[N/A] Yes or No on Home Inspection

I'd backup the suggestions to forego the home inspection if you're planning to do repairs anyway... Identify what you know, engage contractors you trust to fix and/or help identify full scope of issues.

I'm not on the owner's title bandwagon, though. I get burned up by the (possibly local) custom of closing attorney's also being stakeholders in the title insurance companies.

I just paid you to run a title search looking for issues, liens, discrepancies, etc. And now you want me to pay you, to insure me against your having missed something?

Pass. (And I won't even knock on wood...)
 
chartbundle said:
On a semi-unrelated note that I just learned about. Depending on the panel manufacturer you can get an interlock for your main panel that lets you put a generator breaker in without needing a distinct generator panel. Turn off main, turn off circuits you don't want powered, move interlock, start generator, turn on generator breaker, turn on circuits you want. Far cheaper than a full generator panel as you just need an inlet and a breaker and the lockout. Obviously this doesn't apply if you want automatic load switching.
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Had the lockout put in when I updated my panel to 200A, works great and allows me to choose what I want to run. Was a lifesaver when we were without power for 3 days a few years back.
 
The first two houses I bought I had an inspection done. It was relatively inexpensive and at the time I thought I was getting something of value, but neither inspection turned out to be worthwhile. All of the findings from both inspections would have been discovered by me, had I spent a similar amount of time going through the house.

I won't be wasting my time and money on one again. I'll just do it myself. I have yet to use a lender that required anything more than an appraisal.
 
SaltH2OHokie said:
I'd backup the suggestions to forego the home inspection if you're planning to do repairs anyway... Identify what you know, engage contractors you trust to fix and/or help identify full scope of issues.

I'm not on the owner's title bandwagon, though. I get burned up by the (possibly local) custom of closing attorney's also being stakeholders in the title insurance companies.

I just paid you to run a title search looking for issues, liens, discrepancies, etc. And now you want me to pay you, to insure me against your having missed something?

Pass. (And I won't even knock on wood...)
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My parents said the title insurance isn't needed. The house was built by my great uncle and grandfather and never sold or mortgaged. The house was 100% paid for the day the last of the paint dried.
 
I would pass on the home inspector like a lot of others here. In your case, a waste of money.
 
As far as the electrical, back when a lot of older houses were built, there were few electrical appliances, so not many receptacles and breaker boxes were put in. For your house, it could be that as time went by, someone needed more power, so added another breaker box, etc. That would be my guess.
 
NHWannabe said:
Had the lockout put in when I updated my panel to 200A, works great and allows me to choose what I want to run. Was a lifesaver when we were without power for 3 days a few years back.
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If you already go through the process of installing a new panel, have the electrician set up an 'inlet' plug on the outside that is connected to the lockout breaker.
 
ARFlyer said:
My parents said the title insurance isn't needed. The house was built by my great uncle and grandfather and never sold or mortgaged. The house was 100% paid for the day the last of the paint dried.
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Title insurance covers more than mortgage issues. If there are any survey errors, rights, easements, etc, all should be covered under the policy. Likewise deeds, wills, and trusts that you may not even know are there. Doesn't matter if there was a mortgage on it or not.
 
ARFlyer said:
My parents said the title insurance isn't needed. The house was built by my great uncle and grandfather and never sold or mortgaged. The house was 100% paid for the day the last of the paint dried.
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You buy the house from your great uncles estate.2 years from now, cousin Ricky (the one with the pill addiction), gets the estate re-openened because he was unfairly excluded at the time. The title insurance would defend you in that action.
 
weilke, wsuffa, I don't disagree with the possibilities...I just think they're remote enough that I'm not concerned.

To each their own. It's optional. You guys clearly opt-in, I opt-out.
 
Title insurance is inexpensive, and totally worth it. I don't buy homes, nor airplanes without it.
 
wsuffa said:
Title insurance covers more than mortgage issues. If there are any survey errors, rights, easements, etc, all should be covered under the policy. Likewise deeds, wills, and trusts that you may not even know are there. Doesn't matter if there was a mortgage on it or not.
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We've already found issues with the survey, deeds, family estate and the easements. I'll have to get the estate reopened to rewrite all the deeds and their amendments. So I have an appt. at the law firm we used to start the process. I was wanting to beat my head against a wall last night looking over the survey errors.
 
weilke said:
If you already go through the process of installing a new panel, have the electrician set up an 'inlet' plug on the outside that is connected to the lockout breaker.
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Did that at the same time I just roll the generator out of the garage chain it between the garage doors and plug it into the inlet plug....takes me about 2 minutes and I have a power back.
 
cowman said:
Maybe I've just had bad ones but I've never had an inspector tell me anything I didn't already know from using my own eyes. Sounds like you already know it has problems and are planning on doing a lot of DIY work anyway.... so I'm guessing you've got a clue. I probably wouldn't bother.
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I agree. If you are reasonably handy and do a lot of homeowner work yourself, you can do the home inspection.

Plan to spend an entire day going over the house very critically with a clipboard in hand and possibly a phone camera. This ain't rocket science.

Then, and this is the best part, take the money you have just saved and buy beer, lots of beer - you are going to need it.
 
