If you’ve never hired a home inspector or been part of a real estate transaction which involved a home inspection, then it’s possible you may not even know what a home inspection is or what exactly a home inspector actually does.  I figured I’d give you the opportunity to read the United States Government’s “dictionary definition” of a home inspector:

Home inspectors conduct inspections of newly built or previously owned homes, condominiums, town homes, manufactured homes, apartments, and commercial buildings. Home inspection has become a standard practice in the home-purchasing process. Home inspectors are most often hired by prospective home buyers to inspect and report on the condition of a home’s systems, components, and structure. Although they look for and report violations of building codes, they do not have the power to enforce compliance with the codes. Typically, they are hired either immediately prior to a purchase offer on a home or as a contingency to a sales contract. In addition to examining structural quality, home inspectors inspect all home systems and features, including roofing as well as the exterior, attached garage or carport, foundation, interior, plumbing, and electrical, heating, and cooling systems. Some home inspections are done for homeowners who want an evaluation of their home’s condition, for example, prior to putting the home on the market or as a way to diagnose problems.

-United States Bureau of Labor Statistics

Now you know, in case you didn’t before.  If you need a home inspection in Northwest Indiana, or know someone who does, please keep HomeScan Inspection in mind. Thanks.

The typical home inspection is ordered and paid for by a potential buyer to give them more knowledge about their future home.  This type of service accounts for most home inspections performed by any inspection company.

There is another major type of home inspection that can be an advantage for the home-seller.  The pre-listing inspection, or “seller’s inspection” is a type of home inspection many people have not heard of or considered as part of the real estate transaction.  This inspection is ordered and paid for by the seller of the property prior to listing it for sale.  Here are a few reasons why having a seller’s inspection done BEFORE selling your home may be a good idea for you:

1. If there’s a large problem with the home that you were unaware of, you can then decide whether you can price accordingly or whether you might be able to move at all.  Much better to find this out now than when you’re in the middle of selling with a buyer on the hook and possibly involved in your next property as well.   A buyer’s inspection could discover something so severe that there is no way the seller could fix the home and still afford to sell.

2. It gives you a chance to fix items on the list at your own time and leisure, meaning that you can shop for repair bids or get it done yourself.  When a buyer finds it at their inspection, you may only have a week to get items done before closing and they may ask for specific contractors, which could easily cost you more than the inspection would in the beginning.

3. Fixing items before listing helps your home show better as it will appear obviously well maintained and there will be less items that buyers and their agents will notice.  Therefore they are more likely to give their best or better offers than if they saw unrepaired items from the get-go.

4.  Being able to market your home as pre-inspected gives a nice warm, fuzzy confidence to a buyer that there shouldn’t be any big surprises lurking down the path.  You can easily provide the home inspection and evidence of repairs, which again should lead to better and higher offers.  Lots of offers hedge against the unknowns that may be found at inspection time.

5.  Already having an inspection and repairs done, the buyer’s own home inspection contingency should be a breeze.  There may be minor discrepancies between what everyone finds, as inspectors are human and each may miss or catch something the other doesn’t, but anything of big concern should already be known.   Since many contracts fall apart at inspection time, having already been through an inspection means that you’re much much more likely to keep your deal together and get to closing.

6. Even if you’re not making any repairs from the inspection, being able to provide this report up front should still mean better offers as buyers see what they are up against.  Many buyers who purchase as-is or TLC properties come in quite low because they don’t know the extent of the problems until inspection time.

I know, I know!  Inspections can cost hundreds depending on the size of your home.   But it may be better for you to spend a few hundred now than to lose a few thousand on the offer side of things.  And the peace of mind from knowing exactly what you’re up against is great.  Selling a home is nerve-wracking enough just trying to find a buyer and wondering why all those other ones didn’t like your house.  With a pre-inspection, you can negotiate with your buyer in the confidence that you know what’s going on with your home and with a higher likelihood that the deal will stay together and close!

-HomeScan Inspection LLC

-ActiveRain Corp. 2011

You may think your to-do list around the house is never-ending at times, but at least the following photos weren’t taken at your house! Check these out.

that's a quick way to lose a kid.

That's like $800 in duct tape! How much does a new tub cost?

architect? who needs an architect?

watch that first step...

