How Can You Prepare For Your House Inspection in Rochester Hills?

As we discussed many times before, there are multiple reasons people have their homes inspected. The most common, of course, is when they put an offer in on a house and want to make sure that the house is worth buying. On the opposite side of things, a homeowner might want to have their house inspected before they ever put it on the market so that they can get problems taken care of that otherwise might delay a sale (or cause the buyer to haggle for a lower price). Still other homeowners are interested in having a home inspection because they’re concerned about how the house might be aging.

In all three of these cases, someone is going to have to prepare for a home inspector. Don’t worry, it’s not terribly labor intensive to get ready for a house inspection in Rochester Hills, but it’s still a good idea to do a little bit of preparation whether you’re paying for a home inspection or if a prospective buyer is having your on-the-market sale inspected.

Make Sure Areas of Inspection Are Clear

We have two primary goals when we are doing a home inspection in the Rochester Hills area: to do our work efficiently and to be thorough. We want to be fast and efficient because we want to respect your time, and we want to be thorough because our reputation as top-tier property inspectors is on the line.

Here’s the easiest way to help us reach each of these goals: clear the clutter. We’re going to have to look under sinks, which will be much easier if there aren’t a bunch of cleaning agents in the way. We’re going to want to check electrical outlets, so pull desks away from the wall so that we can access them. Is your furnace room also your primary storage space? Make sure that there’s a clear path for us so that we can access it.

And we’re not just talking about areas inside the home. Because we’ll be inspecting the foundation and siding of a home, please make sure that as much as possible has been moved away from the house. This includes piles of lumber, tools, and anything else that might be preventing us from getting a good look at the condition of the house.

Ready the Access Points!

If you think we need to get somewhere…you’re probably right! If there’s an access point to the frame of the house in the garage, please have everything cleared away so that we can make the inspection go as fast as possible. If you have attic stairs that often get stuck and take you 30 minutes to shimmy loose, go ahead and have it open by the time we get there.

If you’re using areas with ceiling access points for storage, please clear them out of anything that could pose a danger to us. For instance, if you tossed your skis up there and shut the door access panel as quickly as possible, that’s going to be dangerous when we open it up! It’s also going to make it harder for us to do a thorough inspection, so ensure that we can at least get good line-of-site when we stick our heads up there during the home inspection.

Move Stuff Away From Electrical Panels

If you live in a fairly new home — one built in the last 30 years of so — your electrical panels aren’t something you have to deal with very often. While older homes might have tripped and blown fuses due to inadequate power supplies or surges that the panel can’t handle, most of us forget we even have electrical panels. When asked where they are, many homeowners either can’t tell us or have to think for a minute before they can remember.

Because so many people don’t need to access these areas of their house very often, electrical panels often end up getting blocked. There might be boxes stacked in front of it, or a bicycle hanging from the garage ceiling might be in the way. Before a house inspector stops by, be sure to locate your electrical panel box and get everything out of the way so that we can give it a thorough inspection…and not trip on anything when we approach it!

Secure / Remove Pets

We have the same goal as you do when it comes to your pets: We want them to be safe. We also want to remain safe ourselves, so it’s best if you make a plan for your pets before we stop by.

The best option is if the pets go visit someone else during the house inspection. Alternately, you can put them in their travel crate if they don’t mind being in there for a few hours. We’ll be opening and closing a lot of doors (and access panels) while we’re in the house, and we don’t want pets to get into attic spaces and be lost! We also don’t want them bounding out the front door as we’re inspecting the front of the house, or getting underfoot as we’re coming down from a ladder.

Unlock Gates / Doors

While some people like to follow us around in order to see what we’re doing, others are perfectly happy to just let us move about the house and do our jobs. After all, we’re going to be moving around the house for a couple of hours and, to be honest, our job is seldom exciting!

Since you probably don’t want to tag along with us everywhere we go, you’ll want to make sure that we have access to everything we’ll need to inspect. You might keep the spare bedroom locked so that the kids don’t mess it up, but go ahead and unlock it for us so that we don’t have to find you. You might also keep the side gates locked, but we’ll need access to it so that we examine the outside of the house. Some people even have key locks on certain drawers under the sink in order to prevent children from getting to chemicals, so once the little ones are out of the way, be sure to unlock them for us.

Turn On The Utilities

This might sound strange to you if you are currently living in a home; of course the utilities are turned on!

But if you own a vacant property that hasn’t been lived in for a while, it’s very possible that you turned off all or some of the utilities. (Bonus tip: While this can be okay during the warmer months, you certainly don’t want to turn off the water and heating to a house in winter, as the pipes could freeze.)

If utilities have been turned off, you’ll need to have them turned on again so that we can perform a proper house inspection. Much of what we check is based around the utilities, from electrical outlets to the plumbing system.

Get Ready For Your House Inspection

It doesn’t take much pre-planning to get ready for a house inspection, but it can certainly make the entire process go smoothly for everyone involved. If you’re ready to get the best property inspection in Rochester Hills, Sterling Heights, or Troy, contact Total House Inspection today!