Hello, it's Greg Harrelson here from Century 21, the Harrelson Group and I just wanted to give you some additional information regarding purchasing property and most in particular, talk to you about a home inspection. I just will tell you, I would never buy a property, even personally, without having a professional inspector going and doing a home inspection on that property so I can identify if there're any challenges with that property that I might have to deal with in the future. So if I wouldn't buy a property myself without doing a home inspection, then surely I'd never recommend to any of my clients that they would purchase without a home inspection.
So I just wanted to share a five pretty common sense reasons why you want to get a home inspection. Number one, you don't want to judge a book by its cover. I mean, especially new construction. You may think "I'm buying new construction, what could be wrong with that?" Listen, we have our clients do home inspections on new construction all the time. Now the builders don't like it, because the builders know we're going to probably find something or the inspector's going to find something and they're going to have to go and update or fix something. It just happens just about on every house. That doesn't mean that the builder or the new construction is a problem or they're not doing a good job. Its just things get missed and the home inspector's job is to find that.
So do home inspections, even on new construction, but besides that you might be buying a home or making an offer on a home that you can tell the owner's really taking good care of the home. They've been meticulous. It looks good. You just don't know what's under the shingle, what's behind the walls, what's under the house. So you need somebody who has a trained eye to make sure that they uncover any issues that you might have to deal with. So, number one, don't judge a book by its cover. Go ahead and get the inspection no matter what the property looks like.
The second thing is, the reason why you want to get a home inspection is it'll save your money. If you can find mistakes on the front end, if you can find those mistakes on the front end or those challenges with the house, then you can talk to the seller and the seller a lot of times, depending on the contract that you have with that seller, will go ahead and have those things fixed on their dollar. So too often, you see buyers not get a home inspection. They buy a home; they close on it. Two weeks later, they're calling saying, "Hey, it looks like the seller didn't tell us that the outlet didn't work in the master bedroom and I can't plug my light a lamp in." Well, once you take possession and close, it's too late, you can't really go back to the seller, so any expense on fixing, that's going to be on your shoulders at that moment, or it's going to at least come out of your wallet.
The third thing I wrote down here is why you want to have a home inspection is it gives you additional leverage in the negotiation. See if there's a home inspection done and it comes back and there's five or six items that the inspector found, then you can reopen negotiations if you choose to, again depending on the contract, how it's written and we're good at protecting you. You can renegotiate. You can say, "Hey, look, I agreed to pay X amount of dollars based on the property being in certain condition, but the home inspector has now uncovered that these five things don't work." Now, those five things might amount to a thousand dollars, $1,500, maybe only $500. But in either case, when you have a home
inspection, then you'll be able to leverage that inspection with the other party, the seller, and typically get them to contribute all or at least some of the costs associated for those repairs. So it allows you to leverage, in the negotiation to make sure that you get some of those costs covered.
The next thing is seller's repair. So even before you close, there's a few ways to go about this. Before you close, you can ask them to give you money. That would be another way to negotiate. "Hey, can you give us a thousand dollars credit for the things that were found in the home inspection?" Or you could actually build into the contract that the seller has to repair those things. So maybe there's no negotiation or exchange of money, but we can build a contract where the seller is obligated to make those repairs. Now, again, we have to specify what those things are in a contract, but that's why you hire a professional real estate agent.
The next thing is, and I think this is important, the last one here, is it's just comforting to know what you're buying. You just want to know. You want to have peace of mind. You want to have confidence that when you buy this property, you know what you're getting, there's no surprises. Some people, like a used car, they'll go buy a used car and it looks really good, it sounds good and then a month later, they start hearing clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, and it's like, "Gosh, darn it." That issue was probably already there, it's just over that one month, it got a little bit worse and now it's noticeable and that can be very stressful.
So, I want you to know what you're buying and when you get a certified home inspector or somebody that's licensed in our state to go out there again and use their professional, their trained eye, and put that on your property, then you can know once you've got the inspection, once you've renegotiated with the seller, once you've closed, you can be confident that you know what you got and there shouldn't be many surprises later on down the road. So if you can't tell by now, I recommend you get a home inspection. These are the reasons why. Please reach out to me, Greg Harrelson, or any of our agents within Century 21, The Harrelson Group, we would just love to help you, represent you in your next purchase. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.