Don’t Fall In Love Too Fast With That Potential Home
The Hunt For The Perfect Home
If you have been house hunting for any length of time you know how easy it can be to fall in love with every home you look at in one day. Beautiful decorating, bright new paint job on the inside and out, shiny granite counter tops, beautiful hardwood floors are all things that can easily persuade us to fall in love with a home at first site. It happens to all of use. We are excited, and ready to make the move to a new home, but taking time to slow down and get to know the home inside and out is to your advantage. Just because a home has a nice paint job, does not mean that it is the perfect home. There can be a lot going on behind the scenes that are simply masked by the nice paint job.
We all know that looks can be deceiving and understanding what goes on underneath or in the background is typically what we need to be paying attention to with most things in life. The same goes for your home. Understanding the health of the structure will save you tons of money and heartache in the long run. I will tell you to be prepared for some heartbreak along the journey of your house hunt because you will find many homes that are simply deceiving. Finding good Dallas Home Inspectors can be hard unless you know where to look.
Homeowners sometimes go to great lengths to make their homes look appealing, knowing that they are simply masking other issues that may have haunted them for years as the homeowner. No one really likes paying for repairs, and if you happen to stumble upon a home that has been neglected for years on end, but had a cosmetic face-lift recently you could fall victim of this type of deception.
The Home Inspector
This is where a home inspector can become your best friend and most valuable asset. Find a good home inspector in your area that you can trust. We love the guys at www.DallasHomeInspectionCo.com. They are more than a home inspector, they are engineers. These guys are trained to look for things that many of us would never notice without the proper training that they have had. You want a person like this on your side when you are about to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a major investment.
When you hire an inspector you need to make sure he or she will be your advocate. They are working for you and not for the builder/contractor simply signing off that work was completed. I would go to the lengths of telling you to speak with 3-5 different home inspectors and interview them before hiring them to come inspect your potential home. You are simply hiring them to do a job, so interview them just as an employer interviews a potential employee. Make sure they have your investment in their best interest.
Before the interview make sure you educate yourself on some of the basics. Ask questions about what methods they use during the inspection, what type of reporting will they provide, etc.
You should hear the basics from them like:
- Heating and cooling
- Roofing
- Foundation
- Plumbing
- Electrical Systems
I would entice you to make sure they go deeper with their answers than that. Get specifics as to what they will be testing, how they will be inspecting etc. Some inspectors may feel you are being unreasonable with questions like this, however, I would urge you that if you run across someone like that simply move on to the next inspector in line for the interview. If they are frustrated by these types of questions, imagine how they will be if you question the actual reports they provide.
I may be being a little harsh, but I hate to see people get screwed by paying a lot of money for inspections and getting a half-hearted report by someone simply looking to make a buck. Find someone passionate about what they do, and go with them.
We hope this article has been helpful. Although we know a lot about paint, we also know how much paint can hide or mask other problems, and we want you to be aware of those things if you are looking to purchase a new home. If you have any further questions, please contact us.
