Should SELLERS Get Home Inspections?

To Get A Seller Home Inspection Or Not

Almost every time I sit down and strategize wtih potential home sellers the question allways comes up:  "should we get a home inspection first?".  My answer to this question used to be an absolute Yes, but of course very few sellers would actually make the investment to do so. 

Well, after experiencing a number of situations where the home seller actually made the investment to invest in a home inspection but decided to NOT actually address all the items that came up on the report, it has caused me to be very careful how I answer this in today's world.  

A few years ago I spent a lot of time working with some really nice folks interested in listing their home for sale and to position it fantastically in price, condition and marketing. 

Everything was going fine until we got the home inspection back that the seller had invested in.  The home inspection was nothing out of the ordinary, and let me use that term loosely, as an "ordinary" home inspection has become long books full of standardized and boiler-plate disclosures inspectors use to head-off potential liability for themselves. 

But the problem was "ordinary" to me was definately not ordinary to the sellers and they were appalled at all the things that were on the report, even simple things such as nail holes and nail pops plus the "this might break in the future even though its working now" verbage we are seeing more and more of.   

To make a long story short, I lost these folks as clients as I told them that if they did not repair some of the real structural oriented items such as moisture in the crawlspace, fogged windows and some other items that they had actually known about for a while but just did nothing about it we would have to disclosure them up front to any potential buyer(s). 

They decided to throw the home inspection away and hire another agent that knew nothing about the home inspection and proceed and hope the problems would not arise on a buyers new home inspection.  I always try to eo the right thing but as we all know we all do not share the same definition of the "right thing".  

So, now I answer the question with "it depends", which I go into much more detail in the video above.  But, I still feel that by being proactive the seller(s) put themselves in a stronger position as many buyers will walk away from buying a home over simple things that could have been easily addressed by the seller before the home was put under contract. 

Buyers can be very emotional as most of them do get "buyers remorse" and they are scared, we all are normally nervous when making such a large life altering investment.  And sometimes the very least little things can cause buyers to get spooked and walk away.  

My personal analogy is that when I get on an airplane I want someone who knows what they are doing to inspect it as best as possible BEFORE we get in the air, not wait for a problem to come up and try to fix it before we try to land. 

I hope this video and information was helpful and if you would ever like to discuss further please do not hesitate to call us at (910) 395-1000 or email me at buddy@buddyblake.com.