Is a House Inspection Worth It?

If you have purchased a house last year, when the market was crazy, a home inspection may not have been an option for you at the time of purchase. With multiple offers flying in on almost every property, the offers with the least conditions were sold first and this meant skipping a home inspection.

Conditions are a point or points in the Real Estate sales contract that needs to be met prior to the buyer finalizing their purchase. Common conditions are home inspections (to confirm there are no major surprises), financing conditions (to ensure the banks will finance you), and now even the condition of selling your current home. There is usually a seven to 14 day period where the buyer has to have these conditions of the sale removed and then from that point the contract is legally binding.

Without any conditions, the buyer can be in a hazardous position. If they cannot purchase the property, the seller has the legal right to sue the buyer for breach of contract. This could result in a large penalty, or even forcing the buyer to carry through with purchasing the home.

Imagine putting an offer in on a property without any home inspection conditions and then finding out from your lawyer that the home was formerly a marijuana grow operation and was never properly remediated. This is on the extreme side, but even discovering the basement was wired incorrectly and without permits could cost the new owner hundreds to even thousands of dollars.

Now with the current buyer's market occurring, where many sellers are eager to look at any offer, a home inspection should be one of the first conditions in any offer. A qualified home inspector will inspect the home from top to bottom and depending on the size of the property and scope of the inspection; this may take from a few hours to half of a day to do a thorough inspection.

Usually after the inspection it takes a couple days for the report to be finalized, although we have had some inspectors print their reports out on site. The final report will have information on the major parts of the home including, the building structure, plumbing and heating, electrical, and landscaping. Most reports even include information on the remaining life expectancy of major items such as the roof, furnace and hot water life.

Armed with this type of information you can go into the purchase of your new home with your eyes wide open. If the seller neglected to mention the furnace was on its last legs this may give you some additional bargaining power. Or if they had considered this, and priced it accordingly you can find out in advance what your costs to replace it immediately will be so you are not taken by surprise after your purchase.

Some discoveries may be so costly as to dissuade you from even removing conditions and thus saving you from purchasing the proverbial money pit. This is why the inspections are so important for a buyer.

Home inspectors can be found in the yellow pages, via referrals from friends who have recently purchased homes or if you are purchasing with a Realtor, they will have several they can usually recommend. Don't buy your next home without an inspection, it is simply too large a gamble to take with such large sums of money.

Bill Biko
http://www.investors.housez.ca
http://www.housez.ca
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