To Inspect or Not to Inspect?

[Kristi Patton]

So, still working on getting my first deal done and so far, my hubby and I have made 2 offers on buy/hold properties and ended up withdrawing both of them because of foundation issues found during the inspection. It would cost more to fix it than the houses would ever be worth!!!

Anyway, we are looking at older houses in lower income neighborhoods so we are aware that there will be things that have to be repaired, but paying for a complete inspection every time we make an offer could real expensive, real fast if we have to withdraw because of a big issue - like the entire floor of the house, including the joists, is sitting directly on the ground and is completely rotted and full of fungus! This was found during the inspection of the latest offer.

I have zero construction experience, but I assume that anyone with any knowledge at all of construction could have spotted that pretty quickly by looking at the crawl space during the initial walk-thru of the house and saved us the trouble of writing an offer in the first place. Is that a safe assumption?

Does it make sense to maybe pay someone with experience a consultation fee to go with us when we look at these houses and point out big ticket items or ("big rocks" as I call them) that could be a deal breaker or have a big affect on what we would actually offer on the house knowing an expensive repair is imminent? Then maybe when we have more experience we will know what we are looking for and can do it ourselves...

And, if we do that, should we still get a complete inspection?

For all I know, this is really commonplace and will end up being a big "DUH" moment for me...but this is literally a matter of not even knowing what I don't know! HA!

Thanks for your advice!