When buying a home, there is one basic thing you should do without a doubt – get a home inspection. By hiring an expert to come out and explain the condition of a home, you can feel confident when moving forward with your purchase. Still not sold? Read on for five reasons why home inspections are important.
What is a Home Inspection?
A home inspection is a thorough examination of a home, typically accompanied with multiple pictures and notes, by a professional inspector. According to Forbes, seventy-two percent of Americans believed that having an inspection done before purchasing helped them avoid potential issues with their home.
Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
Let’s take a step back to that first open house you attended. The home was recently painted and fresh flowers were sitting on every table. Its initial beauty causes you to make an offer right away, and it’s accepted. Now, this is when the inspection comes into play – why was such a lovely home for sale in the first place? You might be surprised to find out.
Safety and Protection
Buyers need to focus on the technical aspects of a home along with how aesthetically pleasing it might appear. If a home you made an offer for has faulty wiring or even minor structural damage, then you’ll want to take those into consideration for your safety. Radon, carbon monoxide, and mold are other factors that can affect your long-term health overall. A qualified home inspector will point all of these concerns out to you and even give you tips for future maintenance.
Maintenance Tips
Occasionally when you do get an inspection, the professionals will tell you that there are issues with the house that are considered minor. These will be the ones that are not worth asking the seller to take care of because you could do them on your own time. Because they give you a report with pictures after making an assessment, you can use them for reference whenever you want.
Avoid Feeling Trapped
At the end of the day, it’s important for you to be able to say that you no longer want to buy a home because it actually has many issues you didn’t know about. That’s why that inspection gives you an out in the buying experience. Negative inspections are a completely fair reason to back out on an offer you made.
Negotiation Strategy
If you don’t want to back out just yet, inspection reports also lead to productive negotiation conversations between buyers, sellers and their agents. The seller could offer to fix some of the issues before you move in. They may even have to lower the price altogether so that you are more comfortable paying for the fixes yourself.