Today’s video with Misty Weaver from the Dream Weaver Real Estate Team is a feature on what buyer’s inspections may be advisable when seeking to purchase a new home.  You can watch the short video below or read the transcript that follows the video, or both!

Video Transcript:

Hi, everyone! Misty here with the Dream Weaver Team at Samson Properties, and I want to discuss buyers today and what inspections you should do or can do on a home that you are going to make an offer on.

So number one is that you need to realize that you have to choose what inspections you want to do when you’re making that offer. It needs to be in the offer paperwork, especially if you are going to make it contingent on that offer. And what that means is you want to do these inspections and, based on the results, you have options. So you can negotiate the seller fixing or giving you credit for any of the things that came back from the inspection. Or you can decide to cancel that contract or you can just decide to move forward as it is. So it gives you options when you make it contingent.

Stop renting start buyingSo let’s discuss the most popular one, it’s the general home inspection, and the inspector is going to come in and literally kind of go over everything that they can see. Now, they cannot see “everything,” so you need to know that. You can do some more invasive inspections if needed, such as chimneys, behind walls potentially depending on what’s going on, up in attics, all of those things, but anything that they can see. They’re going to look at roofs; they’re going to look at electrical, plumbing, all of those things. They’re going to put together a report for you and let you know where the issues are. So that’s the main one.

The second one would be radon. If there is a basement, we are in a high-radon area because of our rocky soil. In the Shenandoah Valley Area about 66 percent of homes have high radon, so if it’s a basement you’ll probably want to get that checked. It is fairly easy and inexpensive to remediate for radon with a radon system, but you want to know about it. So you can make those options, again, during the contract.

The third and fourth most popular ones would be well and septic if you are looking at a property that has those. If you are on city water and city sewer or you are in Lake Holiday on the private system, you don’t need to worry about those things, but if you are on well and septic, you may need to look at them.

Now, there are some ones that are less popular and not done as much depending on what you’re buying. If you’re buying a fixer-upper and you know that there are water leaks and you are concerned about mold, you can do mold testing. You can do lead-based paint testing in older homes. There are a bazillion other things you can do. I’ve had people do radon testing in the well water, not just in the basement. And so depending on the property, there may be something that you want to have done. If you know there are structural issues, you may want to have a structural engineer out.

But those are your main ones.

Now, the second big thing you need to know is you are going to pay for those inspections out of your pocket. So that needs to be included in your budget when you are thinking about buying a home, especially if you are a first-time buyer. And we can discuss kind of the averages of those.

  • Home inspection you’re looking at $350 to $500 depending on the square footage and the inspector.
  • Radon about $100 to $150.
  • The other ones, it will depend on how big the home is and all of that.

So we can go over all of that if you are thinking of buying, but the home inspection protects you and they’re really, really good to do. I always recommend people do that. You can choose not to. If you’re buying a fixer-upper and you have remodeling experience, you may understand things a little bit differently, a little bit better than other people. So we can discuss all of that.

If you are thinking about buying, please reach out, we would love to help you, and I will see you next week with some new tips. Bye!

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