What should I use as an attic fan hood?

luggage and a brick holding up ductwork...nice.

you know a floor joist is dry-rotted when you can stab a screwdriver all the way through it.

why you should turn off the water to hose bibs before winter hits.

There are a lot of crazy things that Home Inspectors can run into when inspecting a house.  Some of these photos came from other inspectors, but check it out…

Good thing there aren't many earthquakes in NW Indiana.

Family of bats in the attic? Why not?

Homemade Handicapped Bathtub Access.

You know someone is wealthy when....

Got melted snow in your basement?  A lot of people do with weather cycles like this.  I guess you could just call the melted snow “water”, but anyone with a wet basement just calls it annoying.

When there’s a foot of snow outside and the sun and warmer temperatures melt inches of snow in one day, it is going to find its way into your basement if you typically experience any seepage at other times in the year.

The reason this happens is pretty easy to understand when it’s explained.  The ground in the midst of winter is frozen, and not able to absorb the melting snow evenly.  While your basement may feel cold in the winter, it is still a lot warmer than the frozen ground.  The warmth of the basement keeps the ground adjacent to the basement walls thawed just enough to allow melted snow to find it’s way to your lower level.

If you have a sometimes leaky basement, keep an eye on things down there as all this snow melts.   Once spring rolls around, you may want to work on grading your landscaping so that next winter, the melting snow rolls away from your home.

Why would anyone in their right mind pay for a home inspection?

It’s a good question, especially if you have never been part of a home sale that has involved one or more home inspections.  Just twenty years ago, a home inspection was asking your Dad or your uncle the electrician to walk through it with you.  Today, around 80% of homes for sale are inspected by a home inspection company before the sale is final.  So why pay a licensed home inspector for an inspection report?

A home inspection is a scheduled event where the potential buyer and a licensed home inspector have an “appointment” at the home for sale.   A home inspection is a non-invasive and mostly visual examination of the condition of a home.  The inspection, which will typically last between 1 1/2 and 3 hours, is a great opportunity for the buyer to walk through and examine the home along with the inspector without the seller or real estate agent looking over their shoulder.  The inspection becomes an ongoing conversation between the inspector and the buyer.

The inspector, after the fact, prepares a detailed inspection report with digital photos and all of their findings and notes, and delivers the report to the potential buyer via email within 24 hours (HomeScan Inspection policy).  This report then becomes a part of the whole process.

Telling a buyer, “I think the dryer vent should extend through the attic and vent to the outside,” is far less effective than showing them that your home inspector’s report states the same thing.   A licensed home inspector is educated and trained to look for any potential safety issues in a home, as well as to educate the customer as to the likely remaining useful life of the home’s main systems and appliances.

Your home inspector will get on the roof, into the crawlspace, and into the attic with flashlight and camera BEFORE you purchase that home.  You probably will not gain physical access to those areas on your own until after you buy the place.

The cost of a home inspection is a small price to pay for the knowledge you will gain about your biggest investment.

If you live in most any part of middle-America and it is February 1, 2011 as you read this, and you also DON’T own a snowplow, you will most likely be inside your house for the next couple days.

If you’re like most people, you’ll use the time to relax with your family, catch up on some reading, or watching some recorded TV shows.

If you’re like most people, you also have a few things around the house that need repair: A broken door knob, sticking cabinet door or drawer in the kitchen, a light switch that doesn’t work, missing piece of trim, or just a stack of stuff that needs a plastic storage container.

It’s probably too late to run out to the hardware store for the items you might need to make those simple repairs, but it’s not too late to make a list of those repairs and what you’ll need to complete them when the roads are clear again.

So get out a notepad and a mechanical pencil or very expensive pen, and start walking around the house making a list of what to fix and exactly what you need to fix it.  When life resumes, stop at the store, buy what you need, and FIX IT!  Stop walking past that hole in the drywall every day.  Stop turning on the corner lamp to illuminate a room because you need to fix the light switch, don’t just ignore the dripping plumbing under the kitchen sink, FIX IT NEXT WEEK!

Make a list, buy the stuff, and fix it…or tell your husband to.

The sooner you make a list, a plan, and a budget for those repairs, the sooner you can get back to the couch to watch the world turn white.

Snowed In - February 2011

What would you do if a water pipe inside your home burst due to freezing?