As I said, the major advantage is that you can use the home inspector report as leverage against the seller. Frankly, I've had very little good luck with inspectors (both buying and selling). I had one about to write a scathing report on a property I was buying (should have let him, but I'd already squeezed all i could out of the seller on this) when I had to point out to him that I think there was more than met the eye. Turns out that someone had turned off (or they thought they'd turned off) the water to the unit, which accounted for the low water pressure (all was fine when I opened the valve).
 
ARFlyer said:
I'm going to get an extra 10k or so on my mortgage for major repairs and appliances. Is that what your talking about?
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Sort of. But I would plan on something totally unexpected to come up and fund accordingly. If you don't use it, you are that much ahead.
 
flyingron said:
As I said, the major advantage is that you can use the home inspector report as leverage against the seller. Frankly, I've had very little good luck with inspectors (both buying and selling). I had one about to write a scathing report on a property I was buying (should have let him, but I'd already squeezed all i could out of the seller on this) when I had to point out to him that I think there was more than met the eye. Turns out that someone had turned off (or they thought they'd turned off) the water to the unit, which accounted for the low water pressure (all was fine when I opened the valve).
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my luck would be turning the valve back on restores the water pressure and I assume "all good" and continue to purchase, only to find out the valve was mostly closed because the plumbing was old and tired and just was not going to hold full pressure for much longer than "possession plus 1 day"
 
Unless you are buying into enough equity where the house can be unfixable, you can rebuild, and still be above water, get a home inspection.
Lots of hidden little gems can lie beneath some aesthetically pretty buildings. Some of the worst may have been totally unknown by the previous owners. Home inspections are very cheap, show up a lot of stuff, and the big things most sellers would be embarrassed not to fix for you.

If you are buying it really cheap or as-is and don't want to ask the seller to fix things, get the home inspection anyway. It doesn't hurt to have someone else overlook your property and it gives you and or contractor a detailed list of what needs to be done
 
ARFlyer said:
We've already found issues with the survey, deeds, family estate and the easements. I'll have to get the estate reopened to rewrite all the deeds and their amendments. So I have an appt. at the law firm we used to start the process. I was wanting to beat my head against a wall last night looking over the survey errors.
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Ugh. Good luck.
 
wsuffa said:
Ugh. Good luck.
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Nothing like a driveway easement that includes your living room or a property description that doesn't include your house.

One of my cousins is a surveyor. Some of the old-timers he had on his crews always excused survey errors with 'land doesn't get lost'.
 
The was a survey error in my hood. A guy across the street, a surveyor, ran into it when the lot behind him (he's on a corner) was about to get a house. The builder survey showed his fence encroached by 2', he didn't think so. He surveyed his own lot and found it was right, the builder surveyed his empty lot and found that IT was correct. There was a 2' overlap that was unaccounted for. The city surveyed a couple of times and came up with different answers. I don't know all the details, but my neighbor said they found out that one of the survey datum was off by 2'. So if you measured east to west you got one answer and if you measured west to east you got a different answer. I don't know how they resolved it, but that lot is 2' narrower than expected.
 
I got a mold inspection on the house I was looking at buying. The realtor thought I was nuts and said she had never had anyone do one before. The air sample found a toxic strain of mold in the basement that wasn't visible to the eye.
 
Code exists because that s the current safety standard. You can redneck a repair all you want - but if the house burns down, and the insurer you did work without a permit - well - they're gnna blame the work for the fire and not pay off. Good luck proving it was to code.

People play these stupid code games all the time - if you hope to ever SELL the home in the future to a non-understanding family member - then you better be able to prove the home was built to code at one point - in order to grandfather the home in. Otherwise - you will be liable to repair to current code anytime an inspector shows up. You could simply have a tax reassessment come through - and the code guy tags along with the scanned rules on ipad- and you're screwed.

Get the house to spec - get it inspected -take the tax assessment hit and move on.
 
comanchepilot said:
Code exists because that s the current safety standard. You can redneck a repair all you want - but if the house burns down, and the insurer you did work without a permit - well - they're gnna blame the work for the fire and not pay off. Good luck proving it was to code.

People play these stupid code games all the time - if you hope to ever SELL the home in the future to a non-understanding family member - then you better be able to prove the home was built to code at one point - in order to grandfather the home in. Otherwise - you will be liable to repair to current code anytime an inspector shows up. You could simply have a tax reassessment come through - and the code guy tags along with the scanned rules on ipad- and you're screwed.

Get the house to spec - get it inspected -take the tax assessment hit and move on.
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I'm not sure I've heard of an insurance company not paying for fire damage because of owner-repaired wiring . . . Unless it could be proven as an attempt at intentionally starting a fire (arson/insurance fraud)


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SoonerAviator said:
I'm not sure I've heard of an insurance company not paying for fire damage because of owner-repaired wiring . . . Unless it could be proven as an attempt at intentionally starting a fire (arson/insurance fraud)


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rely on your never hearing about it? Doesn't mean it can't or wont happen. Some defective wiring may survive a fire - I try really really hard in my life not to give any corporate or government bureaucrat the ability to mess with me.
 
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