I performed a Phoenix Home Inspection on the money pit.

I don’t make that comment lightly. I’ve been performing Home Inspections in Arizona for over 12 years and this is quite possible the worst home I have seen.

This home was in a rural area not far from Scottsdale and had a detached workshop, 4 horse stalls, a walker, a pool and someone had built a garage on the side with a workshop added later.

Every location I just mentioned has an electrical sub-panel and every sub-panel was wired wrong. The garage was a rats nest of improper wiring. After taking photos of about 10 different splices, I just quit counting.

I did find a panel that had been removed from a wall and peeked behind it to find a fireplace with a fan and more bad wiring.

This is the first time I have ever recommended having the entire electrical system reviewed and have repairs performed as needed as part of a home inspection.

That is not all that was wrong with this north phoenix home.

The home had no air conditioning, however it had two old swamp coolers, however neither one of them was functional.

The home was U shaped with the entry in the middle and three bedroom to the left, These bedrooms were connected to a electric furnace however the evap cooler on that side of the home was tied into the same duct work and there was no damper installed to prevent the heat from blowing right out through the cooler on the roof.

The other side of the home was heated by 2 wood burning fireplaces and a small electric heater in the master bathroom. (it was wired wrong too.)

Home Inspector Finds Bad Foundation

As part of the home inspection we look at the foundation. This is the first home I have inspected where it was easier to see the foundation from inside the home rather than outside. This home has a concrete block foundation with a concrete slab on grade poured inside of the block. However about 4 inches of the block were inside the walls and the concrete was placed below the block from 1-3 inches depending on where I checked. When the flooring was installed they went right over the block giving the floor a bowl effect.

If that was not enough, the concrete slab was not finished, or troweled flat/level, it had separated away from the block foundation (likely because there was too much water in the concrete mix)  and it had heaved in the middle of the room. This made walking through the home kind of like walking through an old carnival fun house.

There were two areas of the workshop, attached to the garage, (I am guessing without a permit) where the wood sheathing was totally rotted floor to roof.

The roof and patio cover had been covered with foam and elastomeric paint however they stopped short of the edges of the patio cover so it was rotted out.

One of the skylights was held together with caulk, the lens was broken in at least 4 different places.

One of the ledgers that supported the front patio cover was severely termite damaged. (As reported by the pest inspector who also said this was the worst home he has seen)

Some of the other issues were:

• There was no head flashing over the exterior doors so water had rotted the frames at the top and the bottom,
• Missing tiles from the roof.
• Ponding at the foam roof
• Cracked tiles in several areas of the home,
• Cracks between the walls and at the joints between the walls and ceilings
• PVC used as plumbing for hot water
• Flexible drain connections under the sinks
• Loose and leaking toilet
• reversed polarity at several outlets
• Posts buried in the dirt
• Stucco below grade and rusted out weep screed

I can not possibly tell you everything that was wrong with this home but I can tell you this:

I did not kill the deal as the home inspector

See when I finished the home inspection of this Phoenix home, I called the client. It is normal for the client to meet me at the inspection and this client had not arrived yet so I called. 

I was surprised when he told me he had canceled my inspection as he had called a different inspector that was able to get to the property a day before me so he hired him instead.

I asked the buyer what the other home inspector found and he told me ” there were some electrical issues and some foundation settlement but it didn’t look bad.

I hope I do not get called to be an expert witness on that case.

See there are always common defects found on Home Inspections but this went way beyond that.