Pre-Listing Inspections

Should I Get a Pre-Listing Inspection

 Pre-listing inspections are done prior to listing your house on the market.  This can be a great way to truly understand the condition of your home.  Bringing in an inspector to check out your home can help you see things that you may have been missing.  It’s similar to seeing a co-worker every day and they don’t notice you’ve been losing weight and then you run into a friend that you haven’t seen in months, and they are amazed at your progress.  Sometimes, when you live in a home month after month and year after year, the maintenance items that slipped away from you are easier to overlook.  Additionally, bringing in a home inspector means that you don’t have to get on the roof, in the attic, or in the crawl space to identify problems or potential problems.

There are several reasons why pre-listings inspections are a good idea:

1. As mentioned before, it’s best to have a 3^rd party to look at your home with fresh and unbiased eyes.
2. It allows you to address safety issues and larger defects that may scare off potential buyers before they ever get to see the house.
3. It is a good idea to add-on a radon test to your inspection. This allows you to have it mitigated (the installation of a system to correct the elevated radon level) before you list the house.  A majority of the time, radon mitigation is a negotiated item that gets push onto the seller anyway.  You may as well get it tested (testing cost with UHI $149) and take on the cost of mitigation (approx $2000 with a mitigation company) before listing.  This way your client feels automatically safer with the property.  No buyer likes to hear, “The radon came back positive.”, even though it is a relatively easy fix.
4. It allows you to make repairs before they become negotiating tools for the buyer. It allows you to better control the cost of those repairs by either finding a more affordable contractors or even doing the repairs yourself, as long as you are qualified.  Most home inspection reports will recommend the repairs be done by “A licensed or qualified contractor”.  If the buyer request those repairs to be made by a licensed or qualified contractor then, the cost may be more than you are comfortable with.  You may have a cousin who’s a licensed electrician that will work for beer….
5. It can give your buyer a sense of ease knowing an inspection has already been conducted. To further reassure them, a re-inspection can be done after the repairs to prove the items found in the original inspection have been taken care of.  This is usually done at ½ the cost of the original inspection.
6. Your buyer will most likely get an inspection of their own conducted but now you know that a majority of the issues with the house were taken care of before their inspector walks in the house.
7. Having a home inspection report to support your disclosure statement can reduce your liability. In addition, having the inspection done ahead of listing can also allow you and your realtor to more accurately price the house at listing.  Hopefully for more!!

Union Home Inspection provides pre-listing inspections with through reports with pictures and descriptive narratives of the issues found.  Call/text at 859-321-6943 or visit www.unionhomeinspection.com to schedule your inspection today (just select either Kentucky or Ohio Home Inspection.  Condos are available as well).