All About Home Inspections

If you're buying a house, you need a home inspection. Here's why:

Knowledge: You'll learn things about the condition of the house that you won't find out any other way. A good home inspection will determine the condition of every major system of the house, top to bottom, inside and outside. A good inspection report will detail these conditions clearly, in plain, everyday English. You'll know the house you're buying, before you buy it. Money: Let's say you're buying a $350,000 house. Let's say the inspection costs $350. That's one one-thousandth of the cost of the house! A home inspection is literally the deal of a lifetime. If the inspection turns up nothing wrong with the house, you've bought some relatively inexpensive peace of mind. If the inspection finds serious problems, your $350 could end up saving you thousands. How to choose a home inspection company. Okay, you're probably thinking, "It's HOUSE SENSE's website. Everything they say about choosing an inspection company will just be sales talk, telling me to hire them." Well, we could try that, but we know our customers are smart enough to see through it. Okay, here's the skinny: You want a locally-owned-and-operated inspection company, that's been in business for a long time. You want to talk to the actual person who will inspect your house. Not the inspector's secretary, spouse, scheduler or "home office." Here comes the self-serving part: You want a custom-written, plain-English narrative report that deals with your house, not some canned report that lets the inspector fill in the blanks. We say avoid companies that use the words, checklist, book, or the impressive-sounding matrix to describe their report. These are code words for canned, pre-written fill-in-the-blank reports. If you want to compare inspection companies, look at a sample of each company's report. That will get you behind the curtain of marketing hype, and let you have a look at the people who'll inspect your house. Why don't you read one of our sample inspection reports: * Regular home inspection report. Read or print one of our contracts: * Contract for condominium inspection. * Contract for regular home inspection. All inspections are performed to ASHI standards. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to view these document. To download a free copy of Acrobat Reader, click here.