Should I Get a Home Inspection?
Buying a home can be one of the most stressful things you’ll ever do. For most people, buying home is not only the largest purchase they’ll ever make but it is a major commitment to undertake. It seems like there’s a fee around every corner – taxes, insurance, PMI, appraisal, application fees and on and on. For the budget conscious buyer, setting aside some money for furnishings, updates and the inevitable maintenance that comes along with home ownership, is just more cash out of pocket, and a home inspection can seem like just another cost that isn’t always mandatory and can easily be cut.
If you’re trying to save money, getting a quality home inspection can be one of the best ROI’s in the entire home buying process. For around $500 a quality home inspector can identify problem areas in your prospective home that can not only head you off on some expensive future costs associated with home maintenance but can also be used in negotiation to potentially reduce your purchase price by thousands of dollars. A home inspection can give you a peace of mind that comes with knowing what’s going on in every corner of your new home. It can provide you with a list of maintenance items that need to be addressed in the near future or a convenient priority list for items that need to be addressed now and items that can be addressed down the road. Unfortunately, sometimes home inspections uncover major issues that a prospective buyer may not want to take on, but the good news is that most contracts have built-in protections revolving around home inspections that allow a legal way for a buyer to back out of a contract.
At Sloan Inspections we live by our maxim, “our family, protecting yours”. Our inspectors have families with young kids and we feel we have a personal responsibility to do everything in our ability to protect the families who entrust us to inspect their homes. Of course we’re biased. We make a living providing home inspections to our clients, so it would be silly to pretend that we aren’t. However, we have been able to provide information to clients that has saved them thousands (and in some cases tens of thousands) of dollars. For most people, the one or two times you get to walk through a home before you make an offer is simply not enough time to fully evaluate its condition. Not only does a home inspection have the potential to save you time, money and stress, it gets you started out on the right foot with new home. We can provide you with vital information like model and serial numbers, shutoff locations, potential problem areas, and a great reference for prioritizing home maintenance should you decide to purchase the home.
Although it can sometimes be hard to swallow another fee in the home-buying process, don’t skip out on a home inspection – you will get so much more value than the cost of the inspection!
Image used with permission of InterNACHI.org - https://res.cloudinary.com/internachi/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:best/https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads-east-1.nachi.org/gallery-images/comics/internachi-a-shocker.jpg