For most of the last decade, especially the first part, housing market prices have risen at an unprecedented and spectacular rate. As home prices continued to rise in value faster and higher and higher, buyers began making more and more interesting decisions that any professional would probably agree were not in their best interest. One of the most interesting practices is that homebuyers seemed so concerned that the seller would not accept their offer that borrowers would start forgoing major contingencies to attract more of the seller. One of the biggest contingencies buyers chose to forego was a home inspection.
If a person is trying to sell a house that they know was built a while ago and has been around for a while and, say, is nervous that the house might have termites and the resulting structural damage, they don’t want the buyer to know about it. about termites because termites will severely damage the value of the house and the seller will have to pay for it. Or if the seller is in a hurry to move out of your house and wants to sell it quickly, he will be very upset when the inspection says there is thousands of dollars in structural damage that needs to be fixed.
The bottom line is that an inspection is hugely in the buyer’s favor, so much so that it rarely is; if it is ever in the buyer’s interest to forego the inspection, no matter how good the seller’s market is at the time. This principle can be illustrated by so many horror stories buyers would have faced if they hadn’t had an inspection. A buyer found the perfect home, formed a great relationship with the seller, was excited to move into the home, and then when the inspector inspected the home, he discovered that it was built on a sewer easement. No human being on this earth wants to own a house on property to which the sewer company has property rights. Another story is that of a homebuyer who thought he had found his dream home, the house was freshly painted, the structure or architecture was just what he liked, the perfect neighborhood, etc. The inspector immediately noticed that the house had the appearance of “hiding” something. The buyer was lucky that the inspector had a professional termite inspection license because the inspector was almost able to find thousands and thousands of dollars in damage to the home. Somehow, the house was about to collapse, which would have left the buyer and the lender with nothing of value.
Of course, horrific structural damage or thousands of dollars in repairs are rarely the norm, but the exception to the rule. Regardless of the odds, the chance or downside of your home not being inspected far outweighs the upside. Why risk buying a lemon with one of the biggest investments one is likely to make in their lifetime?