If ever there was one thing that comes up time after time, I would have to say that it is the question(s) of just what is a Home Inspection, what is the inspection and report supposed to accomplish, and, what is it’s value as it pertains to a home purchase. Talk to any number of Home Inspectors, realtors, homeowners or purchasers and you will get just as many different explanations. Having been in the home building and repair field for well over 40 years, inspecting homes since 1968, and, being personally involved in the purchase and sale of numerous homes and properties, I feel that I have enough insight to try and give you a decent answer to that question, at least from a prospective home purchasers position.
First, though, I guess we ought to decide just what a true Home Inspector is if we want to understand what sort of inspection and report we are going to end up with. It would seem to me that the Home Inspector had better well have a very good understanding of how a home is “put together”. Not just the framing of the house, but all of the components that make up a house and how they all are installed and work with each other.
The Inspector also better have more than just simple knowledge of how the different systems work as well as how they are repaired. This sort of basic knowledge can’t be learned by reading books and taking classes only, there has to be a fair amount of hands-on construction and repair experience performed to really understand how the systems work and how they fail. But, one person can’t possibly know all about every system of a house. I guess I’m suggesting to you that a true Home Inspector is a person that has a ton of experience of hands-on repair and construction as well as many hours of actual continuing class education involving the various systems of a home. The Inspector will know enough to know when some thing is not looking right, but may not know exactly the proper fix for the issue at hand. So, let’s say that the Home Inspector you want to find is a “generalist” that has a lot of experience.
Now that we’ve decided what our Home Inspector is “made of”, we can determine what the inspection report will consist of and “do for us”. Well, we know our Inspector is a generalist so naturally the report will touch on all of the portions and systems in the house in a “general” way. I know what you are thinking, “Hey, I don’t want a glossed over inspection and report, I want to know exactly what I’m purchasing!”. That actually is what you will end up with if you hire the right Inspector, but with out spending a several thousands of dollars or more in hiring individual Contractors/experts in each and every system and aspect of the home you are looking to purchase. The true Home Inspection report will alert you to just the areas of concern so that you can then focus in on just those issues and get further information about them from the appropriate Contractors/experts. This will save you a bunch of money, time, effort and aggravation. So, now you have figured out just what a Home Inspection is and what its’ true value is.
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Ahome inspection is more important than I thought it was. Our experience with Ron’s service is that he provides a comprehensive report full of pictures and detailed notes that will guide all future improvements we do. His attention to detail and quality work left us feeling confident that he cares as much about our home as we do. He explained everything to us so we understand how to care for our house and protect our most valuable investment. Most of all, Ron’s inspection report and expert advice helped us to be confident in determining the true value of the home while we were bidding on. After receiving his report, we were able to substantially reduce the purchase price of the home we bought. The value of working with kind, competent, experienced professionals is always worth paying a little more for.
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