What A Home Inspection Will and Won’t Cover

After all this time planning, searching, and hunting, you have finally found the house that is perfect for you. But finding the right house is only the beginning of the home buying process. One of the most critical times in the home buying process is the home inspection.

 

A home inspection is a thorough examination of the home by a professional, qualified inspector, trained to look for and evaluate the home so that the buyer can get the full lowdown on the property. Home inspectors vary in quality and thoroughness, so it is absolutely vital that you and your realtor find the best home inspectors around to ensure that the property you are investing in is worth every dime that you are potentially putting into it.

 

There are a lot of critical spots and potential problems that can be lying in wait once you buy a house, and is those crucial things that a trained inspector is going to look for. When buyers first get learn about home inspection, they tend to focus on the big items in the home that need to be up to snuff. Things like the roof, electrical wiring, and plumbing issues are at the forefront of our minds when we think about common home issues, but there are a lot of other key areas of the home that can be just as expensive and damaging to the property down the line.

 

Home inspectors arrive at the property with a hefty list of items to go through. Your home inspector will give you a walkthrough of the items by section, and you might be surprised at some of the things that you find on that list.

 

The lifeblood of any Arizona home, your air conditioning and heating can be a very expensive piece of equipment to repair or replace, so your inspector will ensure that it is in working order. The inspector will look for signs of improper installation, gaps, poor maintenance, corrosion, parts that may be missing or in disrepair.

 

It might be obvious to you when it’s pointed out, but many potential homeowners forget that all water should be draining away from your home, instead of pooling around it. The inspector will check that the roof’s gutters are intact, the spouts are not clogged or damaged, and that rainwater can freely flow down and away from the home.

When you look at the exterior of a home, you may only be looking for paint chipping and obvious visual issues, but an inspector will be looking for the little things that are easily missed. Cracks and spaces around windows that leak air out or let water in, poorly applied stucco, unsealed exterior fixtures, and small cracks in the walls can all lead to major issues in the future.

 

One of the things home inspectors do that many potential buyers will not is crawl into every nook and cranny of the home and check them from top to bottom. Attic crawl spaces need to be inspected for proper and effective insulation, adequate venting, and water damage. Leaky attics are one of the easiest ways to waste hundreds of dollars every year on electricity and gas bills.

 

Though a home buyer should have an environmental evaluation performed on the property separate from the inspection, a home inspector will look for potential problems that you may not see for months or years down the line. Any signs of mold or spaces that have the potential to produce mold will be reported by a home inspector.