What to bring on your Home Inspection!
If this is your first home inspection, or you've moved and used home inspectors several times, I hope I have a few newer insights into how to enhance this experience.
It's a stressful thing, making a decision about where you are going to live. You might be raising a family in this neighbourhood, and your kids will grow up here, go to Scouts, make friends, have birthday parties. Or maybe you're downsizing, and you're interested in your home being close to shops, restaurants, the golf course and entertainment venues. It's a personal choice, and of course you've done all the due diligence in deciding on your place. Now you have a subject to home inspection, and this is where we meet.
You've already looked at every room in the house, but here is an excellent opportunity to look at it with a more practiced eye while on your home inspection. Bring a tape measure. You might want to measure a room for furniture or area carpet placement or carpet replacement.
Bring a notepad or your digital pad to take notes. I'm the kind of home inspector who will be talking a lot about the different components as we do our "walkabout" inspecxtion. These tips and tricks can come in handy down the road, and if you keep a record of them, you'll be happy! Of course, I'm always just a phone call away if you decide to buy, and it's six months later and you forgot what I said about the water shutoff.
If you've got an iPad, you might want to take pictures as we go along. I'll be pointing out where the shutoffs are, and the gas furnace, the electrical panel, etc. If there's something of interest you want to "tag" now's a good time!
Of course, bring questions. Lots of questions. Every house has it's own story, and sometimes, as a home inspector, it's like being a member of CSI discovering where and how that water stain occurred. Not every water stain is a sign of problems. Sometimes it's a sign of a problem that was fixed on the outside and not fixed on the inside. A new roof replacement perhaps, but they haven't repainted since the roof replacement. Over the course of years, so much depends on regular maintenance. Two houses side by side in the same neighbourhood will have dramatically different results 20 years later. If one was not maintained properly, the furnace might be shot, the sidewalks sinking, water damage in the shower stalls. The house next door to it might be in move-in and like-new condition. There are small signs sometimes, that lead to big answers.
In the end, it's all your decision on if this is the house for you. It might be a house that has to have almost a perfect move-in appearance, with all the bells and whistles that you have on your list. Or you might be more comfortable in a home that has some projects attached to it, to make it completely your style while living in it. These esthetics are essentially your choice, many times based on your budget and home-improvement savvy. I built and subcontracted every home I lived in. Why? Because I'm too picky, says my wife, but at the same time, we don't move that often. We built the things that we couldn't change with the best materials we could afford, and the things we could change, we went with a much lower budget. For example, over time, lighting fixtures can be easily replaced to make a home look newer and fresher, but 6 inch exterior walls, well, that's impossible to change.
So, bring your questions, your notepad or iPad, your camera, and your tape measure. I'll supply the rest.
Happy House Hunting!