Inspection Deal Breakers

[Dante M.]

I have an inspection tomorrow on what is hopefully the first rental of my RE investing career. For my fellow BP members, what are some things that if discovered during an inspection, you can't overlook?

[Glen Whipkins]

One thing to remember about inspections is that you are paying someone to look at the property and find all the problems.   And they are going to find problems, it's what you paid them to do!  A lot of times it will be lots of little things that really don't amount to much.   Like "switch plate cover in bathroom is cracked"  or "sidewalk should slope at 12 degrees and it only slopes 9 degrees".    They will also find major items if there are any.  We built some new houses and a potential buyer wanted an inspection.  The inspector came back with like four pages of things wrong and 99% of it was really nit picky things or things he would have done differently than my builder did, not wrong, just his opinion.  We wound up fixing one thing on the list.  So as a buyer you can a lot of times use the inspection findings to reduce the purchase price.   Usually minor things aren't going to get you much but major repair items will, like the roof needs replaced or it has cracked rafters or floor joists.  Sometimes the seller will lower price, sometimes they won't.  Another thing to look at, make sure your inspector does hvac.  If he doesn't, I would recommend having a separate hvac inspector look it over because that can run into a big expense in a hurry.