During the first week after acceptance of your offer, we typically order inspections of the property, just to make sure that we’re very clear about its condition and to find out if any repairs are needed, anything that we should be concerned about, and get a ballpark idea of how much that’s going to cost and therefore decide if we need to either renegotiate the price with the seller or ask for a monetary credit from the seller to compensate for those.
The inspections we generally recommend include a pest inspection, which looks for termites and other kinds of bugs that eat wood. It also focuses on damage from water, particularly plumbing leaks or water landing on the roof or getting sprayed on the house from sprinklers – anything that could deteriorate especially wood and other parts of the structure. That generally costs anywhere from $125 to maybe $175 for an unusually large house, and we usually can get those done within I would say two to four days of when we order them.
After we have the pest inspection done, we usually recommend a roof inspection. That typically costs $75. And even if you’ve got a concrete tile roof that you think is perfectly fine, it’s a lifetime material, we just want to make sure that no tiles are broken or chipped or have slipped out of place and that there’s no flashing around the roof vents or other parts of the structure that have moved out of place or been damaged. We can usually get that done within a couple of days of when we order it.
Assuming that these move forward since they’re more expensive, we usually get a whole house inspection, and that’s more or less like taking a used car to a mechanic and having him give it a quick overview, bumper to bumper. We’re going to have a look at the overall structure of the house, the heater, the air conditioner, the plumbing system, the electrical system, appliances, windows – quite a long list – water heater. I think you’ll agree, once you see that inspection report, which is generally around 30 pages of text and 8 to 10 pages of photos, 12 to a page, you’ve got a very good opinion of the condition of the property.
And in case you were wondering, these inspectors I’m mentioning, they’re all the same ones that I used when I bought my house. When my son and his wife bought their house, they used the same people. We’ve worked with most of them for anywhere from 10 to 15 years. They’re quite good, and we’re sure you’ll be very confident and happy with the job they do.
The other inspections we recommend would be a sewer line inspection, especially for an older structure, an older home where lines have been in the ground for 15 or 20 or 30 years, and especially if there’s a lot of trees or other vegetation that could affect the line going out to the street.
And last but not least, if you have a chimney, a good chimney inspection and cleaning is always a great idea.
If anything turns up during these inspections that need more of a specialist’s look, whether that’s plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning, structural stuff, roof, we can have a more detailed look at those elements of the hose and make recommendations from what’s found.
So that’s basically what we’re going to focus on for inspections. Usually, we get them done in I would say 7 to 12 days after the purchase, and we’ll have a little bit of strategizing – do we want to do the appraisal of the property first or do inspections first, or perhaps do them concurrently? We’ll go over that with you as well. If you have any other questions about inspections or any part of the purchase transaction, please call, text, or email us. We’re always happy to answer them.