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When the thread first started I had already emailed Bass101 a very long response to his/her email request. These responses are to help anyone viewing this thread to understand that an inspection is not a waste of time! Slight thread drift? Yes but a very necessary one.
I am under contract to purchase a home, and recently had the home inspection completed. The home inspector was excellent, and there were about 17 problems found, ranging from the serious (crack in foundation) to the non-serious (loose knobs on sink).
The serious problems included a large crack in the foundation, a rodent infestation in the attic, shoddy electrical work throughout the house, and furnace problems. On the plus side, the roof, plumbing, A/C, water heater, are all new, and no evidence of flooding or mold was found.
The inspector gave me the impression that overall, it is not a well-built house, despite the fact that it was built in 1980, which seems to be a good decade for it to be built in terms of quality. The problem is, we've been looking for a long time and this was the only house we were excited enough to put an offer in for. We were very surprised by all the problems, because on its face, it appears to be a very well-kept, well run house, but the home inspection dug deeper and revealed a bunch of problems.
Our enthusiasm for this house has gone from a 10 (extremely excited) to a 5 (kind of excited). However, we know that if we walk away, it's unlikely we'll find anything that we like as much. We've been seriously looking for 10 months already and there is very little inventory in our preferred suburbs. This house is the first offer we've put in for a house in those 10 months of looking.
We're conflicted as to whether we should walk away now or not.
Has anyone else had their home inspection really deflate their interest/enthusiasm for a house?
We just went through the same exact experience in the last couple of days so I know what you mean by feeling deflated. We, too, thought we found the perfect house in the neighborhood we wanted; we loved the floorplan, the new hardwood floors in all rooms except bedrooms. All that it was missing (we thought) was landscaping. The yard was pretty desolate looking. We were buying the home at what was definitely a reduced price compared to the other homes we had seen in the area. We hired a very thorough conscientious home inspector and paid more for a more extensive inspection because the home had been recently "flipped" by an out of state investor and we were a little leary. It was good that we did, because so many major things were discovered; The furnace doesn't work without exposing carbon monoxide, the roof needs replacing, new electrical circuits were installed in the main panel without permits, needs new plumbing water piping. Has 3 x the air leakage into the home than is allowed, has structural defects, and many other things were wrong as our inspector said; the work that had been done on the house was substandard. BUT THEY PUT IN GRANITE COUNTERS!!?? The home had been vacant for a year so no gas had been on in the house. It's sad to walk away from a house you thought was perfect for you, but we hope to find something that says to us "Love is Wonderful, the second time around."
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The serious problems included a large crack in the foundation, a rodent infestation in the attic, shoddy electrical work throughout the house, and furnace problems.
Has anyone else had their home inspection really deflate their interest/enthusiasm for a house?
Shoddy electrical work and a crack in the foundation? Yikes!
We had an offer in on a house when we found several serious problems. We asked that they be fixed by a license, bonded contractor.
The owners refused. We walked.
Two weeks later we found the house that we loved and lived in for 20 years.
A crack in the foundation would likely be a situation where I would break the deal, even if the house was being offered at a considerable discount. Some cracks can be superficial and are not indicative of structural/settling problems with the foundation, but it can be hard to tell the difference without an expert examining it. Extensive dry rot and/or termite damage on major structural members I would also be very worried about too.
Obviously a crack which weeps water is a telltale sign it goes all the way through the wall---though some serious ones are not so obvious. Foundation repairs/replacements can get very expensive (often upwards of $10,000) and it really is not something where you can expect the seller to fix it as a concession as part of the sale, though many might reduce the price when faced with the evidence of a major problem.
I walked from a house I wanted last winter when it was discovered a wall in the cellar was failing--a large bulge in the stone wall was evident at the bottom end, where it meets the floor and footing--the entire wall was listing slightly inward, but enough to the house sill was partly off the wall! Water could be seen weeping through a series of small cracks by the floor. I walked as soon as that was discovered (and bought the house I am in now). That house was bought a few months later, sold at substantially less than its asking price.
The new owner had to jack the house up and tear down the entire basment wall on that side and rebuild it. That's an expensive job to do, especially for a house which already needed probably 25K in work to get it to what I had wanted (ie kitchen, bath renovation, cosmetics in several rooms, etc.)
This entire thread became confusing. Apparently NeilVA changed his name to Pruzhany after posting.
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