Home Inspections

[Brandon Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Axiom

The buyers still asked for every single item the inspector found to be repaired before they took possession.

We're talking things like:
a little bit of peeling caulk in the bathroom
a cracked switchplate in the attic crawl space
a noisy fan in the laundry room
(umm, nothing wrong with it - it's a fan, it makes a noise when turned on)
a leaky shower head
(except he just put that it was in the secondary bathroom... we had two secondary bathrooms and neither we, nor the handyman we hired, could figure out which one he meant... some huge leak, eh?)

The kicker was that the inspector jotted down that since we had a 3 car garage but only had an automatic opener on the 2 car section they might want to have one installed on the single car section.

The garage door opener was out of line and shouldn't be on a home inspection. l have no problem with the rest and they are inexpensive. No reason to risk a contract as a seller over that.

[Astrantia]

Axiom, it's amazing that your buyers went off the deep end on such irrelevant things. Didn't your listing agent go to bat for you at all and try to talk some sense into them or their agent?

My area has been a strong seller's market for ages and still really hasn't swung into what the media hypes as the "current buyers market". Unless I was in a desperation situation, I would have bluntly told a buyer like yours to "get real; do you want the house or not?".

I don't know anyone who has ever offered a home warranty with their house; how does that work exactly? I guess it's one of those things that hasn't caught on yet here (probably because it's always been a buyer's market, so it hasn't been needed as an incentive). I do see it now and again recently in the starter or midrange listings ($400K-$500K) and very rarely on new construction (but there's very little new construction anymore that isn't a custom-build). So I'm not familiar with how home warrantees work.

Does the seller just hire his own inspector and offer the buyer a guarantee on the basis of a good report that the house won't have major issues within a certain timeframe?

[Axiom]

Originally Posted by Brandon Hoffman

The garage door opener was out of line and shouldn't be on a home inspection. l have no problem with the rest and they are inexpensive. No reason to risk a contract as a seller over that.

Did I say we risked the contract over it?

The few things I listed in my previous post were just an example, but I hired a handyman and he fixed all 14 petty little things on the inspectors' list.
(OK, to be fair; not all of them were petty, there were 3 or 4 things that I would have wanted fixed as well)

But as a buyer if an inspection report on an 8 year old home came back with things like small mineral deposit on water heater valve, or small area of peeling caulk I think I could manage to take care of that myself and not demand an itemized handymans' bill showing that it was fixed.
And exactly what were we supposed to do about the leak we couldn't find, or the fan that makes noise when you turn it on?
Oh, I forgot another one... the sprinklers hit the block fence in the backyard (2 very small spots) they wanted that fixed as well. We puzzled over that for a minute, then just turned down the water (well, the handyman did, had to have written proof of the repair you know) they'll have spots of dead grass, but hey, the water won't touch the fence.

Wasn't there an earlier post about not injecting emotion into a business transaction? Maybe it's a bit too soon for me to be posting about my recent inspection experience.

Astrantia,

In a normal market we probably would have pushed for further discussions about who should take responsibility for some of the stuff... but it was a definite buyers' market, so we sucked it up and acquiesced, except for the new garage door opener nonsense.

Offering a home warranty is pretty common in our area (AZ)
IIRC it cost us under $500 and offered the buyers 1 year coverage on major home systems, appliances, and swimming pool/spa repairs for a year. No inspections necessary.

Since the buyers also asked for our washer and dryer to be included in the sale, I'm sure they'll be using the warranty. They think they got a deal - I'm glad to be rid of the darn things.

[Astrantia]

Originally Posted by Axiom

Offering a home warranty is pretty common in our area (AZ)
IIRC it cost us under $500 and offered the buyers 1 year coverage on major home systems, appliances, and swimming pool/spa repairs for a year. No inspections necessary.

Since the buyers also asked for our washer and dryer to be included in the sale, I'm sure they'll be using the warranty.

Wow, I'm amazed that (a) the warranty costs that little (a home inspection alone costs $600 hereabouts, or did the last time I had one done which was six years ago),and (b) that there's no "vetting" of the condition of the house before the warranty is issued!

So in other words... a seller could 'buy' a warranty on a house that they know could or is likely to have problems, and offer that coverage to the buyer? And if, say, the central AC compressor dies 4 months after the sale, who then pays for repairing or replacing it? The seller, or the home warranty company?

Just goes to show the difference between selling areas; I've never seen a house for sale here on Long Island in which the washer and dryer wasn't included! It would be considered "weird" if they weren't.

By the way, I LOL at the lawn sprinkler incident! That is just unbelievable. As a buyer, I would never have the... errrr... "nerve", let's just say ... to even mention something that unbelievably petty and insignificant. All parties involved would look at me as if I was a complete looney-tunes!

[Brandon Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Axiom

Did I say we risked the contract over it?

Astrantia,

Nope, you said you fixed 'em. I was agreeing you did the smart thing and it's cool you didn't get too worked up over doing it.