In a competitive housing market, many home buyers are skipping home inspections to increase their chances of getting their offer accepted. They resort to drastic and ill-advised measures to score a better deal among the sea of desperate home buyers.
In reality, home inspections make a huge difference in your finances when buying a home. If you detect issues on the plumbing, you can request the seller to hire a plumbing service to tackle the repair before you purchase the house.
In this article, we’ll look at the reasons why home buyers shouldn’t skip the home inspection regardless of how competitive the market is.
Identify deal-breakers
Home buyers only see the surface of a home. A house may look straight out of a lifestyle magazine, but behind those walls lie hidden issues with plumbing, wiring, or foundation. Sellers try to hide the old inner workings of their homes with fancy upgrades, an attractive curb appeal, or a new furniture set.
Performing a quality home inspection will help you identify the underlying problems of the property. If the inspection detects major issues that require expensive repairs or heavy work, you have the choice to lower the house price or raise the issue to the seller so that they can address it before the closing date. But if the issues make you anxious, you can still back off from the deal.
Determine health and safety hazards
A home inspector can access countless components in a property to identify problems, whether small or serious. This means they’ll look for defective garbage disposals or even loose doorknobs.
Without a home inspection, you won’t be aware of potential issues that can negatively affect your family’s health and safety. A home inspector can uncover potentially risky problems, such as outdated wiring, plumbing defects, or pest infestations.
Severe structural issues, such as sloping floors, hidden mold, cracked walls, and rundown roofing, can pave the way for an unsafe living environment. They will also look for the presence of mold, fire hazards, radon, and carbon monoxide. Once the home inspector flags safety issues, they will present them to a contractor to address the repairs as needed.
Gain a negotiating power
Conducting a home inspection is a great opportunity for a home buyer to renegotiate, reevaluate the offer, or back away if it’s no longer an interesting investment. Buyers can negotiate the home price twice: during the initial offer and after the home inspection. You can present the seller with a complete list of deductions and request repairs through the inspection report.
So if you forfeit the inspection, you’re skipping the opportunity to renegotiate the price that will accurately reflect the overall condition of the property and account for potential repairs.
Find out if you’re qualified for home insurance
Generally, insurance companies don’t want to cover any unnecessary liability. That’s why they require several proof or documents to prove the property is in good condition before the homeowner receives the appropriate coverage. If they found pre-existing issues after you moved in, your request for coverage will probably get rejected.
You can’t always depend on insurance to cover the repair costs. Since most of the damages are already present before you bought the home, the insurance company typically won’t cover such issues. This is why you need an inspection to make the seller tackle the repairs instead of paying for them out of your pocket.
Anticipate potential repairs and replacements
Let’s say you decided to buy an older house because of its low purchase price. You think the equipment and systems seem to be working fine and assume you can fix them on your own. But sometimes the underlying issues of an old house can eventually pile up, making you realize that you’re paying more than the actual price of the house.
A home inspection can forecast how much longer a certain system will last, which can help you estimate the potential cost. If the system is already nearing its maximum lifespan, you can negotiate this with the seller for a price reduction.
Identify illegal additions
An inspector can also detect illegal additions around the property. If the house has a garage, a basement, or any extra room that wasn’t built according to the building code, you could end up paying for these penalties or cover the costs of the seller’s failure to build the structure according to legal standards.
A home is one of the biggest purchases we’ll ever make. So don’t get easily deceived by the fancy upgrades we see on the surface because we may not know what lies beneath it. Regardless of how perfect the home looks on the outside, make sure to protect your investment by conducting a thorough home inspection. In the end, nothing feels better if you live in a house with greater peace of mind.
