Varieties of Home Inspection Contract Clauses in N. Virginia

Varieties of Home Inspection Contract Clauses in N. Virginia

Copyright(c) 2011, Deanna and Jim's GOLD Team

Different choices may be made depending on the offer environment (multiple offers, single offer), and other aspects of the offer.  

1. No Home Inspection: This is often used with an all cash buyer who is making a lower offer. It indicates that the sophisticated buyer is ready to take the house exactly as is.  Some sophisticated buyers even make offers sight unseen (although they may be foolish).

2. "Home Inspection For Information Only."  This is used by some buyer's agents in multiple offer environments to attempt to convince the Seller that they shouldn't worry about the home inspection.  If the property is in an HOA or a condo then the buyer can used the results of an information only HOA to privately support his/her decision to withdraw over the HOA/condo documents.  The listing agent's way around this is to simply have the HOA/condo documents ready and to allow the "Information Only" Home Inspection to occur only after the document review contingency has passed.  If the buyer balks at doing this the "information only" HI contingency is really a disguised version of #3 below.

3. "No-Nonsense, Take-It-Or-Leave It, Home Inspection": This is written using a normal Home / Radon Inspection Contingency form and crossing out the Home Inspection section's language in small Roman numeral (i).  The NVAR Home/Radon Contingency language says that the buyer will have the home inspected by a professional home inspector within X days and will deliver a copy of the inspector's report and either (i) a list of defects etc. or (ii) a notice voiding the contract.  Crossing out the entire option (i) leaves the buyer the only the options of not doing an inspection, doing it and going forward, or doing it and voiding the contract. The buyer will not have the option of bringing forward a list of defects.  This option is not as attractive as number 1 above, but is still more appealing to a listing agent and his client than number 2 or number 4.

4. Normal Home Inspection with provision for list of defects or voiding contract. This is frequently used on normal sales and/or by first-time buyers.  Doing this on bank-owned, short sale, or other explicitly AS IS property is somewhat of a waste because the Seller has said, via the AS IS condition, that all the buyer can do is take it or leave it.

Buyers agents frequently advise their clients to get a home inspection to remove any potential liability to themselves if a significant defect is discovered after purchase that an inspection might have revealed.