You’ve found a home you want to buy, put in an offer and are now under contract! Congratulations!
Now what?
Now you need to have the property inspected to make sure you’re investing in a quality home. Issues that are found can either dissuade you from buying a lemon or become potential negotiation points for getting a better deal on the property.
Is right before my inspection objection deadline an OK time to do my home inspection?
Well, simply speaking, no. Give yourself some wiggle room.
Understanding dates and deadlines of your contract is the key to success, and less stress!
To know what date you should schedule the inspection, you’ll need to work backwards from the inspection objection deadline date.
You will need to know how many days it will take to book the home inspection, sewer scope, radon and mold test appointments.
Make sure to allocate enough time to go over the findings with your real estate agent to decide on how you want to proceed with your negotiations before your inspection objection deadline.
Make a plan with your real estate agent for how you’d like to proceed with all the varying scenarios before you receive the results back from your home inspector. Having contingency plans ahead of time will make getting your results back much less stressful, as you’ll have already decided what your next move will be.
Booking an inspection
The majority of the time real estate agents call to book an inspection they are able to get a home inspection scheduled within 3-7 days out from the initial call.
During the busiest times of year expect most inspectors to be booked out by at least a week.
Pick a day and time when you’ll be available to meet with the inspector at the property. Have your real estate agent coordinate with the homeowner to find a time that works for both of you.
You’ll want the homeowners off property so that you can go over what the inspector found in private. Make sure to allocate enough time to review the inspectors findings before the homeowners return.
Unforeseeable Delays
Know that sometimes there can be unforeseeable delays in the home inspection process that are out of your control. Getting your results back for inspection test results can take a few days. And even more time if they need to be redone.
For example, you can’t always control what the current homeowner does during standard testing for things like radon. When it comes to testing for radon, which requires the home’s windows to be closed for the duration of the 48-hour long test, mishaps such as one family member opening a window would skew the results and then the test would need to be reset. This can easily cause several day delays in getting the final results back.
Happy House Hunting!
If you’ve had any experiences with home inspections, we’d love to hear your feedback!