Qualified Home Inspection Buys You Peace of Mind
By Joey Fitzpatrick, Personal Affairs, The Halifax Herald, Sunday, September 17, 2000
When you’ve just sunk your life savings into a home, the last thing you want to learn six months later is that underneath that coat of paint, half the windows in the house are rotten. Or that the chimney needs to be rebuilt.
Hiring a home inspector before you buy can help avoid some of the pitfalls of buying a home.
There’s a vast list of potentia1 problems that a qualified inspector can uncover. Older homes often need rewiring. A leaking oil tank can be a disaster, with liability issues on surrounding properties. Wood deterioration around windows and doors is a major problem in Nova Scotia’s damp climate.
Most building inspectors charge about $325 for a structural and major systems analysis, which includes the foundation, doors, windows, siding, roof, plumbing, heating and electrical systems.
They can also uncover potential health and safety problems in a home. There could be child safety issues, with damaged or rotten decks, loose railings, or exhaust concerns with fossil fuel burning systems.
Before hiring an inspector, however, there are a few things you should know. Home inspection is an unregulated business - anybody can call themselves a home inspector.
The Canadian Association of Home Inspectors provides certification and sets criteria for becoming a registered home inspector. But while most inspectors pursue certification, not all do. So the onus is on the consumer to ask questions before hiring someone. How long have you been in business? How many homes have you inspected? Can you provide references?
A typical inspection takes about two hours, and you should expect to get a written report from the inspector.
Let’s say the inspector overlooks a major structural defect, end six months later you’ve got water pouring through your roof. Your first line of recourse is to go back to the inspector, and indicate that this problem should have been caught.
“Every situation is different,” says Allan Thompson, with Clue-So Home Inspections. “It can start with a phone call and end up being settled amicably within a day, or it could end up in Supreme Court.”
This is why you want to make sure the inspector carries errors and omissions insurance, which protects the inspector against claims of negligence by consumers.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the inspector can be held liable for every future problem in the home that crops up. Let’s say a pipe breaks in a wall l2 months later. If all the plumbing in the house looked good, but all of a sudden a particular fitting lets go, and it’s a hidden defect, then an inspector can’t really be held responsible for picking that up.
Should you have the home inspected before you make the offer, or after? There are two schools of thought here.
In most cases the prospective buyer will make the offer contingent on a satisfactory building inspection. If the inspector uncovers major structural or electrical problems, then the offer to purchase is null and void.
Then if the offer is accepted, the inspection is carried out.
This way, if the offer is rejected, the buyer is not out of pocket for the $250 for the inspection. Likewise, the buyer will then wait until the financing is secured before hiring the inspector.
In some cases a buyer will have an inspection done before making an offer. This way, if there are major deficiencies uncovered, you can walk away from the deal. You will have spent $350 on a home you will never own, but you will have avoided purchasing a major problem.
Or, you can use the inspector’s report to negotiate a better price. If the house needs $10,000 in work, perhaps you would be willing to absorb half of that if ~ the vendor will come down $5,000 in price.
Joey Fitzpatrick is a Halifax writer. Email: jfitzpatrick@herald.ns.ca
