If you
are buying and/or selling real estate you will come in contact with
building inspectors. I'm not talking about the ones from the local
government that tell you what you can and cannot do with your own
property along who can do it. That is a discussion for another day.
We are looking at the inspectors buyers hire to check out a piece or
real estate before they commit to closing.
They can
be somewhat annoying even when checking out a property you wish to
buy but they can be extremelhy helpful. They are the ones who
squeeze into crawl spaces under the house and skulk about in attics
so I don't have to. In fact, you will not find me creeping around
two foot high caverns dodging sewer pipes, air ducts and the usual
assortment of critters that populate such environments.
I say
annoying because most have a fetish about finding every real and
imagined flaw in the property down to cracked swith plates and
missing screws that are scheduled to be replaced anyway. I must say
that I somewhat solved this problem with an arrangement with an
inspector friend of mine when we agreed that he would not give me the
book, but would just hit the things I really had to fix. It worked
out great. I saved a bit of money and he did not have to document
every unimportant detail many of his colleagues thrive on.
You may
wonder why I deal with inspectors when I buy since I seem to have an
aversion to their work. The fact is, if I plan to sell the property,
I want to know what the next guy is going to ding me for. Which
brings us to the question of them being a necessary evil, Here we
get a little more philosophical. Nothing that is necessary is evil
and nothing evil is necessary... ever!
These
guys have saved me some money and they have saved me from buying a
money pit. This is why I like to be present when the inspectors are
going through a house I am looking to buy. A couple hundred dollars
is not a bad price for this and I want to get my money's worth.
When I
sell, it is another story. I don't want to be around when my buyer's
inspector comes around. I don't want to give the impression that I
am colluding with him or intimidating him. (I wouldn't want Adam
Schiff or Robert Mueller wasting my time coming after me.) Beyond
that, the practice may well keep me out of trouble and preserve the
physical well being of the the guy picking apart our completed
work... even though, knowing they will be around helps us do better
work.
So, like
them or not, they are part of the real estate business and since we
must deal with them, we may as well understand how the game is played
and use them to our best advantage.
