What does a home inspector look for? Episode #310

Hello. Welcome to Todd Miller TV. Today’s episode is tips on selling your home. This came from a user request. A user had some comments. They went on the tab that’s on the page that says, “Ask the expert or feedback”. They put in a little question for me so I’m doing a video on it.

So this question comes from somebody who I believe her name is Marina, maybe based on the email address. OK. So the question specifically is two parts. Part one is what does a home inspector look for and what things should I fix now before I should sell the house? And then the second part is should I sell it now or wait until 2014? So I’m going to take them separately.

Ok. First part, home inspector. What do they look for? Well, what I’m going to actually do is have an episode with a home inspector and we’re going to talk the home inspector and ask a bunch of questions. But as a general rule, they look for things they can actually see without – that are nondestructive. Meaning, they don’t bore inside of walls. They don’t go and look at the framing. They just look at what they can visually see. But they will check systems. They will turn the stoves on. They will look for things like water leaks and things like that. But only things that are visible. It’s not what you may think. It’s not like an MRI of your house, OK?

So – and you never know. Maybe you get ten inspectors and they could all find different things. So trying to troubleshoot what might be wrong and fixing it – here’s the general rule. If your house is in a livable condition, you’re living in it and it’s fine, just put it – if you put it on the market and get offers, let them do the inspection and they’ll tell you if they have something that they want fixed or they have to be fixed for their own. That’s usually the easiest way.

And for the most part, if you fix something and then it ends up not being an issue, you just spent money on something that didn’t really add value to the house. And so, it’s a general rule that sort of how that works. But we’ll have an episode with a home inspector and we’ll go into more detail on what they look at.

Second half of the question, sell now or 2014? Well, you should sell the house when you have a need to sell it. Don’t try to sharp shoot what’s going to happen. It looks like home values will be more next year. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe the banks will say, “Oh, these news laws coming in effect in 2014. We have to dump every REO this year.” And REOs flood the market. There are so many unknowns. Nobody can tell you.

I don’t think we thought in 2006 that by 2009, values would be – have fallen by more than half which they did here in Vegas. So if you’re in a market where inventory is low and it’s a good time to sell and you’re going to sell it rather quickly, it might be a good time to sell. If you’re going to stay in the house for a year, then stay in the house. But don’t try too much to sort of play the market. That’s just a general rule. It might be good, it might not be good. You’ll never know.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on those two things. It’s all from a user comments. So if you do have comments, you want me to do a specific video, just put it up there. Make a note. Send me a note through the website and I’ll do that.

So that’s my update and hope to see you on another video. Thanks.

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