Buying a home can seem daunting, but having a thorough understanding of the steps in the home buying process is certain to help you feel some control over the experience. Today, we’ll focus on the role of the home inspection in the home buying process.
Before the Inspection
Many steps precede obtaining a home inspection, including partnering with a real estate agent, determining your preapproved budget, and touring available homes. Once you identify a home you’d like to make an offer on, you’ll work with your agent to put together the offer and begin setting up the steps that must occur before closing on the home.
The Role of the Inspection
The home inspection is important regardless of the state of the real estate market, but its role can change depending on how hot or cool the market is at the time of your offer. In very hot real estate markets, sellers sometimes have their home inspected prior to listing it and prefer that offers are written without an inspection contingency. If this is the case, you usually may still have your own inspection conducted, but the results will only be for your information, and you cannot approach your seller to request repairs.
In a more typical real estate market, that is, one that is not extremely competitive, closing on your offer will be contingent upon the outcome of your home inspection. In this case, your real estate agent will typically help arrange to have the inspection conducted within a time period specified in your contract with the seller, and your obligation to move forward with the deal is determined once you have the inspection results.
After the Inspection
Assuming your offer was contingent on the outcome of the inspection, once you have the inspection results in hand, you have a few paths to choose from. You can move forward to closing without asking for any repairs by the seller, you can ask the seller for repairs, you can ask the seller for a price reduction to cover repairs that you will handle once you own the home, or you may rescind your offer altogether. You will work with your agent to determine the best course of action given the current market, comparable area properties, the extent of the repairs needed, and the home’s overall quality. If you request repairs, you will set up a final walk-through of the property before closing to verify that all required repairs have been completed to your satisfaction.
To learn more about setting up a home inspection in the Akron metro area, contact Integrity Home Evaluation Services today.