Lisa Johnson's House and Home - Articles on Home, Family, and Living

Lisa Johnson on Buying a New Home or House

Chapter 10: Hiring a Home Inspector

• Back to Table of Contents

October 1, 2003

We knew that it would be wise to hire a home inspector before taking ownership of the house.  All the consumer guides on buying a new home suggested that we should.  But the builder seems to have a way of persuading you not to.

In our case, once the building began installing the appliances, they would lock up the house and no one would be allowed in.  The only way we could enter it was when we did our walk through.  However, they stipulated that the walk through would not take place until after the title transferred.  On top of that, they demanded that during the walk through, only Steve and I could be present.

Hello??? What do you mean we can't do a walk through until after the title is transferred?  That means, we officially take ownership of the house first, then we get to see the finished product.

The point of hiring a home inspector is to discover any potential problems with the house before the buyer buys the house.  I mean, you want to know if you're buying a good house.   But with our builder, we didn't have that opportunity.  If we had been more assertive, we could have just said, "No way!  We ain't buying, if you're not letting us do a home inspection first".   And I bet they would have conceded.  But we were so close to moving into our new home, that we were just too excited.  The idea that we would drop out of buying the home, plus the fact that we had already sold our old home, pretty much left us with no choice.

So, we didn't end up hiring a home inspector.  It probably still would have been a good idea to do so anyways.  At least, the home inspector could still point out problems, and the builder would have to fix them all under the one-year warrantee.

As it turned out, some of the problems with our home ended up making themselves known.  We reported them all to the builder, and they were very good about fixing them.

Next:   Chapter 11 - The Walk Through

Suggested Links

·  Tips on Buying a Home

·  HUD Homebuying Guide

·  Homebuying Consumer Info Center

·  Real Estate ABC

·  Home Buying Guide.com