The One With the Home Inspection
Home inspections. Waste of time and money? What are your thoughts? Would you rather pay someone $350 to tell you what is wrong with a property you want to purchase or hope for the best?
I hope that the last question really opens your eyes to how important home inspections truly are.
Now as a Realtor in Orlando, I like to give some of my clients a gift… the number of a great home inspector. I urge every single client to get a home inspection before moving forward with a transaction, and yes, even on new builds.
Home inspectors have a huge job. And in Florida, it becomes a hot job. Not one that gets posted on indeed.com, but literally HOT. Like sitting in a metal box in the middle of the desert hot. T
hey are brought in AFTER a contract is accepted. If you have a great Realtor, like me, they will go to the home inspection and sweat it out with the inspector. I love going to these because I can see first hand what the inspector finds and how it can be fixed. If your Realtor will not go to the inspection, FIRE THEM IMMEDIATELY! Sorry to be harsh, but they are showing that they truly do not care about you and your home. Rant over…
The inspector will go on the roof, in the attic, around the outside of the property, inside the home, check all of the appliances, electrical outlets, plumbing, heating, cooling, windows, floors, ceiling, fans, electrical panel, water heater, etc. They check it all! They are worth their weight in gold and if they’re really good, like really really good, they will let you know what is a major issue and what can be done by a DIYer.
True story- I attended a home inspection recently (duh! It’s my job to do these). The inspector went through a 2,500 sq ft home and tapped on every single tile on the floor. He found several that were no longer attached to the ground via the thin-set. They had ‘popped’ meaning they were floating and sounded hollow when tapped or even walked on. This was a big issue because my client had small children. The last thing she wanted was a tile cracking or popping up and hurting one of her kids.
The inspector said there were enough tiles that popped that it needed to be addressed and most likely replaced. He then found a big NO-NO. The A/C unit had a sticker on it displaying that it was installed in 2019, making it only 1 year old. The sticker was fake. It was taken off of another unit and placed on the current one. After I removed the fake sticker, were found out the A/C was actually 12 years old… needless to say, I came back to the seller's agent with a vengeance!
We went back and forth for several days. I showed them proof of the sellers misleading the public with the sticker and showed a tile that had actually popped and broke in half. Can you guess the outcome?
We negotiated the price down $10,000 and they had the floor replaced (buyer ended up paying for the tile they wanted, but the seller paid the labor). BAM! Just like that, they got a new SAFE floor and $10,000 off of the sales price.
If I wasn’t there, I would have never tried to pull the sticker off…
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Matt Schnitker is a Realtor® in Orlando, Florida with BEX Realty. I'm a proud husband and father of two, self-professed tech nerd, and bona fide food fanatic. My wife and I are both Real Estate nerds and we love looking at Real Estate, so of course, we got into the business together. 😆
If you have any questions or would like some more information on anything you see in my videos (or anything else) please email me at matts@BEXRealty.com or call my team at 407.415.1015 We have a website with tons of blogs and videos and you can search for homes for sale: www.SoldBySchnitker.com
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