Alaska Home Detectives
I always encourage sellers to have their home inspected prior to putting it on the market. There are many good reasons for that.
Here they are:
To drive the point home let me tell you about two sellers right here in Wasilla who just today found out about problems in their home that each wish they had known beforehand. In each case the buyer was having the home inspected as part of their due diligence period before they closed on the home.
In the first case, the inspector found a problem with the foundation. The buyer and seller were both in tears because it now seems obvious that the transaction will not close. The buyer made plans to move into the home by the end of November and the seller desperately needs to sell the home to move out of state with her family. Now it’s back to square one. If a pre-inspection had been completed the seller would have been able to disclose the problem and perhaps fix it before marketing, or built it into the deal to be repaired during escrow. It is such a large issue at this stage of the transaction that it is likely the transaction will not close.
In the second case the buyer finished their inspection and discovered so many little things wrong with the home they decided to terminate even thought the seller is willing to make all the repairs. Almost all the repairs are minor, but there are a lot of them. Now the seller is going to do the repairs themselves using the buyers inspection as a guide. But they have lost this deal and need to find a new buyer.
A seller should always have inspection done before marketing the home. I can go on and on with examples to illustrate the point, but I won’t do that now. Suffice it to say…DO AN INSPECTION.