Questions & Answers

Buying a home? Congratulations!!! This is an important time in your life, and like most important life transitions, the purchase of a home carries its own measure of excitement and anxiety. You will have many questions about your new home, most of which will be directly addressed during the home inspection process. So relax.

 
Your inspection will identify maintenance recommendations, estimated life expectancies of mechanical systems and minor imperfections. These are nice to know about. However, the issues that really matter will fall into three categories:

1. Major defects. An example of this would be a structural failure.
2. Things that could lead to major defects - a small roof flashing leak, for example.
3. Safety hazards, such as an exposed, live high voltage point at the electric panel where circuit breakers have been removed without adding safety covers to prevent fingers from getting to the high voltage.
Anything in these categories should be addressed promptly. Often a serious problem can be corrected inexpensively to protect both life and property (especially in categories 2 and 3).
It’s important to realize that the inspection report does not automatically place an obligation on the seller to repair everything mentioned in the report. No home is perfect, so it’s important to keep things in perspective. You don’t want to kill your deal over things that are in the end inconsequential. Thus, it may not be wise to demand that a seller address deferred maintenance, conditions already listed on the seller's disclosure or small, easy-to-address items.