The General Home/Building Inspection – Seller Perspective

After your home is under contract with a buyer, they’ll quickly schedule a home inspection. It’s important for them to move this process along because if they discover anything that needs a deeper look, they’ll need to schedule that as well. At this point you’ll need to be accommodating with the scheduling so that the buyer can understand everything they need to about the house.

The inspector will generate an inspection report. This document is the property of the buyer and will have detailed information about the house as well as a summary of what’s been found that may be a potential issue or that needs attention as soon as possible. There’s also a fairly good chance that the buyer will want to look deeper into systems and other items in the house. Waste water or septic, furnace, electrical, radon, mold and water filtration are a few common targets.

There’s a good chance during this process that some issues that you didn’t know about will be revealed. This can happen on the best kept homes and sometimes even in new construction. I’ll often suggest that a seller be ready to fix a few odds and ends that pertain to health and safety within the home. GFCI outlets, fire smoke or CO2 detectors or a furnace that’s gone a little long since its last service are some common issues that come up.

Occasionally, a bigger item will be discovered in this process. If this happens there can be a secondary negotiation. It’s important to know that there are options here to work through these types of things. Almost always there’s a path through and we get to closing.

After the inspections and before the end of due diligence you’ll likely receive what’s called an Investigation Contingency Amendment or ICA outlining some of the issues discovered and a request. At this point you’ll have some decisions to make.