How-a-Certified-Inspector-Can-Help-You-Sell-Your-House

How a Certified Inspector Can Help You Sell Your House

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Selling your home is not something you do every day, and there are really few things in your life that you can say are as momentous and pivotal as this, or involve as large sums of money. These simple facts alone are more than reason enough for you to focus and manage the process as carefully as you can.

This is certainly not a “cross your fingers and hope for the best” moment, and you should make a point of speaking very closely with various industry professionals to prepare yourself as well as you can for the sale of your home.

A certified building inspector, and very importantly, an experienced building inspector is a very good ally in this respect. And while you might not be happy with some of the things they may eventually have to tell you about your home, it’s infinitely better that your inspector informs you of any problems before a buyer’s inspector does the same for his or her client.

Perhaps the two most important aspects of the sales process that an inspector can help you with concern the valuation of your home and negotiations with potential buyers.

Valuation

Building inspectors are, of course, not home valuation professionals; even though you can be fairly certain that a qualified building inspector would have a very good idea of what you home might be worth.

They can nevertheless help you fine tune your estimates with detailed information about the overall condition of the house and help you determine the cost and seriousness of any pending repairs that need to be performed, and how these might impact the overall value of the house.

Negotiation process

If you decide not to enlist the services of a professional building inspector, you can be fairly sure that buyers who are about to part with very large sums of money will not make the same mistake.

From a psychological perspective, there is nothing more damaging to the delicate negotiation phase than an inspector’s revelation of damaged or seriously deteriorated parts of the house.Buyers will either cease negotiations and look elsewhere, or use the information as leverage to negotiate the sale price down or modify the terms of contract to your detriment.

You can easily prevent any of this occurring by offering your pre-sales inspection report to buyers before entering negotiations. The buyer’s inspector may or may not find other issues with the house not included in your inspector’s report, but it highly unlikely that they will be serious issues, and at the very least you can demonstrate that you have, from the outset, acted in good faith.

Conclusion

The benefits of a complete home inspection before you sell your home don’t just end there. The information you receive from the inspector in person and from the report itself can help you determine any areas where you can intervene yourself at little or no cost, such as cleaning the gutters and removing any potentially harmful material from around the house.

Also, an inspection report can help you identify and subsequently emphasize aspects of the house that are completely sound and free of any issues or concerns, such as the foundations or the roofing, or plumbing for that matter.

What really counts, however, is that you are prepared and have a clear idea of the state of the property you’re preparing to sell. And when you consider the cost of a building inspection against the potential price swings in the order of tens of thousands of dollars that a poorly managed sale as opposed to a well-managed sale can provoke, there’s really no discussing the validity of a pre-sales building inspection.

Building Inspectors Can Get You Out of Deep Water

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With the amount of money involved in houses these days and the potential for agonizing heartbreaks and devastating financial losses, anyone who tries to do everything on his or her own without enlisting the help of industry professionals is taking enormous risks. Most of us only get one shot at establishing the perfect nest for ourselves and our loved ones and the consequences can ruin our lives if we get it wrong. Residential building inspection services can help prevent any such misgivings and may just help us avoid making the single biggest mistake of our lives (apart from getting married).

There are many situations, often critical, in which professional building inspectors can intervene and help us make informed decisions about buying, selling, repairing and renovating our houses.

When it comes to buying a house, most of the negotiating is done with real estate agents whose primary interest in the transaction is the commission they will earn on the closed sale. We are not taking a swipe at the level of professionalism and ethics of real estate agents here, we are just talking about a simple, undeniable fact that every buyer has to keep in mind when they’re about to invest their life savings in a new home. Professional building inspectors, on the other hand, are on the buyers’ side and are there to make sure that people get what they’re paying for.

Sellers also need to get in on the act when it comes to building inspection if they don’t want to risk lawsuits, or being landed with a hefty defect liability for a problem they may have overlooked, or could have avoided. They should also bear in mind that buyers will run for the door at the first signs of trouble, or cleverly use anything they find as leverage to negotiate prices down. All of this amounts to massive headaches and substantial financial haircuts, which could easily have been avoided. It is also important to realise that many codes and regulations pertain to a particular state, city or municipality. This means that building inspection in Sydney, for instance, will entail differences to similar practices in other cities and states.

It is needless to point out that houses deteriorate with time and require regular maintenance and repair. Ageing houses can begin to suffer from problems relating to structural fatigue, humidity, mould, termites and other situations that only worsen with time. Some houses may also still have asbestos panels incorporated into the structure, which spells serious health implications for the inhabitants. All of these problems can be identified by inspection professionals who have been trained to spot the symptoms and locate the areas in the house requiring immediate attention.

Renovations and extensions almost always involve knocking down sections of the house and rebuilding or adding new areas. From an engineering perspective, this often involves adding new loads to existing structural elements in the building, and renovators need to be dead certain that these elements can withstand them.

There really is no doubt regarding the necessity of having building inspectors survey the properties we live in or intend to buy. There are many well-trained professionals in the business, but the best ones would have to be the service providers that are also, to some extent, builders themselves, even if they are comparatively small construction companies. The reason is that these companies, especially those which provide across-the-board or macro solutions, have the inside knowledge and experience necessary to find the problems that are less obvious and more difficult to identify. In short, they know where to look.