I just entered into an agreement on a house in PA built by Toll Brothers. The development is about 3-4 years old. The sellers sold the house to a relo company that did their own inspection (everything from pool to radon) and everything looked good (I saw the reports). I’m fairly handy myself, have built kitchens and bathrooms, but am not very familiar with roofs or foundations. Am I taking on a very serious risk by not having a general home inspection done?
I was still going to have termite and radon done anyway.
Any advice is appreciated.
A home inspection costs approximately $250 in my neck of the woods. To me, it is well worth spending that little for a potential deal, especially if there are things that you are not comfortable with. Measure your options. Good luck!
Get the home inspection. For the money you are spending on buying the house the home inspection is little compared to the possbile savings it can discover for you that might be hidden or flaws from the biulders. I am a home inspector and have seen costs mistakes from biulders many times.
I ALWAYS get an inspection…even with new homes for personal use…the inspector always find something that winds up saving me the cost of the inspection +…
On my current home (high end home), the insulator missed the area over the front foyer when he was blowing in insulation…in Western Colorad this would suck heat in the winter and AC in the summer like a bad thing…
Keith
You could also buy a good book on home inspections and learn to do it yourself. This is not brain surgery. Once you learn to do your own inspections, you can do it for free and you will be more motivated than a third party to do a good job. If you’re going to be in the REI business, then I think learning to inspect your property is a must.
Mike
For the most part, Mike is correct. However, building codes can vary widely from state-to-state, county-to-county, and city-to-city. A fully qualified and licensed inspector is required to know and point out code violations…in several cases, this has save me big $$$.
Just my .02 – the $200-250 is well worth it.
Keith
I was an (unlicensed) inspector before I started investing. Luckily my state didn’t and still doesn’t have an enforced HI license. Most counties and municipalities I invest in now go by the International Building Code with only a few variations. The general consensus among home inspectors in my state is to never quote code. Doing so incorrectly would be a huge liability as we were never tested or trained on county codes. This is just my experience as a HI in a no-license (liberal a.k.a. FREE) state.
I agree though, pay for the inspection. No such thing as a perfect house and you aren’t going to find everything wrong doing 1 inspection. A good book is “Principles of Home Inspection- Systems & Standards”. It’s not the cheapest book I’ve ever bought by it has everything you need to know and a checklist report after every chapter.
If you want to learn to inspect a house yourself then hire a home inspector then follow them around on many inspection. A good inspector will be looking at least at 300-500 items throughout a house and take 3-4 hours including a typed report with digital pictures and 20+ pages. Most will let you follow them around but a few do not like it at times and learn from that way. HI’s yes do not normally quote code but should be reqiured to know it to do there job in there area and to the areas standard. Texas is a licensed state where I inspected for 8 years but in Ca. it is not but the codes are mainly the same with the addition of sesmic earthqauke biulding reqiurements. There will be different items to certain areas like the heating systems, basements, sump pumps, electrical systems and so on. Even in unlicensed states make sure your inspector has the proper training/schooling, experience and not just a contractor doing inspections without the proper training there is a difference. Having the knowledge and looking for the flaws. Hope this all helps.