Why Have A Home Inspection On A Home You Already Own?

This week I did an inspection for a couple who had lots of questions and concerns about their home. Most of these concerns were not warranted. The walls showed numerous seam cracks where the drywall met the trim. Hairline straight cracks at wall/ceiling intersections – or even just on the walls – are butt (seam) cracks. You can ignore these: they aren’t structural.

A bit more problematic was the exterior condition of the stucco, especially on the chimney. I had some concerns with this, but overall there was no evidence of diagonal cracks or underlying distress. Proper maintenance type repairs by a qualified stucco mason was all that appeared to be warranted.

Then for the non-inspection issues. They wanted to know should they redo the redesign the kitchen to make the home more saleable. This is more of a realtor issue: what is worth doing to get more money for the home. The problem here was that a full-scale redesign of the kitchen would involve serious money. Given the location and likely price-point of the home, I just didn’t feel this was worth doing. What was worth doing, in my opinion, was to replace the antique countertop with quartz or granite and then either replacing the cabinet door fronts – or just paint them and put on new hardware. They should get their money back by dong this but a more expensive renovation just would not bring a positive return.

Then for the electrical system. Lots of outlets were improperly wired – or were missing ground fault protection. They needed an electrician to come in to have the outlets safely wired.

Then lastly, the most interesting find: the dryer had an old (old) brass gas connector. I haven’t seen one of these in years, probably because they are dangerous so they get replaced. I urged the homeowner to get a plumber out to replace this with a modern approved connector. (The homeowner confessed that he had installed the connector. Fortunately, the house had no blown up yet (but if he moved the dryer this was a real possibility)

So, the inspection took 2 ½ hours (I tend to be somewhat slow) but, as I often find, there is just a ton of stuff going on with existing homes that homeowners are simply not aware of.

Note: these inspections cost less than one-half what a full PrePurchase Inspections costs!