Many people dream of buying that old farm house on several acres of land where it's peaceful and are miles away from the busy work place.  Well in many metropolitan areas, this is almost impossible to find, but in Raleigh, NC, a 30-45 minute drive can get you closer to your dream, but caveat emptor.

Most buyers realize they should ALWAYS have a home inspection when buying a new house.  If you are buying an older house your REALTOR should be screaming home inspection from the get go.  You can expect to find many items come up in the report that may not need repairing right away and furthermore, most of these homes may be sold "as-is" because the seller knows there are issues, but may not want to deal with a repair list.  But certain things should be paid very close attention to so that dream doesn't turn into a nightmare. 

The issue I am addressing today is how they use to build houses "back in the day".  When building the foundation of a house using a pier system, some if not all of the piers were tree stumps......yes tree stumps.  I mean good idea back then, they were sturdy at the time...right?!  Well a hundred years later those stumps are more like mush thanks to our dirt buddies we call termites.  If not caught in time, termites go up through the stump into the wood framing of the home.  If no home inpection was done, you may just be spending A LOT of money on this overlook.  It is well worth the money for a home inspection....because even if you find these issues, you may lose that money you paid for the inspection, but you saved thousands of dollars of future repairs.