Jan. 29, 2007 - The Importance of Home Inspections--A new lesson learned

I thought that I knew everything I needed to know about home inspections.  To me, "Yes you need one" was the only answer that was correct.  I still have that opinion, but I have added more reasons why to the list.  I learned a very important lesson from a recent home inspection experience...

I recently sold a wonderful home that was fairly new, and was built by a reputable builder.  Great...newer house, good builder, that inspection should be good as gold.  Man was I wrong.  The buyer's agent hired a very thorough inspector who probably could recite the code book from memory.  And he would not back down from the code as written in that book. 

The inspector came, he saw, he conquered.  At the end of the inspection there were almost 20 items that the buyers wanted fixed because their inspector found them to be code violations.  My sellers look to me and asked "Why Susan, how can this be?  How can there be so many code violations in our fairly new house?"  Yes, some of the items on the inspection report were small, picky things that the majority of inspectors may catch, but never enforce or make the builder correct.  But there were a few more serious violations that even caused me to run home and check MY HOUSE for.  Luckily, since we were dealing with a builder that has a wonderful customer service attitude they agreed to have a county inspector come out and reinspect and agreed to repair anything that did not meet code. 

Moral of the story...home inspections are a necessity.  If you are a buyer, don't buy a house without one.  Please.  I'm begging you!  And sellers, don't scoff when a buyer wants to do one.  It may actually protect you legally from selling a home that has some serious code violations.  Your liability in the sell of the house would probably have to be determined  by a court of law in the end, but you would probably rather it not get to that point.