11/18/2022
Dear Real Estate Brokers & Agents:
How many of you have either said or heard someone else in your office say that “the home inspector killed this deal”? If you are being honest, I suspect all of you have and even if you haven’t said it out loud, I’m willing to bet you thought it at least once or twice. Is this really true? Can home inspectors “kill” deals? The honest answer to this questions is “no”. Home inspectors do not kill deals and if the real estate industry really understood what a home inspection is and what home inspectors do, the opposite may be true. Yes, you read this correctly. I really believe a good home inspection is just as likely to help a deal close smoothly as it is to kill a deal.
In order to better understand a home inspection just think of the home inspector as a physician with a general practice (GP). When you go see your GP and he/she sees something that is not normal, they typically send you for more tests and refer you to a specialist/expert. They do not try to diagnose everything themselves. Rather, they understand their own limitations and defer to an expert in the field. This is almost identical to what a home inspector (the GP) does when they say in their report that the roof shows evidence of unusual wear and tear and they recommend you contact a licensed roofer (the expert) to further evaluate the issue…before the sale closes. The timing of going to the expert for further evaluation is critical. If you wait until after the closing, the expert may reveal a much more serious problem than you believed. This is akin to ignoring the referral to a specialist by your GP because you have a vacation planned and then finding out after the vacation it is too late to treat your condition.
It is also important to remember home inspection is defined as a “visual examination” of the major components and systems in a home. The word “visual” is very important because it means the inspector cannot see behind/through walls or under carpet/tile and cannot cut holes in anything to supplement his/her visual examination. Other issues encountered by a home inspector which limit the effectiveness of his/her report include, by way of example, inaccessible areas (attics and crawl spaces), rooms filled with boxes, furniture blocking walls, and freshly painted walls, floors, or ceilings. In the end, this means even the best home inspector cannot and should not be expected to find every single item which may be of concern.
A good home inspection and thorough report will bring transparency into a real estate transaction and that benefits all concerned over the long haul. Now, take the pledge to give home inspectors the respect they are due and stop blaming them for “killing” deals. Even the ancient Greeks stopped killing the messenger centuries ago.
Yours truly,
Korell Cooper
First Class Inspections
