Home Buying for Beginners & Dummies by Bradley Banks

Author:Bradley Banks [Banks, Bradley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-09T18:30:00+00:00

Picky Home Inspection?

I recommend a home inspection for sellers as well as buyers. By obtaining a home inspection, sellers can find out ahead of time what the inspector will identify as a problem. Buyers can find out if there are any money traps in the home and get a good idea of a home’s general condition.

Readers have asked me some thorny questions over the years about “picky” home inspections, and how to differentiate the little things from the big things. I’ll try to answer that question here.

The point of a home inspection is to find the big things that would introduce financial hardship for the buyer that they would otherwise not know about. This includes structural defects, plumbing errors, architectural or builder errors, electrical defects, or lack of maintenance that has compromised any of the major systems in the home.

Home inspections are not specifically designed to catch code violations, although an inspection should point out safety deficiencies. An example is an older home where a bedroom has been added where there is no window in the room. An inspector will flag this condition not specifically because it violates the code for a “sleeping room,” but because it is a safety issue. In the event of a fire in the hall, where will the person sleeping in this room escape to? So, “no window” could be a serious problem if the buyers were to assume this room was a bedroom.

Other minor safety issues may be called out on the report but are usually not loaded into the "significant" category. These issues are, for example, the spacing between pickets on a deck rail. If the home was built prior to the code going into effect, then there is no violation. While the inspector can list this type of item in his/her report, there is no obligation on anyone's part to correct them. "Picky" report items are usually those items that do not have relevance given the date the home was constructed and do not pose a substantial safety or structural hazard. If you encounter items like this on the report, you should clarify their significance with the inspector.

As long as you are willing to push the inspector a little on identifying the major issues clearly in the report, then the pickier the inspection the better. As a seller, you will have a good idea of what will turn up on the next inspection, and you'll have a checklist of items to correct. As a buyer, you'll need to wade through the little stuff to get to the major items, but a picky inspection will not be a problem as long as you get clear explanations.

A final note on pickiness. If the inspector is inexperienced (less than 2 years inspecting), they will be very picky because they don’t want to miss anything. This could be to your advantage. If the inspector has been inspecting for a long time, then they may not be able to differentiate what is major and what is not. As long as they capture the “big stuff,” pickiness should not be a drawback.

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