Making an alteration so that inspection can be done?

[Bienes Raices]

In the REO, the attic entrance is one of the those small hatch doors in the garage that you enter using a ladder. The bank(?) put some kind of contraption there that prevents someone from entering the attic. It's almost like a trap door that only opens a quarter of the way. It has a cord and I tried pulling on it but the thing does not open.

Obviously I want the inspector to be able to see the roof, attic, etc. Would it be out of line if I just cut that "trapdoor" out with the sawzall so that someone can enter? I don't know if this could come back on me if I end up not buying the property and they see that this alteration was made. Thanks.

[J Scott]

Are you fairly certain you're going to go through with the purchase of this property? If so, then I don't see anything wrong with doing whatever you need to do (and causing the minimum amount of damage in the process) to complete your inspections.

Now, if there is a reasonable chance you won't be buying the property, or if the damage you need to do is major, it's probably best to talk to the listing agent before you doing anything.

As an example, we have a house under contract now that has a roof leak, which is causing some mold behind a few walls. During our contractor walk through, we ripped out some sheetrock to see how bad the mold was and extensive it was.

If we weren't positive we were going to buy the property (assuming no issues on the seller side, that is), we probably wouldn't have done this, but we've never not purchased a property that we had under contract (again, other than due to seller issues), so I'm not concerned.

Btw, with this particular house, we found the roof leak to be extensive, and for the first time, we'll actually be asking the seller's permission to do repairs before the closing; we'll see how that goes... :)