of the most important things you can do!
