Virginia Basement Waterproofing, Foundation and Basement Waterproofing in Virginia, Serving Northern, Northwestern and Southeastern VA | Waterproofing Articles - The Value of Home Pre-Inspections for Sellers

The Value of Home Pre-Inspections for Sellers

If you are selling a home, or have ever sold a home in a buyer’s market, you understand that if your buyer ends up with a long laundry list of significant items in his home inspection report, then it becomes a bargaining chip at the closing table.

Things to consider:

You don’t know what you don’t know. If you are not a contractor then you are unlikely to know what codes have changed since your home was built.

You or the previous owner may have been a confident and competent Do It Yourselfer, but you may not have realized that you needed permits and inspections on those projects.

The worse case, if you added decks or finished basements, is that now you may have to get permits and open them up for inspection; only to find they do not meet current code, even if it would have been ok at the time the work was done. If that is the case, then you may have to remove it all before your home can sell.

Home deficiencies that may cause you liability if not repaired or disclosed, such as a leaky roof or basement, mold, asbestos or lead paint.

Safety consideration of electrical, plumbing and HVAC that may not be up to standards. If these are put in a buyer’s inspection report, they could reduce the value of your home by 10s of thousands of dollars: new HVAC $10,000; new electrical panel $2,000; entire house rewiring $6,000; plumbing replacement $4,000 to $8,000; reroofing $8,000, basement waterproofing $9,000.

Upgrades or repairs may cost much less, such as waterproofing a dry basement, which is worth 3 times more, on average, than the cost of the waterproofing. For example, your home’s value is say $30,000 more dry than wet. So a $10,000 investment could gain you $20,000 in higher sales price. Repairs keep things off the inspection report. That is money in the bank.

Anything you keep off of the inspection report saves you money and provides you with peace of mind. Therefore, we recommend a pre-inspection inspection for the seller. It doesn’t have to be the high dollar home inspection the buyer pays for, since the liability issue isn’t there; it is only to identify those areas that you wish to keep off of the report, or better yet, show on the report as being in good or excellent condition. Most of all, to avoid any code compliance issues that may result in much bigger projects, like having to go back and re-permit and inspect work that is perfectly okay.

At Home and Property Resolutions and NoVa Barrier Waterproofing Systems, we want to help with the small and big things by eliminating problems before they become negotiating items at the closing table, so you get the most from your sale. We will provide an estimate for repairs as part of our pre-inspection inspection. Our fee is 100% applicable towards any repairs that you have us do. Home inspectors get paid for the inspection only and do not fix anything for their fee.

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The Value of Home Pre-Inspections for Sellers