Building Inspections

You decide to sell your house, you prepare you property and stage it and the marketing begins. People who are hopefully QUALIFIED (!), aka, ready, willing and able to purchase make appointments to ViewTheHome and lo and behold, someone loves it, writes you a bonafide offer and you accept; the house is sold!

But of course it’s not really sold because almost every offer will have some conditions, what are known as subject to conditions. In real world language they often contain clauses that mean essentially, “I’ll buy your house, subject to me a) getting financing (often the trickiest one these days), b) me looking at the title and making sure I am not restricted in how I can use the property and c) me being happy with the results of a building inspection.

We’ve seen lots and lots of offers from strong buyers who aren’t concerned about their ability to get financing and they don’t even need to write in “subject to financing” but it’s rare even on a new house that someone will not want to include the clause that allows them to pay for and conduct a building and property inspection. Even on new construction that is fully warrantied it is highly adviseable to perform a building inspection. You just can’t see everything in your, often less than an hour, viewing of a home. It’s pretty risky for a buyer to purchase a home without doing a building inspection.

So as a home owner you wouldn’t more than likely put your home for sale if you knew there was something wrong with it that would be easily discovered by a buyer; hopefully you will have dealt with it before hand so that it doesn’t come up later and kill the deal.

The roof is often a contentious issue; unless it’s less than 10 or at the most 15 years old; a buyer’s going to want to see that reflected in the price. As a seller you shouldn’t have to buy some one a new roof; you won’t be there to enjoy it, but price your house accordingly if you know it needs a roof. On the West Coast a poor roof means that the house will eventually just melt away from the steady absorbtion of water.

One that sellers often forget is drainage systems. What is the system that is taking away water from the land that your house sits on? You may have never had a problem with water in your basement, crawl space or on your foundation (slab) on grade but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t just a few months or days from failing to perform its designed task which is to move water away from your house.

Drain tiles inserted below the ground around the perimeter of your home will take not only the water that comes from your roof via the downspouts connected to roof gutters, but will also direct ground water away from your home. Hopefully these are connected underground to a larger system of piping for your neighbourhood so that no pooling occurs in your immediate vicinity. Problem is unlike a roof, a furnace or rear deck, people hardly ever know a thing about their drainage systems. Hey, if it’s not broken, or if it ain’t leaking in the basement, don’t fix it right?

Here’s the problem, more and more people are making the drainage system an essential component of the building inspection. The cost to have a new system installed is not cheap; 15-20 thousand dollars for a small to average sized home is not unheard of. You don’t want to find out after you’ve accepted an offer and you start to get all excited about how much you are going to net after the expenses related to selling your home, that your could be down several thousands of dollars because you find yourself re-negotiating with a purchaser over an old or failing drainage tile system.

Here’s my suggestion; work with a Realtor when you’re selling your house that’s going to order an examination of your drain tile in advance of marketing your home. A really detailed analysis can be done for less than $200. It’s a great thing to pass to a seller or to a seller’s agent as proof of the condition of one of the most essential elements of your homes mechanical systems.

Jaeson Navaroli of Drain Pro at 250 686 5290 and Jeff Richmond of Royal Rooter 250 480 4806  (love those trucks!) are two of the best and most reputable referrals you can use in Victoria, BC. If you need any advice in preparing or staging your home prior to marketing it for sale, call me now: 250 216 1217.

In the end, I never like to say a home passed or failed an inspection; it’s really just a measurement of how well the building and its systems have performed and most importantly a guide for what needs to be done going forward. Anything can be fixed, repaired or improved!

I specialize in helping people who’s home listing has expired by implementing a new marketing strategy and helping them to sell their home in 90 days or less. Do you know of anyone who’s been frustrated in their attempts to market and sell their home?

I’m your Realtor in Victoria, BC, Fergus Kyne from RE/MAX Alliance.