Can a Home Inspection Destroy a Real Estate Deal?
This is a tough question to answer. In short, yes. A poorly conducted home inspection does have the ability to make a home buyer run for the hills in fear. And this can give home inspectors everywhere a bad wrap. So, let’s dive deeper into what’s really going on here.
Every Home has Vulnerabilities and Flaws
There is no such thing as a perfectly constructed home. Every home in every city around the world will reveal a defect at some point. Expecting a perfect home is like expecting a perfectly behaved child, it just doesn’t exist. The good news is that every home has a perfect buyer, and that is really the better foundation to build a house hunting experience from. Buyers ought to ask, “am I the perfect buyer for this house”, rather than, “is this the perfect house for me?”
Home Inspectors Also Have Vulnerabilities and Flaws
Each home inspector comes with a unique and seasoned set of skills, some of which may have nothing to do with his/her ability to discover flaws within a home. Suppose you have a home inspector that is very capable, maybe he has a strong background in construction, lending you to think you will receive an excellent home inspection only to discover that following the home inspection the inspector fails utterly at communicating what is found.
What some clients fail to consider beforehand is whether that home inspector has strong communication skills, both written and oral. Can your home inspector communicate the flaws he/she discovers in a home to a home buyer in a way that allows everyone involved to rest easy knowing that there is no reason to become alarmed, that there is a solution for every problem and that your inspector is there to navigate you to that solution?
Communicating Every Flaw and Always Finding a Solution
Expect every home to have flaws, but don’t expect every home inspector to have flaws. When a home has many flaws and the home inspector has flawed communication, chances are a disaster is on the way.
A flawless home inspection experience can facilitate the sale of a very flawed home.
Almost every defect has a solution if both the buyer and seller can get on board with it. We try to remind our clients that no home is absolutely perfect and that the home inspection is just another phase of negotiations. It’s just an all-around better experience for the client if their whole team (lender, realtor, home inspector, etc.) is working from a place of “how can we fix this problem,” rather than, “this problem isn’t fixable.”
