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Interesting...Get it inspected. Fix the things you can afford. Disclose the rest. Price accordingly. Leave the report for buyers to read. Leave the receipts to show what's been repaired. This avenue will insure you get your asking price and reduces the amount of haggling that goes on during the Real Estate Transaction.
From a sellers perspective, I think pre inspections are generally a bad idea. Why would you pay to have all the major and minor deficits documented prior to listing a house. You are then obligated to fix all these items or disclose them. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
From a sellers perspective, I think pre inspections are generally a bad idea. Why would you pay to have all the major and minor deficits documented prior to listing a house. You are then obligated to fix all these items or disclose them. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Why not....If your selling your prefect home, prove it. Why let the buyer hold the negotiating edge. A pre-listing inspection would uncover the defects that can be repaired by the seller or they can reduce the price of the home accordingly. Don't wait for the buyers home inspector to uncover the defects. Be forthright with the process and your buyer will appreciate it. Avoiding last minute negotiating will ultimately result in a higher selling price.
My market is very hot. I could close 10 houses a day if there were enough people willing to sell but there's a definite lack of inventory right now.
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Originally Posted by thession
Why not....If your selling your prefect home, prove it. Why let the buyer hold the negotiating edge. A pre-listing inspection would uncover the defects that can be repaired by the seller or they can reduce the price of the home accordingly. Don't wait for the buyers home inspector to uncover the defects. Be forthright with the process and your buyer will appreciate it. Avoiding last minute negotiating will ultimately result in a higher selling price.
First, because there's no such thing as a perfect house. Inspectors are paid to find defects and they always do even on brand new homes.
Second, because no two inspectors are the same. The inspector you hire will find some defects and I guarantee that the inspector hired by the buyers will find different ones. Why pay to have something fixed if you don't know if the buyer's inspector will find it? Sounds like wasted money to me to not only pay an inspector but also to fix defects that may or may not be found in an inspection. If you don't repair the defects that you've just uncovered yourself (a/k/a shot yourself in the foot) then you'll need to disclose them.
Third, because you don't know what's important to the person who ends up buying your house. Some people are willing to overlook or take on the job of fixing a defect. In a hot market, you also have a lot of negotiating leverage which allows you to push some or all of the cost of repair onto the buyer.
In a seller's market (yes there are some out there in various parts of the country), it's an absolute waste of money to do a pre-listing inspection.
There are several areas of the U.S. where demand is greater than the inventory, multiple bidding is increasingly common and home values are appreciating. Mine is not one of them.
In a seller's market (yes there are some out there in various parts of the country), it's an absolute waste of money to do a pre-listing inspection.
Agreed and I am an strong advocate for prelisting home inspections.
Back when, I relocated and bought in northern NJ on the tail of what was then a decade of flatlined prices. Within 3 years, listing in some areas meant hitting the MLS on Friday, an Open House on Sunday, sealed bids were accepted till Monday and a decsion was made on Tuesday.
There are pro's and con's about having a pre-inspection. I feel the seller should be made aware of them and make the decision he feels is best.
If there are some major issues, every inspector will find them. By finding them early the owner can probably get bids to correct the issues at a lower cost than having to do them in a rush.
The pre-inspection may reduce the sellers disclosure liability because the inspection may turn up things the seller did not know about, but would have had reason to know. Because he didn't know about it, he wouldn't disclose it, but because he should have known about it, that could be a failure to disclose a known defect.
So, in my opinion, there is no right or wrong answer. It's the sellers decision after learning of the pro's and con's.
On one of my own properties that I rehabbed, after finished I had a home inspection. The inspection pointed out quite a few small items that I overlooked while rehabbing, but were typical of the things an inspector looks for. I corrected all these items at my leisure, at minimum cost, and provided the home inspection report to the buyers agent along with the SPDS, so they could see the things that had been reported and corrected.
The buyer had their own home inspection and her inspector came up with a couple more items that my inspector had not written up. They were not warranty items, but I took care of them and made the buyer very happy.
Had I forgotten to disclose something on the SPDS, then I would have been covered by having the home inspected by a licensed home inspector, so my liability was reduced; especially since I was an owner/agent/rehabber of this house.
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