What would you do if, as you sit here at your computer, you hear a strange noise, then the sound of water running, and find a pipe under a sink or elsewhere shooting water all over the place?

That water will continue to gush onto the floor if you haven’t already shut it down, and no, the sink faucet controls will NOT turn off the leaking water.

Hopefully you are home if this ever happens to you.  If it does happen, hopefully you already know where the main water shutoff is for your home.  A quarter million American families a year have one or more rooms in their houses flooded and their lives disrupted each winter because of pipes that freeze and break, according to State Farm Fire and Casualty Company.

If you don’t know where the shutoff is in your home, go find it right now and try it out.  If you can’t find it, look in the area where your water supply enters your home, or near your water softener or your well pump, you’ll find it.  Try turning the valve to the off position (turn to the right or turn parallel to the pipe itself), then go try a faucet to ensure you’ve turned it off.  Nice work!  You now know more about your own home than you did 5 minutes ago.

The first priority is to keep your pipes from freezing in the first place by insulating the area where they are or by insulating the pipes themselves.

If your pipe does freeze and burst, however, at least now you know how to stop the water from getting all over the place.  A little water can ruin a lot of stuff, and can ruin an otherwise peaceful winter evening in a hurry.

It’s winter (not technically, but it’s December).  Typically from December through February, depending on where you live of course, there’s not a lot of rain coming down.  Snow, sleet, and ice take over during the cold months, so why would an otherwise functional roof start to leak in the middle of winter?

The answer is Ice damming.  If you already know what this is and how it works, you may move on to checking your ebay items or to your online Christmas shopping, but if you don’t know what an ice dam is, please read on.  I want to just briefly explain what it is.

An ice dam (or ice jam) occurs when water builds up behind a blockage of ice.

When snow on a roof melts, moves down the slope, and re-freezes further down the roof, it could potentially create an obstruction preventing additional water from passing.  This water may then be forced uphill and underneath shingles where it could find passage into the structure.  Roofing is only designed to keep out water that’s travelling downward with gravity.

There’s nothing we can do about these crazy weather cycles.  What we can do, as I wrote about earlier this week, is make sure an excessively warm attic isn’t what is melting that snow.  If it is cold outside, and warm in the attic, the snow can melt and the water may then re-freeze at the edge of the roof where there is no attic under the roof.  Now you have a huge ice barrier all the way around the edge of the roof, playing bully to the poor water that just wants to get to the gutter.

Nobody likes a bully.  Make sure your attic is properly insulated.

Winter often presents homeowners more hazards than other seasons, in more ways than one.  Dangerously cold temperatures, ice, snow, and freezing rain…yes those aspects of winter can all be harmful, but the heating bills that accompany the cold season are the most hazardous to our checkbooks.

Looking at a thermometer that reads 24 degrees, I am thankful to live in a time when I have access to the technology to keep my home at a comfortable temperature for my family.  Whether we keep our home at 56 degrees or 83 degrees, we are responsible to pay for the fuel used to produce that heat.

Since you’re paying so much hard-earned money each month to heat your living space, it’s your responsibility to ensure that YOUR heat isn’t escaping that living space.  How do you find out if it is escaping?

One thing you probably have not paid too much attention too is the snow on your roof.  Let’s say it snows 4 inches, and the temperature stays below freezing for several days after the snowfall.  Look at your roof and compare it to your neighbors’ roofs.  If, after a few days your roof still has all that snow and your neighbor’s is almost all melted, your neighbor is not protecting their heat, are they?  You may also notice this only above one or more particular rooms.

Roof with even snow

Roof with uneven snow-melting

There are many reasons why this may be, but give yourself a pat on the back for taking good care of that heated air you paid so well for.  When you get a chance, bake some cookies for your neighbor and explain to them that the snow on their roof will melt when the outdoor conditions allow it to.  They don’t need to help.

If it is your home with the snow rapidly melting, you should better insulate your attic.  Remember, the temperature in your attic should the same as the temperature outside, not the same as that of the home.  The insulation should be properly and safely installed just above the ceiling of the top floor of the home, not in the attic rafters.

Ending point:  The snow on your roof should be melted by warmth OUTSIDE the home, not by heat INSIDE the home. I’ll bet you all start looking at snow-covered roofs for melting patterns from now on.