Selling Your Home? Worried About the Buyers Home Inspection?

Selling a home can be stressful!  Adding to this stress is the buyers home inspection process. 
Typically:
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1.       Seller places their home on the market
2.       Buyer makes an offer
3.       Seller accepts
4.       Buyer hires an independent home inspection
5.       Inspector finds a few things wrong
6.       The buyer asks for it to be repaired
7.       Then the seller and buyer go back and forth debating on who will fix what and how much
8.       Hopefully the deal closes on time

If that sounds like a strange order of events you are right!  It is!  Only about 3 percent of all home sellers elect to get their own pre-listing home inspection.  A pre-listing home inspection is the seller’s best defense in a home sale.  Knowledge is power so why would you want to give all the knowledge of your homes function and safety in the buyer’s hands?  What if the order looked more like this:

1.       Seller hires their own independent home inspector
2.       Seller reviews the inspection and makes repairs accordingly (or even if no repairs are made the seller has the knowledge of their homes condition.)
3.       Seller places their home on the market
4.       Buyer makes offer
5.       Seller accepts offer
6.       Buyer gets their own independent home inspector
7.       Inspector finds a few things wrong, but the seller knows of these things OR they did not find much wrong and the inspection is great because problems were all previously repaired
8.       Buyer and seller are happily sitting at the closing table, on time and on budget!

A Few Misguided Thoughts

Thought: What if the home inspector finds something significantly wrong with my home?
Answer:  If there is something truly significantly deficient in your home (foundation, etc) it will come out during the buyer’s inspection or bank appraisal.  This will either kill the sale or back you into a corner making last minute big ticket repairs from anyone who can get it done in the limited timeframe.

Thought: Maybe the buyer won’t get an inspection, and I shouldn’t waste money fixing things.
Answer: Around 80 percent of buyers in the Clarksville area get their own independent home inspection.  Why compete for the 20 percent of buyers in the market when you market to 100 percent or them?

Getting a home pre-inspected before its listed puts the seller in the driver’s seat.

Zumbro Home Inspection (931) 278-5400    
www.zumbrohomeinspection.com