Central Ohio Home Inspection

Home Inspections in Columbus Ohio and all of Central Ohio

Preparing for the Home Inspection

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Tips for sellers in preparing for a home inspection

 As a home inspector I am privileged to spend a lot of time with your customer- the home buyer. Your customer may have only spent 30 minutes looking at your home during the open house. You did everything right, cookies in the oven and candles on the table. Now we arrive for the home inspection. Your buyer may be with me for four hours or more. Home inspection reports are often 30 pages of minor items, often routine maintenance. Items that you might have to disclose if the sale falls through. I find it is the sheer volume of minor issues that can overwhelm home buyers.

  1. Disclose all known issues!!! Fresh paint over rotten trim isn’t going to fool anybody. When things are found that should have been disclosed you lose credibility with your buyer.
  2. Maintain heating and cooling. A vacant house will develop mystery smells quickly, increasing the buyers fear of mold issues.
  3. Check all the light fixtures. A bad light bulb is one more item that is needlessly on the inspection report. A replacement globe for a fixture is $5.
  4. Clean! When a window is opened and the sill is full of Lady Bugs… I don’t care, but rest assured it turns the buyer off. In Ohio, your termite inspector has wide latitude whether to recommend treatment or not. If he (I) has to examine bug wings in every window sill the chances that a Wood Destroying Insect (WDI) treatment being recommended go up.
  5. Do not paint over water stains. The stain will bleed through, almost immediately. Fresh paint in the basement will get more scrutiny than if you had left it alone. See item #1
  6. Walk through the basement and look up. Are their exposed wires? Junction boxes without covers? A $100 service call with an electrician can go a long way here. Minor electrical problems spook your customer.
  7. Clean the gutters. The water stains in the basement are because you haven’t kept up on this. See #5
  8. Have the HVAC system cleaned and serviced. A bright white furnace filter shows the buyer you care. This $100 service call just removed 6 items from the home inspection report. A savvy buyer knows that a new HVAC system could be $5000 or more

Part 2 coming soon