You really want to get a Home Inspection…whether you’re buying or selling
Now we at Short Notice Inspections may be a bit bias when we say this, but it’s true. If you’re working with a good real estate agent, they will tell you the same thing. There may also be a time when they say it will make your offer stronger without having a contingency for one, which is also true, but that is not them advising you not to have one. It’s them telling you a fact about the offer, not about the home inspection or the home itself.
If you are a first time home buyer, you are about to make the biggest purchase in your life. An investment like no other you have made. Waiving the home inspection means you’re quite literally buying it “as is”. Even though it was not even advertised as “as is”. You’re taking out negotiation power from your agent. Worse, unless you’ve been trained on knowing what to look for, you are buying something “as is” and only looking at the wrapping it comes in. Even if your real estate agent does advise you to remove the home inspection contingency from your offer, you can still ask them to put in the offer you are allowed to have a Home Inspection for knowledge only, without it being a contingency to back out of the sale. That way you can at least know and plan what you need to work on in priority.
If you’re looking for your next home or a second home, then in most cases you know what can and has gone wrong with homes. It’s easy to say I’ve dealt with it before, but it’s a better idea to have a second set of eyes that is impartial, looking at it. Again, it’s an investment. You want to know as much as possible about it before you dive in. You may also say, “well I’ll just bring a general contractor with me instead,” and yes, we’ve definitely seen this on travels. How are they impartial though? Their income actually relies on you paying them to fix things. If they don’t find things to fix, then they don’t get paid. We’re not saying reputable contractors would try to find something if there isn’t anything to find, but the home inspector is paid to review the home and give you as much information as possible about its current status and condition. We’re specifically forbidden from providing additional professional services (Plumbing, Electrical, Roofing, Carpentry, etc…) for a full year to our clients. This prevents a conflict of interest for Home Inspectors.
As someone selling a house, we know it’s easy to say, “I don’t want to know, and I don’t want them to find anything,” but that is a dangerous thought and statement. While not required in Massachusetts, other states do require a sellers disclosure form. Some brokerages in Massachusetts do have clients fill these out as part of their listing agreements. It’s a legal document, it’s coverage for the brokerage to say “it’s not our fault there was something defective found in the house after the sale went through. We asked the seller all these questions and they answered they had no knowledge of it. You need to go sue them, not us.” With a Pre-list Home Inspection performed before the house hits the market, you can rely on that to support your answers.
This can also be a selling point to speed up your sale. Having your agent upload a copy of your Home Inspection into MLS with the listing, can give buyers a better view of the house condition and follow up with contractors on estimates of any work they would opt to have done. This helps them give you a more targeted offer. Also you and your real estate agent can do the same so you know how much, if any, you’re willing to negotiate. Even in some cases they may feel comfortable enough to put in an offer waiving the home inspection. We know, this contradicts what we said earlier about not waiving the Home Inspection. This is why we used the word “can” earlier in this paragraph instead of “will”. This goes back to human nature and trust. Some will always say, “Never trust another person’s home inspector,” and “Always get your own.” We would agree with the second statement there, but not the first.
All licensed home inspectors in MA are supposed to follow the same standards and ethical codes. As long as they are doing their job correctly, their report should be fine to review. Please remember though, home inspections are only representative of the home on the day it was inspected. Do we trust other home inspectors to do their job, yes, we do. Have we seen reports that we find lacking in details or useful information for someone, yes, we have. Having your own inspection can still be useful so you have a point of contact to follow up with on questions.
Do you need a home inspection, yes, and after reading through this, you may have some pretty good reasons why. You may also have some ways to use them in order to quicken the sale of your home, and from the buyers side, you have some ways to get them in without losing a competitive edge.
“Why haven’t I had a Home Inspection? I just don’t want to know…”
Welcome Back to the Short Notice Inspections Blog. We hope you all had a great start to the new year. Lets get right into the question and answer in the title of this blog post.
This is a common answer. It goes along with the saying “ignorance is bliss”. I can understand people's view of this also, I don’t agree with it, but I get it. It’s nice to not think about the age of your heating system or the condition of your pipes. It’s very nice to not think about the condition of your attic structure. It’s even easy to ignore visual signs of a roof that is in need of repairs, as long as you don’t notice anything wrong in the living areas of your home where you spend your time. That doesn’t mean things aren’t still happening. The world does not stop when you are not paying attention to it. All that happens is you need to play catch up when you finally start paying attention.
Now, I’m not saying you need to go in your attic and basement before and after every storm to check for any changes. It’s not a bad idea to do that every now and then, or after bad storms, but I’m not saying you need to worry about your house all the time. We actually recommend a 5-7 year Home Health inspection to check your home. It’s a home inspection, but not in the pursuit of buying or selling a home. I personally like these because when working directly with the home owner, we’re able to get authorization to do some more invasive inspections that are not part of a standard home inspection, which are non-invasive. Home owners also normally have a few items they want specifically checked on these, which tends to lead to great conversations in general.
Not knowing about items in your home doesn’t really help you. If you don’t know something is in need of repair approaching the end of its lifespan, that doesn’t help you plan and budget for it. Then emergencies happen and you are in a worse spot to handle it than if you had been planning for it for a few months or even years. Even if something is found that just can’t be corrected in the near term, it is still important to know it exists, so you can try to prevent any additional issues that come from it. For example, say you have a leak in your attic. Now, that is not something that is easy to ignore, unless you just don’t go up to your attic, which some people don’t. You have a leak in there, that is not bad enough where it’s coming through the ceiling into your living space. “Out of sight, out of mind” as they say, but it's not just the leak that is happening. The leak is letting water onto your roof framing, and possibly down the side of your wall framing. That water can start the wood rotting, depending on how much penetration there is. That water can also lead to mold growth, which can, and most times will, cause respiratory issues.
Say you can’t get someone to repair the roof quickly, though…what then…what is the point of knowing? Well you can work with people to take small steps to track it as best as possible and mitigate issues you know about, until you have the means to correct them. If you know that an issue is there, you also can learn about the additional issues that can be caused by it. While it’s very easy to say, “I just don’t want to know”, you’ll feel a lot better knowing, planning and taking action, rather than waiting for an emergency and just taking action.
Make sure to come back for the next blog post, where we will be talking about the benefits of doing a Home Inspection as a seller, before you list your home.
Goodbye 2023
As 2023 comes to a close, we’d like to use this blog post to reflect on this past year. It was a big year for us at Short Notice Inspections…we opened.
That honestly wasn’t planned for a few more years at least. However, necessity somewhat hastened our decision to open. In doing so, we used the culmination of all our work experience prior in retail, customer service, operations management, logistics management, and in customer experience management, to design a company that operates with the customers experience and best interest at heart while being fair to all employees.
Learning about insurance, accounting and payroll and building our own marketing has been its own adventure….but obviously a good one.
Aside from opening the company and getting 5 star reviews for every inspection we’ve had, it’s been a heck of a lot of studying. From the above you may have gathered that Peter and Trisha were not in the construction field before. This caused them to go back to school and complete not only the required training to pass their exams on the first time, but they’ve also each done over 100 hrs of continuing education since July this year. That’s gotten us 20 certifications so far from InterNACHI, and there’s more to come!
As we roll into 2024 we’re looking forward to many more bookings and meeting new clients. Peter and Trisha are looking forward to completing their associate pre-requisites and applying for their full licensures as soon as they are eligible.
We hope everyone has a very safe and happy new year!