Cute bathroom, right? Could there be problems lurking that can't be seen with the naked eye?
Here’s a scary scenario...
Week 1:
Realtor puts your house on the market
Week 2-5:
You get a lot of great showings because you’ve staged the home and priced it right.
Week 6:
You get an offer!
Week 7:
The offer, after a few negotiations, is now a contract and you’re set to close in 30 days. Home is now taken off the market and you start looking for your next home while the buyers of your home get their inspections & appraisal scheduled.
Week 8:
You put an offer in on your next, larger home. It’s accepted!
Week 9:
Your buyers pull out of buying your house because the inspector has found several things that need repair on your current property and the buyers have been scared away. You have to give them back their Earnest Money because they fall under Alternative 1 in the contract you signed with them. You are forced to back out of your new home’s contract and you lose your Earnest Money.
Week 10:
Start all over
Sounds pretty awful, huh?
How could this have been avoided? Would you pay $300 to make this awful situation go away?
With a $300.00 pre-inspection, you could have been in-the-know and well on your way to closing this deal. Your buyers wouldn’t have been scared away by the report findings and you could have been better prepared for the results, too.
It may seem ornery or even like a waste of hard-earned money to get a pre-inspection before putting your home on the market, but as you can see from the scenario above, $300.00 could have saved a deal from falling through-a deal that, in the end, was certainly worth well over $300.00! (If you know of property I can get for less than $300.00, please email me immediately at sarah@sarahmartinhomes.com!!!)
Having the knowledge that your roof has a growing leak or that your HVAC system is on the outs, is power. You can either fix the problem and brag in your marketing material: New Roof! New HVAC! or you can at least be up front with buyers that they will need to invest in a new roof in the next 5 years and you can adjust your asking price accordingly and before the listing hits the market. A lot of buyers are ok with the fact that the home they love needs some TLC; they just like to know these things up front. Reading it in an inspector’s report seems much scarier and can almost seem like the seller was hoping it would go unnoticed. No one likes to feel blind-sided.
Newer and old homes alike should be inspected. Some of the worst reports I've seen have come from new construction homes. Now that's a scary thought...
A lot of times, inspectors will even offer sellers a deal on pre-inspections because they can be less cursory. A few of the most common defects revealed during inspections listed in this article.
Happy Investigating!
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