When we meet with potential clients about selling their home we always discuss doing some pre-inspections, but not a full inspection. What do I mean by that? It means when we agree to represent you in the sale of your home we’ll call our contractors to come out a check out a few critical areas of your home. This will ensure that the major inspection items have been looked at, repaired/replaced prior to your home hitting the market. This is the best way to sell your home with the least amount of problems and friction. So, you may be asking yourself what things should we get checked out before going on the market?
Pre-Inspection Essentials
- Always have a licensed roofer check the roof. If it’s brand new great, but if not have a roofer check for damage, lose or cracked tiles, missing flashing, caulking or potential leaks. If issues are found or the whole roof needs to be replaced (hail damage in Colorado) we have plenty of time to tackle that project before the house goes up for sale. The last thing you want to be doing is fixing a roof while under the gun of the dates and deadlines of a purchase contract.
- Always have the furnace and air conditioning cleaned, serviced and certified by a licensed HVAC professional. This comes up in almost every inspection report so why not head off this problem before you are under contract. It’s not expensive (usually around $150 for a clean, service and certify) and when they are done you’ll hopefully have a document that shows your furnace/AC has a clean bill of health. The certificate can then be passed on to the buyer giving them a level of comfort that the HVAC will not be an issue if they buy this house.
- Always have a sewer scope down on your home to find out if there are any breaks in your sewer line, offsets, root intrusion or clogs. Even if your home is relatively new it’s still a good idea to look at the sewer line because you can bet the buyer sure will. Sewer line repair is a big-ticket item and if you find out about an issue during contract there is a good chance that deal is going down the drain (sorry could not help it) so I recommend you deal with it ahead of time. A sewer scope runs about $100-175 dollars and its money well spent. Many of the issues like root intrusion and clogs are easily fixable and don’t cost a lot of money. Again, once completed and your sewer line has a clean bill of health you can pass along that certificate to the buyer giving them the peace of money that the sewer line is not going to cost them a bundle sometime later.
Why Not a Full Pre-Inspection?
There are more inspections you can do, but we do not recommend doing a full inspection or doing all of the inspections. First, keep in mind anything you find out about your home in a pre-inspection must be disclosed to all buyers once you put the home on the market. Let’s say you find out about something and you don’t want to fix it. That means you have to tell the buyer and explain why you didn’t fix it. Sometimes it’s better not knowing. In addition, it’s up the buyer to do their due diligence and find all the issues. If I am truly serving the best interest of my client I am not assuming what a buyer will object to in an inspection. Instead, I would prefer to give a buyer plenty of time to do their inspection and then come back and tell us what they want to be addressed and what they are willing to ignore. In this way, we usually save our sellers thousands of dollars. There are always cosmetic issues to address as well in getting your home ready for sale. If that’s the case, there’s no need to worry, we have a whole stable of contractors that can help get your home ready lickity-split.
Have more questions about pre-inspections? Contact us at 808-913-0899 or team@thehawaiiteam.com
Dan Polimino is a Broker/Owner of The Hawaii Team, Keller Williams Realty Maui. Contact The Hawaii Team at 808-913-0899, team@thehawaiiteam.com.
All reported sales were not necessarily listed or sold by the broker and are intended only to show trends in the area or shall separately identify the broker’s own sales activity.