First Time Sellers Tips #3

You've opted to sell your home and may or may not have selected a REALTOR. The next step I'm going to give you is optional....but HIGHLY suggested.

Get a home inspection!

What? Get real. Home inspections are what buyers get when they like my house enough to put in and/or negotiate a contract for sale.

That's CORRECT. But you can also get a pre-inspection. Why wait for your house to be sold (under contract) to find out about problems within it? Isn't it a better idea to have the home inspected and remedy the problems beforehand?

I think it's definitely worth checking into, take this scenario I had with a client a year or so back: Nice, little house. Needed some updating/ personal decorating touches but many houses do. It was priced accordingly and put out with my typical marketing blitz. It showed. There were interested buyers....and ta-dah! Foundation issues below, mold issues in the attic. Blew a potential sale to bits and pieces. Eventually the home sold as the mold was remedied and foundation repair was taken from the sale price, but for tens of thousands below it's original value and after months and months of headache.

Now, if it were inspected beforehand, both issues would have been out in the open and could have been addressed before setting the listing price and putting out marketing efforts, just to be found later on. The mold would have been a non-issue (disclosed, yes....but with proof of remedy and warranty) and the home could have been priced with the foundation issue in mind- and would have sold months earlier (thus saving my seller time and money to pay for and 'run the house' for those months).

Don't tell me your house is perfect. It's not. I can find 10 things in MINE right now, that I want to/ need to/ at least should consider remedying before I sell. Even if your house is a year old, I promise it's imperfect.

The REAL trick of the trade is picking the home inspector that's going to do the job well enough to find the issues for you! I'd be glad to refer you to him!