Your home inspection came and went smoothly.  You were even able to join the inspection near the end and we answered your questions and went over a few of the more important issues we discovered.

  Later, our inspection report lands in your inbox.  You open it and….ZOMG!  You read through the different sections and it’s like, “they found issues here, here, here, here, yada, yada, yada…”

It feels like the dream you had for this house is coming crashing down!

How you saw the house before you read the inspection report.

How you saw the house after you read the inspection report!

First off, take a deep breath and R-E-L-A-X!  A good home inspection report is going to contain a quite a bit of detail.  

And that’s a good thing.  Because the idea of a home inspection isn’t to frankly, crap, on the prospective buyer’s dream.  A good home inspection report will give you a better picture of the total cost of ownership of the home.  You have the purchase price, yes.  But purchasing a home comes with the responsibility of maintenance.  The inspection report will give you a better understanding of what you can expect to spend on the first year of ownership (i.e. addressing more urgent items first) and in future years.

  Not all issues are the same so to help provide some clarity in our reports we break them down into one of three categories:

• Urgent – The highest priority.  These are items that we consider should be addressed right away and includes any items that would impact occupant safety.
• Action – An issue that may have caused some degradation to a system or will if not addressed. These issues may not need to be addresssed right now, but you should start planning for when you will.
• Routine – These are items that can treated as deferred maintenance for the time being but may be general, routine maintenance items.  It should be noted that “deferred” doesn’t mean “never”.  Routine items, if ignored long enough, will develop into “Action” items.

Fortunately, the majority of issues noted during an inspection fall either into the “Action” or “Routine” category.  This gives you a good deal of flexibility in deciding when to address them.

And of course, if you still have questions after reading the report you can always email or call and we’ll be happy to walk you through any parts of the report where you have questions.

#actionableintelligence  #informeddecisions #homeinspection