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Is The Hassle Of A Home Inspection Worth It?

04.05.2017

With a traditional home sale in St. Louis, one of the first things that will happen is the buyer will set up a professional home inspection. While the buyer is usually responsible for the cost of the inspections, the buyer will either want you to complete costly repairs, ask you to reduce the sale price of the home or they will walk away and leave you to start over again. Finding a contractor to make the costly repairs can be time consuming and frustrating.  After the home inspection, the buyer’s lender will order an appraisal.  If you don’t have a cash buyer for your home, the buyer may be using a FHA or a VA loan the appraiser will often ask for further repairs to be made.  Then, you will still have to have the county or local municipality come out and do their occupancy inspection.  It’s not uncommon for these inspectors to find expensive repairs that will often cost you thousands.  Even if your sale falls through, after the local inspector comes to your home you will be responsible for making the repairs or you will be taken to court and fined.

Home inspections and the endless repair lists are a hassle even if your home is move-in ready.  If you have major repair items like foundation cracks, termite, broken sewer lateral, old heating and cooling, etc., it can be almost impossible to find a retail buyer for it.  If this is the case for you, then selling your home as is might be the best way to avoid the stress of home inspections.

A home inspection can be very unsettling to home owners because you will have complete strangers going through your home, top to bottom for up to 4 hours.  You can have a home inspector, pest/termite inspector, pool inspector, sewer line inspector, chimney inspector and more depending on what features your home has.  Their job will be to find everything that is wrong with your home and report it to the buyer.  They could end up finding tens of thousands in needed repairs to your home.  This can often scare a buyer and cause them to walk away from purchasing your home and leave you to start over again.

Other issues you can run into are not disclosing issues with your home or if you had repairs or improvements made to the home without a permit.  By not disclosing problems with your home you run the risk of being sued even after the home is sold.  If you made improvements or repairs without having the work permitted, you could face fines by your municipality and might have to have everything redone by the book.

If all of these headaches don’t seem worth it to you, then you should think about contacting Saint Louis Home Buyers to quickly sell your home for cash.  We will make you a fair, cash offer and close at a date that works best for you.