How Getting A Home Inspection Can End Up Saving You Tons Of Money
There’s no question that the last couple of years has led to a strong seller’s market in real estate. Every buyer is competing against other buyers, with everyone trying to get the best bang for their buck.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, people are changing their priorities. For some, losing a job or being laid off turned the tide away from career dissatisfaction. For others, working from home led to the discovery that they didn’t want to go back to the previous status quo. Many employers aren’t willing to continue to allow remote work. Also, a lot of businesses couldn’t maintain viability and closed down.
Furthermore, many people who spent a long time in lockdown have suffered anxiety, depression, and loneliness. And there are those missing long-distance family and friends they were unable to visit. These factors have led many also to re-evaluate whether they want to maintain those long distances or move closer.
All these factors and more have led to people deciding to seek housing in other parts of the state or even other parts of the country. For sellers, even those who may not have previously thought they might sell, this has led to a significant influx of buyers and competitive pricing.
How Do Buyers Compete?
Buyers are finding it difficult to compete in this seller’s market. These concerned buyers may be locked into specific areas in which they want or need to live. Being competitive can lead to compromises. These compromises can involve settling on less square footage or a smaller property. Or the compromise can be a financial one where the buyer takes on some of the costs that the seller might typically pay.
However tempting it may be to cut corners, one thing you don’t want to avoid is a home inspection. Even if a seller asks you to waive the inspection as a stipulation in the sale, you should decline to avoid making a very costly mistake.
Why Is It So Important To Get A Home Inspection?
The main takeaway in understanding why a home inspection is so important is that it’s a small cost now to avoid a possibly more considerable, unexpected expense later. For a few hundred dollars fee, a licensed home inspector can find issues in a home that potentially could cost thousands in repairs.
Even worse, it may not just be the cost of possible needed repairs. A home inspection may also find dangerous or even life-threatening issues. Something like missing insulation could lead annoyingly to poor energy efficiency. But an inspector might instead discover dangerously corroded lead pipes, missing second-story reinforcements, or poorly maintained gas lines.
Regardless, a home inspection can help the buyer make the most informed home-buying decision, even if that decision means they run away quickly from a dangerous home.