Pre-Listing Inspection
March 18th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice
Something to think about when it comes time to sell your house is paying to have a professional home inspection done. For around $450, depending on the size of the house, you can have a home inspector come out and give you advance notice of anything wrong with your house. This will give you time to decide what you want to fix AND give you the time to get quotes without having the pressure of a deadline hanging over your head. This is much preferable to having only a few days to find a contractor and get them out to do the work after the buyer asks for an item to be fixed.
You can also then market your house as a pre-inspected home. This will give potential buyers more confidence in the condition of your home.
Face it. If there is something wrong with your house the buyer’s inspector will most likely find it. Of course, even if you fixed everything, the new inspector will find “something”. But wouldn’t you want it to be something really minor?
The only possible downside to a pre-inspection is that the results of the inspection become a “material fact” that must be disclosed to potential buyers. But even this downside is preferable to any nasty surprises just a short time before closing. So think about it. It could be money well spent.
Good idea. Though the issue of disclosure would scare me as a buyer. The least a seller could do is to fix the items that they know are broken. The value of a home decreases when they feel that they have to do work.
Jonathan - Thanks for the comment. Disclosure can be scary for everyone sometimes, but I think that getting as much as possible out in the open can prevent MUCH bigger problems down the road. If a buyer has the seller’s inspection and has one of their own, they can feel pretty good that they know the condition of the house. And I agree with you that the seller should do as much of the repair work as possible, preferably before putting the house on the market.