House Inspection Question

[Account Closed]

For any potential home buyer, a general inspection is of course a must. But upon doing some research, I see that some recommend doing more detailed inspections before closing such as: termite, radon, plumbing, roof etc.. For someone who really wants to do their due diligence to make sure there won't be any hidden surprises/costs once the house is in their hands, I'm wondering if any investors would recommend additional inspections to cover all bases even after a general inspection? And if so, which ones?

[J Scott]

It depends. Some of the things that you might have additional inspections for may not be overly important to your end-buyers, may be part of the rehab regardless or may not be expensive to fix. In those cases, I don't bother with additional inspections.

For example, I never do a radon inspection. My end-buyer may or may not do one, and if I do one, I'm then obligated to disclose if there's an issue. I'd rather not know and if my end-buyer wants to do an inspection himself, he can. Many times buyers won't. Worst case, it costs about $800 to put in a remediation system, which really isn't a big deal.

For termites, remediation is less than $1000 (for subterranean termites, which are common in my area) -- if I notice termite damage during the rehab, we'll do the treatment and repair any issues, but any major issues wouldn't be visible prior to opening up walls anyway, so I don't bother with inspections prior to purchase.

For stuff like structual issues, if I notice something concerning, I'll generally have my engineer take a look. If it's a basement foundation issue (bowing walls), I'll have my foundation company take a look and give me a bid...thus saving the money on the inspection.

For basic things like plumbing, I'm generally doing a pretty big rehab anyway, and I build in buffer in the budget for plumbing/electrical issues that might come up. I rarely find a pluming/electrical issue that costs more than $500 to fix (assuming nothing obvious from basic inspection), so I deal with it if it comes up.

Basically, instead of spending $2000 on additional inspections from termite companies, foundation companies, engineers, radon tests, etc., I put that $2000 towards my "surprise" budget. Only if there is a potentially costly issue (greater than $2000) will I bring in a specialist.

Of course, that's just me...