A home inspection is one of the important parts of selling and buying homes. As TrueNest Management Team explains, it is a way for both buyers and sellers to learn more about the condition of the house being sold and find out what areas need to be fixed before signing the deal. However, many people also blame a faulty property or an overzealous home inspector when a transaction falls apart after the home inspection.
Before you blame home inspectors and the results of the inspection on why you were unable to seal the deal with the buyer, remember that there is more to this common situation than meets the eye. Experienced real estate professionals are knowledgeable about the different ways a deal can fall apart. These may include credit and financing problems, appraisals, and more. But among those, one of the more common deal killers is the home inspection. However, it does not have to prevent you from selling your home.
If you are planning to sell your home soon but you are worried that a home inspection will be a problem, we’re here to help you. To help prevent a home inspection from becoming a contract breaker, we’ve compiled in this post a few thoughts from home inspectors.
Homes and Home Inspectors Do Not Actually Break Deals
There are various home inspection situations that may lead to a canceled transaction. But two things are not included in the list, which is the house and home inspector. Before you blame the house or the inspector, you first need to look at and understand what really happens in and after a home inspection.
When the results of the home inspection are provided to the buyer, and there are issues needed to be fixed, it can change the expectations of the buyer significantly, which may cause problems. When you take a look at it, the inspection is not the one to blame but the client’s expectation of the house being sold. Therefore, if you are a buyer, you need to have more realistic expectations before you sign the contract.
Here are some of the other common reasons buyers change their minds after the home inspection:
They are not prepared.
If your buyers have little to no knowledge to help them understand how to look at houses and identify issues, they often back out of the deal once they know about the certain issues that should be fixed about the house that they are eyeing. This problem has been aggravated in recent years by a new generation of home buyers. The majority of them did not grow up working in their houses with their parents.
High expectations of buyers.
At the present time, most people who are looking for houses expect a level of luxury and comfort in a home that consumers could barely have imagined as recently as the ‘60s. This results in people purchasing more expensive and complex houses but having less understanding of how they are built or how they work.
Technology has improved reporting vividly.
The reality that home inspections have changed includes further complicating matters. Home inspections are a relatively new industry. At the present time, when you hire a home inspector, you can assume to receive around 40 pages of a report with lots of high-resolution color photos, detailed diagrams, and links to other information. This might sound great. However, these data often lack the tools that will help buyers understand all of the facts.
Other Common Reasons Deals Fall Apart After a Home Inspection
In addition to buyers not fully understanding what should be done after a home inspection and those that are not yet firm on their decisions, here are the other common reasons deals get canceled after a home inspection.
The listing has oversold the conditions of the property.
One common issue is sellers have a strong emotional attachment to their house. This means that there are times when how sellers think of their home can be different compared to what others think of their home. For example, the seller may say that they have recently replaced the HVAC system, but the home inspection sees that it is already 18 years old. This is because when you’ve lived in your home for about 50 years, 18 years may feel recent. Keep in mind that what’s “new” to one person may not be the same for others.
Buyers have specific feelings about an issue.
A buyer may cancel the deal when a particular problem has been found. One example is a buyer may kill the deal due to any evidence of rodent droppings. This means that he wouldn’t care about how good the foundation, the roof, or other things about the house are because he’s focused solely on one particular problem. Did you know that there are buyers who cancel deals just because a house does not have window screens? For other buyers, this is quite a simple issue to fix, but for some, it is a deal killer.
Buyers realize that there are things about the home that they do not like.
Many buyers blame the home inspection not because of what’s in the report but due to other things about the house that are noticed only during the inspection process. A lot of people who view houses for sale visit different homes. They usually just spend about 15 to 20 minutes viewing a house before they go to the next one. But during a home inspection, buyers have about 2 to 3 hours to sit in the house. That is the time they begin to notice things about the house that they do not like. This can include the layout, the neighborhood, and more.
These things have nothing to do with the inspection but will still cause the buyers to cancel the deal. Most people just find it easier to blame what the home inspector found rather than admit that they made an offer on a home that they do not like.
Some deals simply get canceled.
Even though there are lots of instances where the buyer backs out of a deal that has little to nothing to do with the home inspection, there are some houses that simply have more issues than most buyers are willing to fix. Some examples of these are houses with worn roofs, serious foundation damage, and significant electrical issues. Unless the buyer has extra money for renovations, some houses may just not be perfect for them.
With these, do you think home inspections can prevent you from selling your home? Well, if it is not the right house for the buyer, some deals just kill themselves. However, we can’t really say that home inspections can prevent you from selling your house. It’s just a matter of deciding whether you or the buyer is willing to fix whatever issues are found by the home inspector about the house for sale.